Joomla is one of the world’s most popular platforms for building a website and content management with around 3 million downloads and 6,000 extensions.
With this in mind, it makes sense that there are a plethora of social media add-ons in this day of social sharing and content marketing. Many web developers are pretty savvy when it comes to SEO and social and how this can drive traffic to a site, whilst others ignore it.
The power of social sharing
However, social media is one of the most powerful resources available and as such, should be used to publish content such as blogs, pictures, events and so on. This is because the more social sharing that is done via your site and social channels, the more important the site will appear to Google.
Gone are the days when keywords and optimized pages were enough to get you good rankings in the SERPs, these days it’s all about content as well.
What social channels should I use?
This really depends on your industry. Facebook is ideal for B2C companies such as retailers, whilst LinkedIn is better for networking with other professionals. However, it doesn’t hurt to set up social media accounts on a few channels, starting with the most important.
Facebook Pages
Facebook Pages are free. Whilst there has been some debate recently on whether reach for non-paying advertisers on Facebook is being suppressed by the network, this is something that Facebook themselves deny.
However, if you can afford to advertise, then you will get better reach and engagement but it’s not essential.
Twitter and Pinterest
Twitter is a great resource and should be used by all, whilst Pinterest is only really viable if you have something aesthetically pleasing that you can share.
Saying that, you can use any images with Pinterest and I use it to post infographics and the featured images that accompany many of my blogs.
LinkedIn is a great resource, whatever business you’re in and should have a company page and a discussion group if you are to get the most from it. Endorsements on LinkedIn are a relatively new thing but very useful for showing off your skills as they are almost like mini-testimonials.
What content should I use to feed my social campaign?
This varies by social site but for a start, your blog, articles, whitepapers and any other content that you have produced for your site should be shared via the social networks. Other content can be used to point to articles that your readership will find useful, as well as infographics and anything that gives the reader value.
These should include:
- Blogs – from your site and others which are valuable to reader so give good advice, insight into your industry or ‘how to’ carry something out.
- Images – these should be mixed up into a collection of amusing and informative, with more emphasis on funny as they prompt more user action. This is because any content should evoke some kind of emotional response and amusement is the one which will get you the most engagement.
- Questions – think up something to ask your audience each day
- Polls – on something relevant to your industry SEO in the Panda and Penguin age
For Pinterest, you should look for beautiful images and think about how these relate to your site so that people will click through. If you’re a Joomla developer this can be template pages, typography pieces and so on.
Use common sense when it comes to what to post where; obviously a silly post that people laugh at on Facebook and Twitter will not have the same impact on LinkedIn, which is more likely to be receptive to a discussion about coding or extensions.
Whilst this is just a short introduction to social and sharing, it flags up the assertion that social is important and should make up a part of your SEO efforts. In future posts we’ll be looking a little closer at each network and SEO practices for the modern web.