Social Media Mistakes

How NOT to use Social Media for SEO

Used properly, social media can be a benefit to a small business owner. Used incorrectly, social media can hurt your company and hurt sales.

If you have a business website, you want people to visit it so that they can learn about your business. Hopefully, they will then buy something from you or engage your services.

The process of converting a website visit into a sale is called a conversion.

Take a look at the bottom of this page. Do you see the big button that says Contact Us? That is the conversion I want on my website. I want you to contact me so I can make a sale such as design a new website for you or perhaps do some SEO work. On your website it may be something else, like making an online sale, signing up for a newsletter, or something else.

The Number One Social Media Mistake

The #1 mistake is to send people away from your business site to social media. It's the wrong direction. You want visitors to stay on your site so you can make the desired conversion.

Use social media to drive visitors towards your site, not away from it.

Once visitors have arrived at your site through your hard won SEO efforts, do not send them away by prominently displaying social media buttons and encouraging visitors to leave by clicking on them. They may never come back, and in that case you have lost a sale.

If you have a Facebook page, put prominent liks there to your business site. On other social media sites, make sure your website URL is included in your profile. If you are active, people will look up your profile and click to visit your business website.

If you display social media icons, do not display them at the top of your business home page.

The first thing visitors should see is an attractive, interesting home page that draws them in and makes them want to know more about your products and services. The first thing they should NOT see is a prominent invitation to go away to read something like meaningless Tweets or pictures of you at a family BBQ. This will NOT convince people to do business with you.

Take a look at the bottom right side of this page. That's where social media icons should go. Or, you could just put them on your "About Us" page or your "Contact Us" page. If people want to see your social activity, they can easily find the icons there and click on them.