What social media technology should be at the center of your social media strategy? That’s a question I asked myself, and it was inspired by Wendy at Socialglue, who had listened to a webinar by Jay Baer and Chris Baggot on the topic of making one social media application the center of a company's social media efforts. I thought I’d chime in on the discussion and give a few reasons why a blog should be at the center of a company's social media strategy.
Blogging is different from most other social media technologies. Unlike a forum where conversations happen within the website, blogs are devices for holding conversations between websites, or between blogs. And that factor fits into how the eco-system of the web works. People use search engines to find information about brands and products. Therefore it’s important to get a top ranking in search engines, and three factors for getting a good ranking include:
1. Having good content that includes the keywords your audience is searching on.
2. An indexable site for search engines.
3. Links from other websites that include the keywords your audience is searching on.
That last factor is the reasons why blogs are so successful in the field of digital marketing, and finding stuff on the web on blogs.
10 or 20 active or influential bloggers conversing on the same topic in their industry can easily swamp search engine results because they are having conversations between websites rather than within one website. If you think about other social media applications such as Twitter, even conversations on Twitter are all on the same domain name. This linking factor between blogs is an important factor in corporate blogs helping to achieve ranking in search engines.
Now search engine optimization is not all social media and blogging is about, there's a lot more to blogging. If you have conversations between a group of bloggers and they feel comfortable referencing your stuff or recommending your products. In addition to the links, people reading the referrals will check out the referral because they trust the original blogger in giving the referral. I’d say this was an example of social search in action.
Now having said all this, I think there are circumstances where companies will pick social media applications that are not blogs and those applications may certainly be at the hub of a company’s effort because that's where their community is located, or a company expends more effort on another social media technology than a blog and so achieves better results.
Blogging is different from most other social media technologies. Unlike a forum where conversations happen within the website, blogs are devices for holding conversations between websites, or between blogs. And that factor fits into how the eco-system of the web works. People use search engines to find information about brands and products. Therefore it’s important to get a top ranking in search engines, and three factors for getting a good ranking include:
1. Having good content that includes the keywords your audience is searching on.
2. An indexable site for search engines.
3. Links from other websites that include the keywords your audience is searching on.
That last factor is the reasons why blogs are so successful in the field of digital marketing, and finding stuff on the web on blogs.
10 or 20 active or influential bloggers conversing on the same topic in their industry can easily swamp search engine results because they are having conversations between websites rather than within one website. If you think about other social media applications such as Twitter, even conversations on Twitter are all on the same domain name. This linking factor between blogs is an important factor in corporate blogs helping to achieve ranking in search engines.
Now search engine optimization is not all social media and blogging is about, there's a lot more to blogging. If you have conversations between a group of bloggers and they feel comfortable referencing your stuff or recommending your products. In addition to the links, people reading the referrals will check out the referral because they trust the original blogger in giving the referral. I’d say this was an example of social search in action.
Now having said all this, I think there are circumstances where companies will pick social media applications that are not blogs and those applications may certainly be at the hub of a company’s effort because that's where their community is located, or a company expends more effort on another social media technology than a blog and so achieves better results.
