Yes, yes and yes. Social media is just another way to generate backlinks  to your site, which might help you rank higher –depending on what people are saying about your business.

With the popularity of social media rising, specifically Facebook well over 500 million users and growing, it’s a market you can’t afford to ignore. That’s thousands of potential leads, customers and contacts for your business. Additionally Facebook has its own pay per click campaigns so you can reach out to even more users, specifically by their interests, age and gender if necessary. Facebook has also recently introduced a whole new level of ecommerce on their site, so all your business has to do is tap into it.

Twitter is another major social media player that you really shouldn’t ignore. Twitter works by giving users bits of quick hit information. Your business can use this to its advantage by offering Twitter only coupons, a behind the scenes look at your company, previews of upcoming promotions, and more. Twitter also helps you rank higher on Google as people re-tweet you and your company name shows up more and more often.
This practice leads to  higher visibility, and pushes you up as a trusted or recognized authority on the topic in organic search.

Social media can also help you to connect with your clients in a way that wasn’t possible before. You can get to know who they are, what their needs are, and most importantly what they are saying about your business as a whole. This helps you see a direct correlation between how you’re operating, how effectively your marketing dollars are being spent and what you can do to make improvements. And all of this straight from the horse’s mouth, not from a focus group or third party survey company.

So, why wouldn’t your company jump on the social media bandwagon? Well, there are a few reasons some businesses are dragging their feet. One is fear of the unknown. New technology always presents a certain amount of uncertainty. However, as a leader in your industry don’t be afraid to jump into this market with both feet. Unless you participate in a pay per click campaign, the only thing it’s going to cost you to get your social media visibility going is man hours, so you really don’t have much to lose here.

The bottom line is if you don’t jump into the social media world, your competition will. Then they will have access to the hundreds of millions of users you passed on. You might as well just hand your business over to your competition if you choose to ignore this growing market. So, play your cards right, and accept the fact that social media does affect SEO. The conversations between people online and user generated content matter to Google and they include it in their SEO algorithm.

Blog Post courtesy of Optimum 7