As social media continues to be a big influence on consumers as to whether they decide to purchase with your brand versus a brand not on social media, some of us may be asking, what happened to SEO? Although I’m still a firm believer in professional search engine optimization services, we internet marketers need to be cognoscente on where an audience is searching for information about your brand. According to a study by HubSpot, if 85% of Internet users have a Facebook account and 80% of social media users prefer to connect with brands via Facebook , then your brand should definitely not only have a brand page on Facebook, but one that is fully optimized and engaging. When creating social pages for a product or service, be sure to follow these steps to create a fully optimized social network.

Before I begin breaking down each channel you’ll want to gather a keyword list from your online marketing company’s SEO department. Narrow down the list to your top 3-5 keyword phrases which will be included in all descriptions across your social networks.  Now let’s begin:

FACEBOOK

With the ever-changing world of Facebook, it’s important to stay up to date with all of the new updates within the platform (i.e. editing your brand page to Timeline view). The about section is your chance to give a short description of what your brand does, while also including a keyword and link back to your site for Google to index. It is also a best practice to include links in the description section to all other social networks that your brand is active on.

For even more SEO value within Facebook, consider placing a keyword at the beginning of your status update; especially updates that include a link back to your site. Click on the timestamp of each update and you will be brought to a separate page specific for that update.  The first 18 characters, sometimes a bit less, of your update will be the SEO Title for that post.

TWITTER

With only 140 characters or less, there’s not much SEO opportunity on this platform, but still some SEO benefit.

What you write in your bio information is very important not only just for SEO, but also for other tools that gather Twitter users based on a search query (like FollowerWonk). Don’t forget to insert a keyword in your bio and also include a link to your site. Design a custom skin for your Twitter page that includes more information about your company and calls to action.

GOOGLE+

A social network result from the search engine giant itself, we have Google+ and its land of opportunity for SEO.

Before creating a profile for your brand on Google+, decide whether you want to create a local page (for a specific address like a hotel or restaurant) or a brand page (for products/services). A Google+ local page now integrates with Zagat reviews. Once your page is created, edit your descriptions to be keyword-rich. Google+ allows you to link those keywords within your introduction, creating the dofollow links that Google loves. Having a profile that is linked to a website will also help your credibility; it’s a simple snippet of code provided by Google that is to be inserted on your sites homepage. Learn more about profile and page verification badges on Google+ here. Once this is done, your Google+ page will show up on the right hand side of the Google search page for relevant queries, thus making your Google+ page more discoverable.  Lastly, don’t forget to include links to all of your company’s other social networks in the links section.

YOUTUBE

Another social network result of Google is the video sharing platform YouTube.

Although there is no option for anchor text links in the about section of your channel, be sure to include your keywords as “tags” in the channel settings. Link to all other social networks and also take advantage of designing a customizable YouTube skin for more information about your product or service and calls to action. As you begin to make a presence on this platform, keep in mind that your video title doubles as a SEO title and the video description doubles as your Meta description. This is a great place to add keywords as your “tags” for each video uploaded if it doesn’t sound right in the description.

LINKEDIN

According to my research, there isn’t much SEO value so far from LinkedIn brand pages. Therefore my recommendation would be to include keywords in the about section, specifically in the specialties box which will help your company appear in search within LinkedIn. A link to your website is also not to be forgotten.

PINTEREST

Who would’ve guessed that a virtual pin-board would create so much buzz so quickly? Getting verified on Pinterest is much like getting verified on Google+. All you need to do is download the verification file from your settings and host it on your sites homepage. Don’t forget to include keywords in the description of your Pinterest page, and if possible, title your boards with a keyword. Boards also have SEO opportunity within their descriptions, so be sure to have a keyword there as well.

Now that you have properly optimized six social media channels for SEO value, watch as the referral traffic from social increases over time. With the ability to reach over 50% of Americans, according to We Are Social, social media networks should not only be created, but optimized to ensure you are building relationships while also ranking in the search engines. Have other social SEO service recommendations? I’d love to hear in the comment section below!

We should all be familiar with the professional networking site, LinkedIn, as our go to for recruiting and company inquiries. For many years it was one of the only social networking platforms that really catered to the job search market (eliminating photo sharing and status updates like its biggest competitors in the social world, Facebook and Twitter). Two years ago, Facebook decided to up its competition level in the job search industry and launched its own professional network, BranchOut.

At 25 million registered users, BranchOut allows aspiring internet marketers to see which of their Facebook friends (or friends of friends) are working at specific companies. The application will directly connect you with your pre-existing Facebook graphs. It will pull your basic info and profile info (education history, location and work history) along with your friends’ profile info (education histories, locations and work histories) upon download. This allows you to save time by not having to build your professional network one person at a time, something you must do on LinkedIn.

BranchOut works and looks much like its biggest competitor, LinkedIn, in that it allows you to browse over 3 million jobs and 20,000 internships. Online marketing companies can also use the network for sales and recruiting through its RecruiterConnect tool (which works like LinkedIn Recruiter).  I decided to download the app and take a look for myself; here is what the platform looks like (from my profile view):

As you can see BranchOut allows the following:

• Ability to search for people, companies, or titles in the search bar
• Find connections at top companies
• Gives a live feed of what your friends are up to regarding their work/education history
• Allows you to see where your friends work, and if there are any open positions (and how many)
• Post jobs to BranchOut network and to your Facebook page

After some exploring I think the most useful part of the platform is when you click on a company it will show you a list of inside connections. Here are the people who work there that may somehow have a connection to you; if you hover over their picture icon it will state whether they are a direct friend (1^st degree) or a friend of a friend (2^nd degree).  You can use the Message button shown in the pop-up dialog box to acquire any further information you may want to know about the company before applying.

BranchOut still has a ways to go to catch up to LinkedIn’s 150 million registered users, but with a database of 850 million on Facebook, I see this platform experiencing exponential growth in the near future.  Has anyone else given the new professional networking platform a shot; if so, what are your opinions?

Social Media Examiner released this week their fourth annual social media study, which has grabbed the attention of more than 3,800 marketers to tell us where they see the future of social media activities heading. It is stated in the report that an overwhelming majority of 94% say they use social media in order to market their business; while 83% feel social media is important for their business. With so much likability, any online marketing agency should analyze this year’s industry report to help your business utilize this service.

So if marketers can agree that social media has an impact on their business how much time exactly should we be spending on our social media efforts? According to the report, 59% of marketers implement social media efforts 6+ hours a week, with 33% devoting 11+ hours a week. It was also noted that those aged 20-29 are spending the most time in social media, with 43% spending 11+ hours a week.

Now that we better understand the time commitment, what do marketers see as the biggest benefit about social media? 85% believe that increasing exposure is the biggest benefit of social media, with increasing traffic following close behind with a 69% response rate. An important takeaway from this part of the study is that 58% of marketers who have been utilizing social media efforts for three years believe it has helped improve sales.

In terms of which tools we should be utilizing, 92% responded with Facebook as the most used social media platform. Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, and YouTube took the next four spots. It was interesting to see that even with Google+ being newly added this year to the report, 40% of social media marketers are using this platform. Google+ was also the platform that marketers are most interested in learning more about (ousting last year’s winner, Facebook). Also added new this year was the category, photo sharing sites (including the new Pinterest platform) with a 21% user rate.

Aside from social media marketing, marketers view email marketing, search engine optimization, and event marketing as the top three services they are also implementing. Surprisingly, pay per click internet marketing is not gaining as much attention as previous years, coming in the sixth spot. Also losing heat is webinars; 48% plan on not utilizing them at all this year and 79% plan on keeping the same level or increasing their use of press releases.

There is a lot of useful information to take away from this study, so we want to know where you see the future of social media is heading based on these results?

Watchout Twitter, LinkedIn has just launched its “follow” company button. LinkedIn’s goal is to make it easier for consumers to stay up to date with their favorite companies, seek job opportunities, or watch competitors and industry trends. According to Hani Durzy, LinkedIn‘s director of corporate communications, “The Follow Company button makes it easy for the more than two million brands with LinkedIn company pages to attract new followers and engage with them socially in a uniquely professional context.”

Perhaps one of the biggest advantages LinkedIn has over Twitter or Facebook is the legitimacy and professionalism of the website. Instead of mixing business with pleasure, which is what both Twitter and Facebook Brand Pages try to accomplish, LinkedIn focuses strictly on industry news and trends. To the right is a snippet from Internet Marketing Inc’s LinkedIn homepage.

LinkedIn Follow Box

The follow box appears at the right of every company’s LinkedIn home page. In addition to the follow box, LinkedIn has also provided a code generator so users have the ability to add a follow button to their own webpages. To follow a company, simply click on the Follow Company button and, as long as you are logged onto LinkedIn, you will automatically “follow” the company. If you are not logged on,  a box will appear asking for your LinkedIn login information. Just type those in and you will automatically begin to follow the company. So far only a handful of companies have implemented their own follow button on their websites, but you can expect a quick turnaround in the next couple of months. From an analytics perspective, search engine optimization agencies will be able to use the follow button as another indicator for tracking and analytics.

By following relevant companies, you can essentially turn your LinkedIn homepage to an industry related newsfeed and keep up with real time updates and trends.  Please tell us your opinions on LinkedIn’s new follow button. What companies or industries do you keep an eye on?

As of last week, LinkedIn has reported outstanding financial reports, including a near 20% jump in stock in just one day. Reports from the fourth quarter of 2011 tell us the social networking site experienced a 105% increase in revenue in comparison to fourth quarter results of 2010. LinkedIn ended the fiscal year with approximately $167.7 million in revenue.

What we found to be most noteworthy is the “Hiring Solutions” part of their end of year reporting. Their recruiting services reportedly jumped 136% from the year prior in revenue, ending 2011 with $84.9 million in revenue just from the hiring makeup of their website. This makes LinkedIn the fastest growing public provider of corporate recruiting solutions.

Steve Sordello, CFO of LinkedIn, talks about the success of the professional social networking site. “Our fourth quarter results underscore the company’s success in 2011, which saw revenue and adjusted EBITDA more than double. In 2012, we will continue to invest in our product, engineering, and sales infrastructure to capitalize on our long-term opportunity.”

Top marketing agencies should pay close attention to these findings because LinkedIn could be their next go-to for finding professional, hard-working internet marketers. Here are four ways in which a marketing company can utilize LinkedIn for recruiting services:

• The Job Postings section of LinkedIn allows you to post open positions at your company and also buy highly targeted ads. LinkedIn is clever enough to target those ads towards users that are most likely to respond upon seeing your ad. Research shows that the ads placed on LinkedIn are much more effective than ads placed on Facebook.
• With Talent Pipeline on LinkedIn, those who apply for a position that your company posts will be put in a managed stream. This is similar to a candidate marketing and applicant tracking system.
• Employment Branding is a service LinkedIn provides to you for building a unique career website directly within the LinkedIn network. With this service you are able to promote jobs to the right, interested candidates.
• Finally, LinkedIn Recruiter serves as the company’s vast recruiting platform; providing you with access to their entire database of nearly 150 million professionals who are seeking employment.

Is LinkedIn’s huge success of 2011 enough to make your company think twice about where you will look for new employees? Let us know how you plan on utilizing LinkedIn for your next job postings.

Mark Zuckerberg watch out- Google+ is not going anywhere. It has been open for a little over a month now and everyone’s been asking whether the new social networking site is here to stay, and YouGov took matters into their own hands to find the answer. They conducted a survey for 1,003 adults in the US regarding Google+ usage, future use, and usage of other social media websites (like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter). Their results bode well for Google, which they summarize here.

There are already 25 million Google+ accounts, which is 13% of the US population. While Facebook has penetration of 71%, Facebook has a considerable head start. YouGov predicts that over the next year, there will be an additional 9% of the population acquiring a Google+ account. According to their survey it looks like 30% of Facebook users, that also have Google accounts, are planning to cut down on time spent on Facebook.

When compared to the Facebook demographic, there are some stark differences that YouGov points out:

• 3 men on Google+ to 1 woman
• 59% of Google+ people have a college degree while Facebook has 37%
• 48% are single, while Facebookers are 33% single. In my own experience with Facebook though, many relationships are jokes between friends. In my opinion, the count on “real” relationships reported on Facebook cannot be determined by Facebook relationship status.

Google has a different target market than Facebook, which appeals mostly to college students while Google+ aims for college educated young men

In fact, Google+ is predicted to become the #2 site behind Facebook in the next year with 22% penetration while LinkedIn, Twitter, and Myspace all have under 20%. With the next push for Google+ accounts over the next 12 months, the social media industry is going to have a run for its money… well, whatever part of it isn’t owned by Google already.