Do you need social media to boost your SEO if your market is your own local area? Many small businesses, from restaurants to stores and even mechanic shops ask this question. You may be asking it as well, especially if you’re struggling to bring people in the door after putting up ads, distributing flyers, and even building your business profile on Google. Can social media bring more people in the door?
The Growth of Social Media
It’s no secret that social media use has skyrocketed in the past two years. Even sites like Twitter which had been stagnating since 2016 saw a huge spike in users in 2021. It’s not just how many people are using social media, however, that’s important. It’s how they’re using it. For most users, finding information about products or a brand rank is the top three reasons they turn to social media. Those users tend to utilize,
Instagram
Pinterest
LinkedIn
Twitter
If you’re not on any of these platforms in any meaningful way, you’re missing your customers.
How Does Social Media Help Build Local SEO?
As social media has grown, search engines like Google have continued to search those platforms when people make search queries. For example, you search for “movers near me” on Google. Among the web pages that pop up, you may also see the Facebook page of a local moving company. When businesses list their locations on sites like Facebook, that feeds into Google’s search algorithm and helps the search engine locate places near their users. In addition to helping drive people to your business, social media also helps you to:
Build your brand
Share valuable content & events
Build relationships with your customers
Demonstrate your expertise
Building a Local SEO Social Media Presence
Now that you understand the value of social media, how do you utilize it? Choosing a reputable and social media experienced digital marketing firm is always a good step. If hiring a firm isn’t in your budget (yet), you can take steps yourself to help build your social media presence and increase your local SEO.
Choose your platform(s). Instagram is an excellent choice all-around for businesses for reasons I’ll get to in a moment. If your primary market is other businesses, you want to also use LinkedIn. If your business focuses on fashion, makeup, photography, or crafts, then Pinterest will be a good platform to use in addition to Instagram. Twitter is an effective way to connect to your customers through retweets and responses.
Create engaging content. You build your brand and demonstrate your expertise through the content you share. Sharing videos of your work or products is an effective way to show what you can do and demonstrate the quality of your products. Sharing up-to-date news and blogs or articles about your industry is an effective way to demonstrate how you stay informed (and inform your customers). If you have a special event, share that information as well.
Make sure you give your NAP (name, address, and phone number). Ensuring your pages list the vital information about your business, your NAP helps search engines verify that you are local and helps customers on social media learn about your events.
What About Facebook?
You might have noticed that I didn’t bring up Facebook. That’s because people don’t use it as much for brand research – or at least they don’t think they do. You want to have a strong Facebook presence for two reasons,
Google and other search engines use Facebook page information to help determine the location on searches
People do use Facebook to learn about events in their area
You want to use Facebook for its location search and events, but you don’t want to spend too much effort building your Facebook presence. That is where your Facebook page and Instagram come in. People use Instagram widely for product/brand research, so you already want to have a strong Instagram presence. Thanks to Meta Business Suite, you can link your Instagram with a Facebook page to share the same content between both platforms. This means that you can,
Focus your effort on Instagram, your primary platform
Keep your Facebook page active with cross-posting from Instagram to ensure your events and location show as relevant
Do You Want Help Building Your Social Media Presence?
If your business is ready to make the leap into social media, contact me. I’ll help you meet your evolving business goals.