Boost Your Digital PR & Marketing Skills with Social Media Optimization

By now you know I’m as sold as one can be on the intersection of Social Media, SEO and Content Marketing. It’s the essence of the core principles of information Discovery, Consumption and Engagement that I talk about in Optimize and at conferences like PRSA International in Orlando this week.

Information production, sharing and consumption is accelerating faster than marketers (or consumers) can keep up with. A lot of that information is user generated content from social sharing and networking sites. Internet Marketers have long been savvy about creating, optimizing and promoting content that’s findable and relevant for target audiences.  Marketers aren’t the only corporate departments creating content in need of an audience though.

Public Relations, Media Relations, Corporate Communications, Investor Relations and many other groups part of corporate MarCom publish content to the web. Audiences may vary, from journalists and reporters doing story research to investors and potential business partners. Increasingly, PR departments are publishing direct to consumer news content, ala “brand as publisher”.

My presentation at PRSA International in Orlando focused on how PR practitioners can realize the emerging opportunities for shifts in consumer information trends, how PR content can be optimized and socialized, tools to scale and practical social media optimization tactics to elevate search visibility of social media and social news content. 

Here are the specific SEO tactics for social media in this presentation and links to other more in-depth articles on those topics:

   #  Blog SEO Tips – Blog Optimization – also check out our Blogging category with nearly 8 years of blog marketing tips.
    # Facebook SEO - Facebook SEO Tips: Optimizing for an Audience of 800 Million
    # LinkedIn SEO – Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile to Improve SEO for Your Company
    # Twitter SEO –  How to Use Twitter for SEO
    # YouTube SEO – 5 Basic Tips for Video Optimization
    # Google+ SEO – How Google+ Will Affect SEO for Your Website

Some tools which are use full in SEO :

    RavenTools – Paid tool. For basic SEO project management & reporting.
    SocialMention – Free social media search engine and social topic search tool.
    Google Keywords Tool – Free. Basic tool for researching which words/phrases are most used on Google and how competitive they are.
    Google Insights – Free. Shows trends and comparison of keyword phrase popularity (interest) over time plus geographic information.
    Ubersuggest – Free. Handy tool that makes Google autocomplete suggested search phrases usable. Works for Google.com and Google News queries.
    Scribe – Paid tool. WordPress plugin and standalone web service that provides real-time feedback on article keyword optimization.
    Majestic SEO – Paid tool. Think of this as a clipping report for links, including information about quantity, quality and type. Has a historical feature that’s quite handy for trending.
    SEMRush – Paid tool. Want to know what your site or your competitors’ sites are ranking for organically on Google? And their pay per click ads? This is the tool. Also has a trending and comparison feature.

There are many, many more Social Media Optimization and straight SEO tools out there – certainly many more that are advanced, private or for enterprise sized sites. These are basic, easy to use tools that are free or low cost that Public Relations and Communications professionals can use to optimize their news and social content for better keyword relevancy. More relevant (and links) means better visibility in search and a better user experience