Social Network Meltdown!!

Social Media was undoubtedly one of biggest talking points of 2007. Search Engine Optimisation professionals and businesses found many interesting ways to leverage traffic levels and online brand awareness through online social media sites. These sites were found to be a great way of beginning conversations with potential customers and clients but do they in fact have a negative effect upon businesses?

Social Networking can in fact have a negative effect on businesses if not used in the right way or context. One of the biggest problems with social networking is that it takes up a lot of time. Businesses have to update their profiles regularly so that visitors have fresh content to look at. If businesses have too many profiles then they could well spend large portions of their day monitoring these sites. This will have a big effect upon their productivity levels.

Businesses may also find that the time they have invested in social networking may have been wasted as they have not done enough research and planning. Some businesses just create numerous profiles and hope for the best. This is a waste of time. Think about your levels of traffic and brand awareness before and after you implemented your social networking profiles. Have you made any significant gains? To get the most out of social networking it is worthwhile creating a plan with set goals and objectives.

This plan should look at the social networks you are going to use and what message you are trying to promote. Some social networks will cater better to you and your potential customers needs. Think about the conversations you are trying to initiate with your customers. Too many conversations could confuse them and blur the message that you are trying to get across.

Although social networking can have a negative effect on businesses it is clear that if it is done right that it can be extremely beneficial. Many experiments show that content can be ranked very quickly and highly in Google as a result of social networking. Here at Just Search we suggest to our clients that they use social media plug-ins in there blogs and that they should have a clear plan before they create any profiles.

Mark
SEO Programmer