Twitter, and Blogs, and Facebook, Oh My!

Just like the Scarecrow, the Tin-man, and the Lion helped Dorothy find the wizard so she could get back to Kansas; Twitter, Blogs, and Facebook are being used to help thousands of people and companies get to the top. Search Engine Optimization is the top priority of any company that is actively seeking a web presence. Not knowing what factors search engines, such as Google, are using in their algorithms, people are trying any and everything to get that competitive advantage and make it to the front page. This includes using these top three in the social craze.

Twitter consists of email and messaging, sort of a micro-blogging service due to the limited number of characters. It has allowed us to stay up-to date away from our computers via quick instant messages. With the 110 million unique visitors, companies are using it to keep customers informed on the latest products, news, changes, etc within companies. Blogging is not really new, but has taken off lately. You can find a blog on anything from ancient times to zoological finds and everyone in this world has an opinion on something. Not that much different from surveys, companies are taking advantage this social contact by posting a few comments about their industry and allow people to chime in. The more that a company responds to its customers the more the customer respond back. People thrive on interaction. Blogging has become so big lately that Wordpress.com, top blogging software, ranks number 15 on the most viewed websites, currently tallying 96 million unique visitors. Facebook, currently the most viewed website, boasting a whopping 600 million unique visitors and approximately 680 billion, yes billion, page views is not only being used as a social network but now companies are setting up accounts, building profiles and getting connected to the masses of people already joined.

So what does all this mean and how are these social networks really helping companies get ranked and make it to the front page on major search engines. Simple, it’s all about the traffic and search marketing. If you are providing people with information that they need or are interested in, they will keep coming back for more. Not only that, but we have heard of the saying "everybody knows somebody" and usually they are interested in the same thing, so the word-of- mouth effect happens and website traffic grows. You begin to post meaningful comments on other peoples’ blogs and they will be interested in what else you have to say, so they follow the link back to your blog, and there you have it more traffic. More traffic means more relevance, which means higher rankings and soon our company is headed to "Kansas".

I will admit, I am sort of old fashion and like to stick to the basics and have been successful using that standard, but, if you have the time to do it yourself or the funds to pay someone, I would highly recommend jumping on the social media bandwagon to boost your companies rankings. These are not guaranteed to take you to the top and land you on the first page, but it won’t hurt your company either.