Employing someone for social media..... Is it worth it?

[KatiePrice123]

Hi All
I am a director of a small business and although we do some social media (twice a week maybe) we certainly do not do as much as some of our competitors. Would you say it is worth employing someone on a part time basis just to do social media? Tweets, FB etc..How important is it for Google?
Thanks

 

[ethical PR]

Hi Katie

I wouldn't employ someone just to look after social media. How important social media will be depends on what you do and who your target audience/s are.

For the majority of businesses - it doesn't create many direct sales.

However depending on the size of your business and marketing expertise within your team, it might be worth using a consultant/freelance/part-time marketing/PR person to devise and implement your marketing strategy, work with suppliers to develop your website, marketing materials, manage social media and digital marketing platforms, PR etc

 

[altwebdesign]

Great advice from Ethical PR....

It all comes down to why are you using social media?
To build authority? To sell?

You could schedule it using some software such as www.hootsuite.com and schedule your content each sunday night for the week ahead.

Fun fact: The lifetime of a tweet is less than an hour - So really think about how you will utilise it!

 

[fisicx]

How important is it for Google?

It isn't. You could post a hundred times a day on a hundred sites and Google wouldn't care.

Unless you get loads of people visting your site and sharing that link. And by loads I meant tens of thousands of people.

 

[KatiePrice123]

Hi Guys
Some really helpful pointers there...very much appreciated.
I am going to do some further research on the matter.
Thanks again - Katie

 

[Rockpapercopy_biz]

Social media activity gets taken into consideration by Google right now. So being active is important. Posting relevant, researched, entertaining and tailored posts is important. If you haven't got time to do it, consider outsourcing. Twitter & Facebook are great for traffic, and Instagram and Pinterest are more sophisticated and can spike your revenue with the right approach.

Don't assume you only need to post links to your website with occasional promotion, your followers will expect more than that - the good general rule is to post 40% curated content [shared from other sources] and 60% created content [your own]. Add your logo to each image. When someone shares your post, they will share it with an image and your logo too

 

[fisicx]

Social media activity gets taken into consideration by Google right now

How does Google take it into consideration?

 

[neils3]

If you don't have someone in house to do Social Media I'd recommend hiring. But be careful, you want someone that really understands your business, upcoming events, content your producing, etc so they can build an effective campaign online.

Also, posting content is just the starters, if you can find someone that will help create relationships online and drive conversations through understanding your business that's where it becomes really useful. Social, Content and SEO are all interlinked. The quality way of doing SEO is basically doing online PR which has to include Social.

 

[KatiePrice123]

I have been reading into how Google views social media and there are so many different theories. My brain is pickled! It truly is a minefield. Interesting though....

 

[AllUpHere]

I have been reading into how Google views social media and there are so many different theories. My brain is pickled! It truly is a minefield. Interesting though....

My advice would be to disregard any information you find (or are given) by anyone claiming to be a social media expert, or anyone who offers any social media related services.

Most of the very worst information I see pertaining to social media is written by those offering to manage (or write content for) social media accounts.

 

[KatiePrice123]

...... good point

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Social media is all about marketing not sales, Nobody goes on Facebook to buy something, but if they see your company and a story of what it does often enough, this may lead to them looking you up when they do want to buy.

TV advertisements don't make you rush out and buy today but they stick in your mind when you do want something in the future

 

[Jtabb7]

Hi Katie,

Personally I think any business should be at least have some social media presence. That's because what social media offers is the opportunity to have conversations with customers even after the purchase in a way other media doesn't offer.

What type of business is it?

As the comment above me says, social media is all about building relationships and not selling so if you're starting out on there I'd recommend Twitter as it's the easiest platform to get stuck into conversations with both followers and potential new followers.You wouldn't even require too much more time on it than you are already committing as you could spend 1 of your social media days scheduling your content for the week and the other day getting involved in conversations.

I hope this helps.

 

[Rockpapercopy_biz]

How does Google take it into consideration?

please simply search for Does Social Media Affect SEO? Matt Cutts Answers in Google to get some ideas. Also whenever you use SEO testing tool, it always analyzes your social media activity. While social media is not a major Google ranking factor at the moment, according to Matt Cutts that's where the things are heading. You might establish your presence, authority and trust now or decide to jump on the band wagon once the SMM begins to count and elbow fight with others to get google's attention. I honestly do not see a reason why choose to ignore SMM in the current day and age - if you want to connect with your customers.

 

[fisicx]

Matts Cutts no longer works for Google and his advice was vague at the best of times. SM links are no follow which means there is no ranking benefit at all. You can post a hundred times a day on every social site you can find and it won't make the slightest difference to your ranking. Google won't even know you are posting.

 

[Rockpapercopy_biz]

Matt Cutts advice was vague? This guy spent years working for Google on most detailed advice, and now he's being summed up to being vague lol... Where did you find information that SMM links are no follow? I'd love to learn more - also are you speaking from the position of head of Google informing all of us and the world that social media marketing is irrelevant and we should drop it on the spot?

 

[fisicx]

No, all I just said is posting on SM sites won't help your ranking.

It's been known for years that links are no-follow. Do a Google search and there is plenty of evidence.

Matts Cutts was well known for obfuscation. It's what he didn't say that was more useful than what he did say.

 

[Rockpapercopy_biz]

It's what he didn't say that was more useful than what he did say.

- please could you explain? I would love to learn what you know in terms of SEO that Matt Cutts didn't tell us - that is getting interesting. Unless you are speaking from a position of know-it-all better-than-Matt-Cutts Google representative, you shouldn't expect people will blindly follow your advice. I have been dealing with SEO and SMM for almost 9 years now, and know exactly what impact do Twitter, Google+, facebook and other sites have on website traffic and authority. The more traffic your website gets = the higher your ranking is. The more frequently you post on social media = the more traffic you get. Please tell me again SMM has nothing to do with rankings?

 

[justinaldridge]

The more frequently you post on social media = the more traffic you get. Please tell me again SMM has nothing to do with rankings?

That's social media traffic and not Google search traffic.

For businesses that are hugely active in social media, as a consequence of their activities they can generate interest and comments on blogs, etc, which can yield links which then help with Google rankings,

But just doing some social media will not impact rankings at all.

It's only the ones that are super on it all the time and creating great campaigns that may get ranking benefits due to secondary engagement.

But this is a very long and indirect approach to improving organic search rankings.

 

[AllUpHere]

The more traffic your website gets = the higher your ranking is. The more frequently you post on social media = the more traffic you get. Please tell me again SMM has nothing to do with rankings?

You are clutching at straws now. Following your logic, painting my web address on my bum and running naked around the streets would improve my Google rank.

 

[fisicx]

I would love to learn what you know in terms of SEO that Matt Cutts didn't tell us

If you have been doing SEO for 9 years you would know how to read between the lines on anything Matt Cutts says. Read back through his posts and you will discover all sorts of discrepancies and misinformation. As an example MC says duplicate content won't incur a penalty. But that's not the same as saying duplicate content won't affect your ranking (which it does).

And increased traffic does not means better ranking. For traffic to affect ranking you need to be getting tens of thousands of visitors every day and even then the benefit is minuscule.

 

[Rockpapercopy_biz]

Any type of advertising that brings traffic to your website, improves your rank. So that's correct, running naked with your web address on a bum should help you achieve that. Google changes its algorithms all the time, so yes, anything that Matt Cutts or anybody else said years ago, will no longer apply, that includes the current hype around SMM.

 

[fisicx]

No it doesn't. Increased traffic does NOT mean improved ranking. Social media marketing will NOT help your ranking.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

It depends on the ROI.

If you pay someone a salary, and their social media efforts are directly responsible for sales which give you a good return after factoring in the cost, then it's worthwhile.

You should be able to tell if this would be the case by looking at your existing social marketing efforts. If you're gaining sales from these platforms which come in at a reasonable cost/time per conversion, then scaling that up may work. However, if your social media efforts aren't bringing any sales in, then don't expect more of the same to change much.

As for social media's role in SEO, Matt Cutts has actually made a video stating that social media metrics are not a factor:

.

However, previous to that in 2010, he said they were a factor.

Personally, I think social media metrics are a factor, but not in any sort of simple way. It's not about how many followers you have or how many tweets you send out. Google will crawl these social media platforms, take what they can in terms of authority and relevancy, and then factor these in with various weights. The amount of followers, likes, tweets and all of the rest are just too easy to manipulate to be taken at face value.

Mind you, I also believe that Google do factor in no-follow links as well. After all, they rely on the natural progress of the web to find signals which indicate the popularity and credibility of pages, and no-following links is a direct manipulation of that which makes their job a lot more difficult. I don't think they pass on link juice like any normal do-follow link, but I don't think they ignore them either.

 

[Sheng]

You shouldn't do social media for the purpose of getting higher ranking. Social media in itself can be pretty powerful, but it has to start with good content.

 

[Rockpapercopy_biz]

Absolutely, I've seen it time and time again, how SMM brought 80% higher traffic, but as long as your website is optimized and you have plenty of items for sale, that people are willing to buy, only then you will be able to see decent ROI. You cannot rely on the SMM or ads alone, it's all part of the bigger package.

 

[fisicx]

...how SMM brought 80% higher traffic....

Wow! Can you point us to an SMM page that does this?

 

[Shopclicks]

Wow! Can you point us to an SMM page that does this?

Probably more like 90% because their Google ranking is crap ..... https://www.instagram.com/showpo/

700,000 Facebook likes & 1M+ Instagram followers

This business has a turnover in excess of $10M (so not a new business). They use SM & re-marketing ads. Interestingly, they recently added a short descriptive paragraph to each category page. I've watched one of their pages jump from page 6 to page 2 in serps since adding that little snippet of content.

Any type of advertising that brings traffic to your website, improves your rank.

SM likes, followers, website link clicks, etc. have next to zero impact on ranking. Indirectly, there are obvious advantages in becoming popular on Social Media in that more people will look for you and find you on Google. Currently, any improvement in serps will be the result of other factors, rather than the fact that 8000 people liked your post.

 

[fisicx]

In other words, if they had good ranking the 80% would drop to a much lower figure (which is what happens to everybody else).

Interesting that Mrs Rock is no longer claiming that SMM and traffic from SM sites influences ranking....

 

[Shopclicks]

In other words, if they had good ranking the 80% would drop to a much lower figure

But imagine the potential for a business that was proficient in both SM & SEO. Of course there is much more the business in my example could do on-page to improve rankings but I think they tread the fine line between 'User Experience' and what goes on the page to satisfy Google (which is not always user friendly).

Interesting that Mrs Rock is no longer claiming that SMM and traffic from SM sites influences ranking....

Hmmm ... yes, that would be misleading.

 

[boring-friday]

Matt Cutts advice was vague? This guy spent years working for Google on most detailed advice, and now he's being summed up to being vague lol... Where did you find information that SMM links are no follow? I'd love to learn more - also are you speaking from the position of head of Google informing all of us and the world that social media marketing is irrelevant and we should drop it on the spot?

Why would you care what google says? Google wants 2 things:
you to spend lots of money on ads
them to have the most relevant/high converting organic search results so people continue to use google. They don't care if you make any profit or not.
They want big sites to show first too because they're more trusted and generally better at converting so an ideal situation for them is for you to rank nowhere, chuck a load of money on ads to push up the bid price for the big guys then feed you a load of speal about seo taking time so that you continue to throw money at them on ads aswell for as long as possible.
Then they run some new algorithm changes and sit back and make everyone panic that their site will get penalized if they do anything naughty.
Its similar to HMRC only bothering to catch 1/100 tax dodgers, throwing the story to all the newspapers and making people think that they actually catch most

 

[Rockpapercopy_biz]

Why would you care what google says?

well... because Google controls 94% of the search results, so if you are a smart marketer, you should follow their advice. Apologies, had a wonderful weekend on Thai island, and forgot to mention, that yes, Mrs Rock still thinks SMM improves rank, sorry guys
And, yes, to support my 80% increase in traffic claim, please kindly search a portfolio page on my website [sorry, no links allowed] for UKUSCA Doggie site, which left me feedback stating I have improved their traffic in 80% within 7 days from the project. I'll get back to doing a great job, as usual, if you excuse...

 

[fisicx]

You claimed 80% increase in traffic through SMM. The portfolio page doesn't say that at all.

And you are still wrong about SMM improving the.

 

[Rockpapercopy_biz]

Yes, it does, you simply didn't pay attention, perhaps just like when reading all the information on the SMM. I reached top of 1st page of google with my first online business only because of good social media marketing. I sold this business in 2012, yet it is still on top of the first page of Google when you search for 'scene clothing' - have a look at it yourself [Little Black Cherry]. Now excuse me, I'm off to set up a Hootsuite account for my client.

 

[fisicx]

I reached top of 1st page of google with my first online business only because of good social media marketing.

No you didn't. It ranked because Google considered it to be worthy and because you have a reasonable inbound link profile.

And I did read the page: http://www.rockpapercopy.co.uk/ukuscadoggie.html There is no mention anywhere of SMM. It says:

...noticed that orders started rolling in within few hours from the first re-design stage.

Re-design is not SMM.

 

[Rockpapercopy_biz]

I am pretty sure after 5 years of running LBC I know what made it successful - 100% positive I know more about how I got to 1st page of Google than you. Yes, I did SMM for UKUSCA Doggie, and yes 80% more sales and 80% more traffic from SMM was recorder by a customer - did you really think it was from a web re-design? That would be something new!

 

[fisicx]

No, I do this all the time. A well built site will get better ranking which means more traffic and better conversions. SMM does work for the right product and services but it doesn't improve ranking. There are indirect ranking benefits but posting on FB of getting more traffic from that page will not ever boost ranking.

We can argue this back and forth all day any neither will change our opinions so I'm going to bow out now.

 

[Scott-Copywriter]

well... because Google controls 94% of the search results, so if you are a smart marketer, you should follow their advice.

Within reason.

Google simultaneously offers webmasters advice about search engine rankings whilst telling them to focus their websites on users without trying to manipulate signals for search engine purposes.

They are continually trying to align the two, where the websites with the highest relevancy and best user experience rank the highest, but their algorithms are still far from perfect.

The fact that Google keeps its algorithms a closely guarded secret really says it all. They are selective about what they do and do not say. Everything, including official documentation such as this: http://static.googleusercontent.com.../search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf, also approaches from the angle of making it easier for bots to crawl and understand content whilst making it better for users.

They're useful tips, sure, but they hardly scratch the surface, and that's because prioritising a site for search engines over users contradicts what Google actually prefers you to do. They are also acutely aware that how they word certain information will cause the entire SEO industry to jump on it, pick it apart and figure out how to use it to their advantage.

By all means take on board what they say, but be mindful that their intentions may not always be the same as yours.

 

[Rockpapercopy_biz]

we can all agree that not even google wants us to know it all, so fisicx, you also cannot claim you know it all. You say you improve website rankings by a re-design, I claim I improved website rankings with SMM. My credentials are a proof, but so far I haven't seen any from you. Let's focus on what we do best for us and for our clients, I think that's the most profitable way to spend our time, don't you think?

 

[Shopclicks]

I claim I improved website rankings with SMM.

Can you tell us why you think this is the case and which SM activity is more likely to improve ranking?