What are the different types of social media platforms and which one is best for your business?

Social media is everywhere these days: we see companies employing social media advertising in commercials, radio, billboards, websites, and even on our cell phones and other mobile devices. We see logos for Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr at the bottom of hundreds of websites. We are asked to subscribe to blogs, become fans, friends, share, and connect in countless ways, but how is this social networking actually benefiting us, and are the companies using these social media platforms seeing measurable results?

Since the list of different types of social media platforms and the variety of advantages and disadvantages to using them can be overwhelming, we’ve decided to take a few that we believe to be most advantageous and describe some of their pros and cons from a business point of view. It is critical to remember that not every industry should be spending their time and money on some of these platforms, and it is best to analyze just what your desired outcomes are before beginning a social media campaign. From there, weighing the costs and possible profits of each platform should help narrow down which type of social media program to weave into your SEO strategy.

Blogs – We begin here, as blogs are widely considered the “base” of any social media campaign. Blogs can add personality to your website and boost industry perception, educate others through the demonstration of your knowledge of the market, create an emotional investment in your company, build brand awareness, and more. Additionally, blogs can be integrated with other types of social media platforms, and can even have your Facebook posts or Twitter streams live on the blog itself.

One of the downsides to blogs is that they need to be as real to their readers as you should be to your customers. Readers will know if you are faking your industry knowledge if you have too much emphasis on yourself and not on them, and also whether or not you are involved with the blog regularly. Along those lines, blogs should be updated frequently, which can be difficult from a time perspective. This factor must be taken into consideration before deciding to create a company blog.

Facebook – One of the most currently relevant and widespread social media platforms for social networking is Facebook. Although trends come and go, Facebook should be the second social media device used after blogging for the very reason that it takes brand awareness to the next level by making your company logo very visible and allowing people to easily share news about your business to all their “friends”. People who become your fans are frequently reminded of your presence by status updates, news, and other interactions. Additionally, Facebook provides an analytics tool whereby companies can view weekly reports detailing new fans, numbers of interactions, and types of actions taken on their pages. Furthermore, Facebook allows for the creation of customized tabs on which to link other platforms, such as Twitter or a blog, to a Facebook profile.

The downside to Facebook is, like blogging, the time needed to maintain the company page, although the time needed here is considerably less than on platforms like Twitter.

Twitter – As mentioned above, much time and energy is required to successfully manage a Twitter account. With 27.3 million tweets per day, keeping track of who is talking about your company, your product, or who might need to know about you can be overwhelming, to say the least. Additionally, one must keep in mind various factors such as the need to “retweet” or reply quickly, maintain an appropriate “follower to following” ratio to ensure better optimization and a host of other variables.

On the upside, Twitter allows users to use programs such as TweetDeck to monitor tweets or schedule tweets for distribution. Twitter can be an extremely innovative and relevant way to reach customers, but this social media platform will only work for certain industries, in certain instances, and must be maintained regularly with a good strategy in place in order to be successful.

YouTube – Yes, YouTube is considered a social media platform. What’s more, it is also the 2nd most-used search engine following Google. Yes, we did say “search engine”. For the record, YouTube is used in this fashion primarily by the younger generation, and not as frequently as those who might actually have the resources to become a customer. However, with a trend, this large, companies should not be quick to overlook a branding and informational tool such as YouTube, especially considering the average time on site is 23 minutes. The benefits of maintaining a YouTube social media presence include a potentially huge audience for companies on a tight budget, and the ability to “tag” keywords to videos so that you will have a good chance of being seen when your terms are searched. Of course, as with the other social media platforms we have discussed, various factors play a role here, but if your company has already produced video creative to be used on your website or blog, it is easy to create a YouTube social media channel and cast a much wider net, especially considering YouTube’s time constraints are also much lighter on company resources than with the other types of social media platforms.

As with all types of social media platforms, what is hot today might not be in the future. Companies need to be able to accurately determine what to allocate their time and resources in to increase brand awareness and maintain a positive reputation on- and offline. This conservative and well-thought-out approach will help prepare these companies for the next phase of social media platforms, or whatever type of media becomes the “next big thing”. Search engine marketing companies and their clients must consider these factors when making decisions about how and when to further marketing efforts.

Contributed by Amanda Finch, VP Operations

Titan Growth was recently named one of the Best Places to Work in San Diego, for the 3rd year in a row!

The Best Places to Work survey and awards program was designed to recognize and honor the top employers in San Diego, who contribute to the county’s economy, workforce, and businesses. The list is made up of 100 companies from across San Diego County, in a number of verticals. Though the list of businesses may be vastly different, they share one thing in common: the desire and initiative to create a positive working environment for their employees.

Companies from across the county entered the two-part survey process to determine the Best Places to Work in San Diego. Each company was evaluated on their policies and philosophy, as well as individual employee satisfaction surveys.

Titan Growth, among the other list-making companies, will be honored at a ceremony on August 11th. The Titan Growth team is thrilled to be on the list for the 3rd year in a row and will be in attendance at this year’s award ceremony (and most likely in themed costumes!).

Here are a few team pictures from the previous two years.

Best Places to Work 2015 

Best Places to Work 2014 

Great content can benefit your SEO strategy more than you might think. Here are 5 reasons why.

Whether you’re creating content for your website, for blog articles or online press releases, there should always be one common characteristic: quality. Quality content is not only a representation of your company and culture, it also has the ability to affect your search rankings. Here’s why content is important for SEO:

1. Shareability – Creating valuable content increases the likelihood that readers will want to share it with friends and on their social media platforms. Not only can sharing increase the exposure for your content dramatically, but social shares, such as +1’s, likes and tweets are also signals that can help your content rank higher in the search results.

2. Acquire more high-quality links – Quality has an eye for quality. If your content is truly good, useful and relevant, authoritative sites and individuals will be more likely to link to it. Killer content will help you earn more links.

3. Larger presence – Adding more content to your site increases the size of your website overall, which can make your website appear more authoritative to search engines. The more content you have, the more chances you have for your web pages to come up in the search results. Also, by continuously adding content, you increase the crawl frequency of your website.

4. Keyword opportunities – Creating quality content based on thorough keyword research can provide opportunities for your content to rank better for specific keyword phrases. By researching what terms searchers are using when searching for your products, services, or blog topics, you can more effectively optimize your content to rank for the most valuable terms.

5. Disaster management – By creating quality content, it’s not always about what you get out of it, but what you avoid. Sparse, thin content or content that has overly optimized links can actually get you in trouble with the search engines. Sticking to quality content that will provide value for your readers is the best way to go to avoid search penalties.

Taking the time to create quality content can be rewarding on many levels. It can help to increase your readership, your brand authority, and even your search rankings. Don’t skimp on quality because it can really pay off for your brand. If you would like to learn more about the importance of content in SEO or receive a free assessment of your website content, please contact us.