Social

Done right, social media efforts can be effective for generating leads, enhancing customer relationships and strengthening brands. Studies have found that up to 90% of consumers use social media to research brands and validate their own purchase decisions. People are heavily influenced by third-party feedback.

But most importantly, social media is fast becoming the chief contributor to search rank. How and why does social networking improve search rankings? Any answer to this question remains highly debatable, yet most search experts agree that social media can have direct and indirect impact on organic search rankings (SEO). This is where social media fits into our focus on the property management industry.

Though social media may still be an unproven channel that’s difficult to quantify, it's moving forward so quickly that there's real risk in staying out of the game. A presence in social media has simply come to be expected. Businesses that aren't present on social media are creating a negative perception of themselves as being behind the times or unavailable to their clientele.

We start with social authority checkpoints and work outward.

Account setup. The first step is admitting you need social. We know it’s not easy for executives who are sharply focused on bottom-line results to tackle something with vague ROI, so we start small. Simply having a presence on key social channels (image and description) creates inbound links and helps to establish brand credibility.

On-site content. Every article published on-site (blogs rich in long tail content, for example) is liked dropping another hook in the water. More content on a domain gives that domain more opportunities to rank for related search queries and accrue inbound links, which, in turn, strengthens the authority of the domain as a whole.

Off-site content. Sharing fresh content as well as planning for network growth; encouraging blog readers to join social channels with social media “connect” buttons; social media “share” buttons so blog content can easily be tweeted; images in blog posts so Pinterest users can pin your images.

We emphasize consistency, cohesion.

Social media takes time, and lots of it. It's no small task to establish a professional presence. It's also not something you should start and stop. Half-hearted attempts don't impress and can actually do harm. Furthermore, uncontrolled, disparate postings by employees can be a disadvantage. It's far better to “own” social media fully.

We stress integration.

No marketing element—whether tradeshow, ad or webinar—should be used in a vacuum. When used as a follow-on tool for another campaign, social media provide an excellent venue for broadening its impact.

We focus on results.

Business people understandably want to see solid links between investments in marketing programs and real revenue. Tracking makes it easy to see the number of friends, followers, connections, and comments one is getting, but how does that translate to the bottom line? Does a popular blog result in any measurable dollars? Finding these associations can be a nebulous, if not, impossible venture. If that’s a deal-breaker, don’t dabble.

Our social dictum.

You can go from ZERO to SEO with a simple mix of content and engagement. Building a social presence for SEO requires being present.