I've said it before and I'll say it again, to understand SEO you have this about how your post adds value for the reader and for the broader internet community. It requires a bit of a mind shift from the old method of "Make it look to hard from them to try" to "explain what I'm doing so they will trust me to do it for them".
Social Media give you the change to showcase your prowess by giving people enough information via Facebook Blogs etc for them to have a try themselves and realise the importance of deferring to an expert.
There is however a more direct co-relation between social media and SEO. As the internet is being cluttered with web masters, SEOs and others all scrambling to attention it is getting increasingly difficult for the search engines to differentiate between legitimate content and elaborate webs of sites used to draw a user to a target site which may or may not suit their needs. It is relatively easy to get backlinks for the sake of backlinks, especially if you invest a few dollars on odesk or a similar outsourcing site. The days of SEO being a function of the number of backlinks are long gone now though, even relevant backlinks are loosing their value because is it getting easier for people to devise ways to make content appear relevant.
The way around this? Getting human input.
The very nature of social media means that if something holds a genuine interest for someone they will share it or like it so that other people know it is interesting. Social Media profiles are linked to real people and the social media sites themselves are getting increasingly good at weeding out the bots. This means that it is fair to say that if a lot of people are discussing and sharing a certain site it must be relevant and quality.
The Challenge.
This is all well and good if you are selling items people are interested in. People love to share pictures of their latest dress, wheel rim or a movie they have just seen, they are far less likely to share a picture of their accountant or follow news of an Quantity Surveyor's latest job.
This is where the challenge for On-line marketers gets a little bit real. One solution is to ensure that your business is on as many review style sites as possible, especialy ones that are relevant to your industry, for example a restaurant is more likely to be found by a foodie through a trawl of eatability.com.au then a search for "Vietnamese Restaurant in Newtown". In relation to Trades people, these are sites such as truelocal.com.au which will allow a showcase of your products and allow users to review them, BUT good reviews are read as being submitted by the owner and punters are more likely to put the effort in to post a bad review when they are angry than a good review when they are happy. Profiles Sites such as BusinessChecker.com.au are reviewed independently which gives the user a sense of comfort that they didn't just buy their good review.
One Strategy for building a social media presence is to offer a discount to new customers who have liked your Facebook or Google + page, verifying they really did it can be a bit of work for your front line staff though and there may be large number of unlikes once the offer has been redeemed.
I would love to hear other strategies people are using to build up a social media presence on a B2B or service industry space.
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