Keeping current customers and clients, and attracting new ones, is the very lifeblood of any business regardless of size. Two of the most crucial weapons you have in your SEO marketing arsenal to achieve these things are social media and inbound marketing strategies. When these two work together, and relentlessly, you just may find yourself with a steady stream of new clientele.
Relationship building is everything these days and your marketing efforts need to be focused on that at all times. Customers these days are looking for that connection with a company. They want to know that there are real people and real caring behind a product or service they decide to get involved with.
Recent marketing research done at Harvard points out that business has evolved from being simply a thing to an idea and then evolving further into an experience and even further into a relationship. That is what is being sought out these days – the experience and the relationship. To give the customers the experience and the relationship, savvy companies are turning their SEO marketing efforts toward inbound marketing strategies and their social media platforms.
Your content, your SEO and your social media must all combine together in your inbound marketing to drive traffic to your website or your store. While most businesses seem to just limit their social media efforts to building brand awareness, a more aggressive approach can ensure better results. Create that engaging content at your site and then send it out onto your social media platforms and encourage dialogue between your company and those potential customers. By getting them fired up over your content, you get them fired up about you and, then, the word of mouth asserts itself.
Your content out at your social media platforms is, of course, the key component. Also, your social media becomes a listening post, a way of gathering intelligence that will let you know what people are talking about and what they are looking for. Because your content is SEO enhanced, they will work together so that people can find you. In addition, you are sharing your content with online blogs in your industry that can help spread the word as well as with the social media influencers you will need to really increase your brand awareness and traffic.
While this is all rather time consuming, it will pay off as you increase brand awareness and build alliances with those people who can help drive traffic or you. Most standard SEO strategy suggests that you need to be attracting at least 15% of your traffic from social media. If you are not currently doing this, you need to create some inbound marketing strategies that will begin to get you beyond that threshold.
– Written by Kevin Sawyer
