Stop obsessing over SEO and start capitalizing on Facebook to share worthy content

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Before, SEO community takes out its knives and daggers, and start walking towards me, let me clarify that I am not discarding SEO as a futile medium, neither am I writing off the importance of unique visitors coming from the search engines, however, I do have a problem with people obsessing too much about the SEO and overlooking other amazing mediums, just because they are living in the age of Google.

Don’t cast all your eggs in one basket:

Who can refute the massive impact of Google and how it can make or break a website by a mere shuffle in the rankings , freakish influence? Yes, but that actually puts up a stronger case for having a multi faceted marketing strategy, especially when you have witnessed the devastation caused by the recent ‘Panda’ update.

Not all websites can benefit from the social platforms like Facebook, but blogs have a sizeable advantage over static websites, because blogs are regularly updated with fresh, unique content . If your Blog is producing share-worthy content and targeting the right people and groups at Facebook, chances are that the Blog can thrive solely on a carefully devised marketing strategy that focus on nothing but the social giant known as Facebook.

Let’s see how you can make the most of the wonder known as Facebook for your Blog.

Like and Send button:

Facebook buttons are like hydraulic pistons; the more they get pressed the higher your blog will rise. Up till now, there was only the “like” button, but now there is another spawn known as the “send” button. Both serves pretty much the same purpose (i.e. facilitating the sharing of the content), in a slightly different manner, whilst the “like” button was pretty social, the newly arrived “send” button happens to be a little reserved, and while the “like” button shares everything with each and everyone in your FB contact list, the “send” will share it with a selected few.

Not that these buttons are some novel features launched by Facebook, “like” button is akin to those social bookmark buttons, while the “send” button is not very different from those “email a friend” links, which have been there for ages, but what makes these buttons prevail over their predecessors is the huge user base of Facebook (this social platform hosts up to 600 million share-a-holics).

Remember that majority at Facebook likes sharing, if not, they wouldn’t be hanging around at a platform whose slogan is “connect and share with your friends”. So, give them some share-worthy content and they won’t mind pressing the buttons on your page. That’s easily, one of the best types of free publicity that an online business can get, what’s more? Even search engines are incorporating these signals into their algorithms.

Facebook page & widget on your blog:

Create an FB page for your blog, and integrate it with your blog by using the free widgets available. Consider the page as a separate entity and keep it active. Instead of just occasionally posting the links of your recent posts, try to get as many people to like your Facebook page as you can, even if it requires providing some kind of incentives. Not only, an impressive fan following will provide greater exposure, but it will also serve as an undeniable indication of the popularity of your Blog (you will need that when you are looking for sponsors or advertisers).

And Facebook likes do not just provide a one-off benefit; you can effectively use them as a list of opt-in subscribers by using the update feature that sends the message to all of your fans.

One word of caution though … don’t go for buying a list of those good for nothing, dummy fans, because at the end of the day, 100 fans that you have won yourself will prove to be far more effective than 1000 random profiles.

Facebook questions:

Another relatively new and nifty feature of Facebook, though not meant for marketing purposes, but what good is the marketer if he fails to take advantage of such mediums. You can easily use FB questions to engage more and more readers. Apart from providing valuable feedback, this feature can turn out to be a good marketing tool, because as soon as a FB user responds to your question, the question will go live on their profiles, and some of their like-minded friends might pick it from there.

Facebook Comments Box Plugin:

Essentially a comment management plugin that allows commentators to comments by signing in to their FB accounts, and allows the blog owners to moderate and curtail the spam (and more importantly those flaming comments), but that’s not all. Facebook comments Box plugin has much more to offer to the blog owners in terms of more exposure and more unique visitors. When a commentator submits comments without un-checking the “Post to Facebook” box, the comment will be added to their friend’s feeds, which means you don’t necessarily need to entice your readers to like your blog, in order to get through to their friends via their profiles.

You can also achieve this target by employing the Facebook comments plugin. Because as soon as they comment on some of your posts, the comments will be added to their friend’s feeds with the link to your blog, rest assured, some of their contacts will be tempted to take a look at the post which has prompted their friends to make that comment. More comments means more publicity, and more publicity means more unique visitors, can it get better than that?

As you can see, there’s plenty that this social networking giant can offer, and the most important part is that it will make your Blog a little less reliant on the traffic coming from the search engines, a goal worth going for?

What do you think?

This is a guest post by Arba Hanna, if you want to guest post check out the guidelines .