Everyone knows how important social media sites are these days. But did you know that having a presence on social media sites actually plays into a business is overall SEO score?

Yes, search engines like Google and Bing use a heat index is from social media sites to measure how popular a business or brand or product is with consumers. The more popular the brand, the more “juice” the brands website receives in Google search.

This makes it extremely important to make sure that you have a presence on as many social media sites as possible. Now I know it may not always be possible to be constantly posting on all these different sites, however, at least having a presence is important.

Creating content for each separate social media page is really the optimal way to go, however that is a lot of work. Often times what people will do is use a tool like HootSuite to create one piece of content and send it out to multiple different social media sites.

This is OK, but just know that’s not the most optimal way to do it. On this page I am going to list the social media sites your business should be listed on in order of importance. There is a link to the social media site where you can complete your profile:

1. Facebook

   Facebook is the most important social media site to have a business page on. This is not a group or other type of entity on Facebook, it must be a business page. Complete all the requirements to fill out the page fully (phone, address, description, website, shortname, call to action, etc.).

2. LinkedIn

   LinkedIn Business Pages are extremely important to set up as well. The main purpose of LinkedIn is to network and therefore your business should have a presence on the platform. Interestingly, from our research, we have noticed that LinkedIn has some of the strongest indexing of any social media platform. This means it often shows up first when Googling a person’s name. Try it out yourself!

3. Instagram

   Insta is important as well to building a business. Many people don’t realize that you can have a personal and a business profile on Instagram, and that it is crucial to make sure you have a business page. Certain types of businesses will do better on Instagram, especially if their product or service is very visual in nature. Make sure to take high resolution images and use hashtags on your posts.

4. Twitter

   Twitter is a place to reach the World in ways not possible on other social media sites. It’s also the most misunderstood social media site when speaking to small business owners. They usually can’t seem to understand how to use it. Twitter is unique in that it has lots of micro communities inside the platform that need to be discovered and infiltrated if one is to have success on the platform. It’s important to find the industry leaders inside each micro community and follow everyone that they follow and then engage regularly. These micro communities will have trending themes that occur regularly and you will want your account to participate in these.