7 Tips for Scrappy SEO and Social Media
I’m lucky to work at a company where everyone takes search engine marketing and social media pretty seriously, and everybody wants to pitch in on the efforts. While the enthusiasm is great, we don’t want people even inching towards the realm of sketchy tactics, so we try to offer up specific suggestions on what folks in customer service, finance, product, engineering, anyone not in a marketing/search job, who might have no idea how search works, can do to help out. And about every six months, everyone at Viator spends an hour doing something nice for search. I think of the effort as kind of like the long tail, individually no one is doing very much, but adding it up makes a big difference. We’re a pretty small company, and I can’t help but wonder if we’d did something similar when I was at IAC, with their staff contributing, what we might have accomplished.
In the vein of everybody pitching in and getting their hands just a little dirty, here’s the top search engine optimization and social media efforts that anyone and their brother (really, get your brother to do it too!) can do.
1. Post some links. In a nice non-spammy way, post a link from your personal blog or website or get a friend-relative-willing accomplice to post one from theirs. We sometimes suggest links for pages we want to promote more.
2. Write a blog post. The company always needs content, and everyone probably has one good post in them, so make some more good content.
3. Create a high quality trip planner on Yahoo!. See my other post on Yahoo! Trip Planners for why this is so great. Only relevant for companies in travel, but another industry might have something similar.
4. Vote. Your vote counts! Digg blog posts or articles about your company. Submit to Mixx, del.icio.us, and the like. But, only do this if you are a regular user of those sites. Don’t just show up and only submit/vote for your company. I also strongly encourage folks to do this from their home computers.
5. Make a friend. Join the company’s Facebook group, be a friend of your company’s photos on Flickr.
6. Write an honest review or give some honest advice. This one I reserve for the more advanced, its easy to get carried away. Google Local, TripAdvisor, the New York Times travel section, and other sites allow for review or forum posts. If you had a great time on a bike tour in Sydney with your company, no harm in posting that, but don’t lie and don’t go crazy. If someone is asking about where they can buy a great processor, suggest checking out your options, or reading your reviews, but again, a little goes a long way here. And, its always goo to already be active on the site, don’t only post about your company.
7. Add some off-site content. Got some great photos or video relevant to your company? Add it to Flickr or Youtube. I’ve noticed in particular that short educational videos on a topic can be really viral and popular (e.g., Matt Cutts’ recent videos), why not explain something related to your company?
That’s most of the easy as pie tactics I’ve been encouraging to date, there’s more advanced seo out there of course,but you’d be surprised what a difference the little things can make.
