Retweets, shares, and any other type of social media that includes the spreading of your links has now become exponentially more important for your business in 2011.  Let me clarify:

Back in May of 2010, Matt Cutts (Google) released a statement that revealed there would be no “link juice” coming from social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter.  However, December rolls around and the story has changed to this:

“We do use Twitter and Facebook links in ranking, as we always have in our web search rankings, but in addition we’re also trying to figure out a little bit about the reputation of an author or a creator on twitter or Facebook. […]

This is something that is used relatively lightly for now, and we’ll see how much we use it over time, depending on how useful it is and how robust it ends up being. The one thing I would caution people about is, don’t necessarily say to yourself, “Aha, now I’m going to go out and get reciprocal follows and I’m gonna get a ton of followers,” just like people used to get a ton of links.

In the same way that PageRank depends on not just the number of links but the quality of those links, you have to think about what are the followers that mean quality, who are the people who are actually not just bots, or some software program or things like that.”

So, the key question remains; How Do I Use This Information

  1. Quality Content is Still Key — Your blog posts, your status updates, the events that you host, and everything that goes along with social media marketing needs to be high quality to not only attract more followers but also to verify yourself as an authority within your industry.  Remember, Google and Bing recognize authority and your search engine reputation will increase with improved content sharing.
  2. Quality Business Profiles — A significant number of professionals have two profiles on Facebook and Twitter.  This is not only frowned upon by the social networks, but it is entirely unnecessary.  With the security settings you can establish through Facebook, they make double profiles somewhat obsolete.  With regard to Twitter and other media platforms, if you don’t want the world to see your updates then don’t put the information out there.  Overall, you need to maintain your reputation both personally and professionally.  So, portray your personality but keep your personal life just that…personal.
  3. Quality Business Pages — Similar to the point made in the business profile, establish a business page to make the separation between professional and personal.  Create a killer business page for your Facebook and develop an outstanding Twitter background.  Along with that, produce a great LinkedIn profile.  If you establish all of those, you start to generate a phenomenal social media brand.

If you’d like to see the full video from Matt Cutts, play the video below and be sure to contact us if you need any help with your social media marketing efforts.

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If social media marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) is something that you are interested in but don’t know how to get started, contact us today to schedule your free marketing analysis.

Sources:
“The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing”-E-Book
SlideShare.net
Image Source: HubSpot, “The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing”, E-Marketer.com