How can organic social media boost your marketing efforts?
By Charlie Britten
17 Oct 2019
The concept of using organic SEO for firms to build up awareness is increasingly well-established. Content writers can produce blogs, news and other content that can build up awareness of your firm, speak to the needs of clients, tell your story in a compelling way and build up interest.
Once the attention of potential clients has been established, they will seek to consume more of your content, passing from the awareness phase through the consideration stage and, it is hoped, to the final buyer stage.
What helps build up SEO rankings?
While you build up content, good SEO work will help ensure it builds up its ranking through a range of aspects:
- Strong short-tail and long-tail keywords that will show up in organic search
- Authoritative content
- Good images and the use of video.
Over time, high-quality content will work its way up and should ultimately hit page one of the rankings.
Much of this content will be on your own website, or on an external host website you may have an arrangement with.
However, it is worth noting that social media also offers a great platform for your organic content. It will still benefit from the use of good SEO, but it also offers a great way of connecting with many more people and thus increasing awareness of your firm and its services.
Why is social media such a big opportunity?
It is worth considering just how well-used social media now is in the UK. Recent research has shown that:
- 44 million UK residents are active social media users - 66% of the population
- 38 million UK residents are active mobile social media users - 57% of the population
- Internet and social media use increased in all but one of the last dozen years
- These numbers are expected to go on rising over the coming years
All this means not just that social media offers a huge potential audience now, but also that it is set to go on growing in the years ahead. Indeed, given that younger people have never known a world without the internet, it should come as no surprise that using social media is increasingly the norm.
Of course, posting organic content on social media is not the only way your firm may use it as part of a wider marketing strategy. Short posts with links to your site and paid ads, such as PPC, are also very important options. The key difference with organic content is that it is free. It costs nothing extra to post and can be read by a large number of people.
If growing engagement is the priority, it is important to consider just what you will post, how people might interact and how you can turn interest into leads.
What platforms should you use?
Firstly, the question of just what you post will depend on the platform you use. Your choice of social media platforms should be informed by a range of factors, such as the buyer persona of your target market, as some demographic groups will tend to be the most common users of certain kinds of social media; examples include the disproportionately young, female usage of Instagram, while LinkedIn is the obvious go-to site for professionals.
However, you may get the most benefit from having a presence on a range of different sites. Some, like Facebook, have such a wide usage that they cover most demographics well anyway. But if you have a presence on multiple platforms, that also offers opportunities to post different kinds of content on them:
- YouTube and Facebook are both great for video
- Twitter is ideal for very short posts with good soundbites
- Instagram is good for static images
- LinkedIn is the best site for more high-brow messages
Therefore, by having a wide presence on different social media, your organic content can take on different forms and still reach its audience.
Why interaction matters
Another key feature of social media is that it is interactive. This means you can start a discussion, pick up feedback and learn more about your potential and actual customers. All this can provide useful information to help you build your firm, meet client needs more clearly and promote your firm as the supplier of the services people need to solve their legal issues.
Indeed, your organic social media can, in its own way, be as much a means of selling your firm as PPC. The key is to include links and calls to action to enable those moving beyond the awareness stage through to consideration to move the process forward.
How BeUniqueness can help
At BeUniqueness, we understand how using different social media platforms can help your content gain wider exposure, more readers, raise your profile and help bring more clients to your firm.
We can help you devise a content plan that will enable you to make the most of the opportunities that social media offers.