Hi. My name is Ross Herosian. Over the course of my career, I have been a radio DJ, a collegiate recruiter, a video producer, a marketing strategist, a content creator, a social media manager, an event marketer, and even ran an arts non-profit.
In 2018, I added Founder + CEO to my resume with Tricycle Creative. Tricycle Creative is a marketing agency that’s here to safely navigate solopreneurs and small business marketers through Digital and Content Marketing. Our flagship program, Marketing CLARITY, helps creative business owners build a plan for their marketing and communications so they know how to spend their time, money, and resources.
If you’re a solopreneur or small business marketer struggling with your digital marketing, you should join my FREE Marketing CLARITY Community where you’ll get access to tips, strategies, webinars, and how-to’s related to digital marketing, content creation, social media, SEO, and more!
With Tricycle Creative, I am on a mission to make better Marketers.
Chances are, you’ve made a resource commitment to social media for your business. That “resource” could be in the form of time, staffing, and/or monetary. With the proper execution, the right people, and the right strategy, social media can help to grow your business in a number of different, and valuable, ways.
But, when it comes to digital marketing, utilizing one strategy alone may not be enough. Diversifying your digital marketing in a complementary way can amplify audience growth, leads, engagement, and opportunities for new customers. I like to compare most things to food, so think about it like this:
Plain cheese pizza is delicious.
But add your favorite toppings (in my case pepperoni and mushroom) and you’ve just made it better.
Throw in a Coke (NOT Pepsi) and you’ve taken it up another notch.
Which brings me to something I often tell the junior marketers I coach, “Always aim for BETTER, not BEST.”
Consuming yourself with being the BEST is a tireless, often frustrating, exercise.
BUT, identifying areas where you can be better is easier to identify, qualify, and achieve.
So, before I jump into the similarities, differences, and benefits of doing SEO and Social Media together, let’s first tackle…
Throughout this blog post, I’ll be using the phrase “social media” to refer to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
When I speak to SEO (aka Search Engine Optimization) I’m talking about technical and content efforts that are made to increase the quantity and quality of traffic that result from organic (i.e. non-paid) search results. There are many web search engines out there but since Google is responsible for more than 80% of search traffic, I’ll mostly be addressing and discussing Google.
It should also be noted that I believe Pinterest and YouTube to be somewhat hybrid platforms that exist in the gray space between social media and search. Both Pinterest and YouTube are content-first platforms that see a tremendous amount of usage tied to search on their respective platforms. I’ll address both of these platforms in this post but just know that they are not included when I use the term “social media” in this piece.
The short answer: kinda.
Now, for the long answer.
The ability for anything on the web to come up on the search engine results page (aka SERP) is tied to Google’s, or any other search engine, ability to crawl the page to understand the content and context. It is also tied to the search engine’s desire on whether or not it wants to include certain content from web sources such as social media. A good example here is Google’s preference to show YouTube videos in results instead of Facebook videos. There’s a practical reason and a business reason why this happens.
First, the practical reason.
Google owns YouTube. Therefore, they are able to control, understand, and implement features, data, and functionality between the two platforms.
Second, the business reason.
Google owns YouTube. This being the case, there is a clear strategic value to drive traffic to YouTube where they can generate revenue from ads.
Want to learn more about how search engines work? Watch our video below.
Numerous reports and data point to social media profiles providing a sort of “credibility” signal to search engines. And while search engines may not be able to scan deep into social media platforms, they are certainly able to scan deep enough to know when your business has an account. If they weren’t, when you search for something like “Tricycle Creative Instagram” then nothing would come up. And, remember:
At the end of the day, a search engine’s number one priority is to give you the most relevant, valuable results based on your search query.
Because if they are unsuccessful at that, then why would you use their platform?
Returning to a food metaphor:
If I search for “ice cream” on Google and the top results are all about roller skates, I’d say to myself, “this search engine sucks. I’m going to use [insert other search engine] instead.”
The second way that social media can slightly impact your SEO is through backlinks. Backlinks are… and they give added context to search engines to understand your website, your traffic, and your business. Chances are, you are sharing links to your website on your social media pages and when your audience clicks those links and lands on your website, search engines can then understand the relationship between your social media and your website. The most links, the more context.
Think about it like this (I’ll make this a non-food metaphor):
Google wants to paint a picture of your business.
But, to do that, you need to provide it with paint.
How do you do that?
Well, you do it by creating content that’s relevant to your business, your audience, and your customers.
So if you’re not creating that content, you’ve only provided Google with black and white paint.
Google will do what it can with those two colors, but if you want a vibrant, deep, detailed picture, you need to be creating content.
That’s SEO in a nutshell.
Here’s something you probably know already: Google, Facebook, and Twitter don’t get along.
They are like three jealous friends who only want you to hang out with them.
And because of that, these “social” platforms don’t really like to work with each other.
Why do you need to understand this?
Because if you create something great on social media, it doesn’t mean that it will give you any value in search.
Historically speaking, Google and Twitter have probably had the best working relationship. Google was pulling in relevant tweets into search results for a while but it seems like that is far from a guaranteed feature on the results page now.
There was also a report earlier this year that Google was going to test out showing short-form videos from TikTok and Instagram Reels in results but it would appear that it was just that – a test. Of course, a couple months later YouTube rolled out the Beta version of their short-form video platform, Shorts, so it remains to be seen if a) that platform will be here to stay and b) how/if it will be brought in to search.
Do you want to be a better marketer?
Join my free Marketing CLARITY Community and you’ll get access to digital marketing tips, strategies, bootcamps, and webinars designed to help you grow your knowledge and grow your business.
Google’s AI has become incredibly sophisticated in the past couple of years. In fact, its “evolution” has led to a whole new way of how SEO is executed (if you want to learn more, here’s a great article on Google’s Semantic web to ready AFTER you’re done here).
The days of keyword stuffing pages are long over. So, if you talk with an SEO service or “specialist” that says they do this: RUN, don’t walk, away from them.
In a nutshell, semantic search means that Google is now able to better understand website content to establish a deeper, more relevant, context and relationship between information.
I use this phrase a lot when I’m coaching clients on content creation and/or SEO.
Many of them are creative solopreneurs or junior marketers who are short on time, money, experience, and/or resources. But even if you have the resources or team for your marketing, you still want to be efficient and get the most out of your content.
So it’s critically important that your content efforts are thoughtful and strategic. Spending hours creating something (be it blog, video, podcast, etc) only to share it once and then move on is an incredible waste of opportunity.
That’s why you should start with SEO-optimized content creation.
While this is a strategy that can look a bit different for every business, generally speaking, it can go like this:
Do you see how powerful this can be?!
You now have content diversity – a bunch of different ways that you can share and promote this content to your audience on social media PLUS you have the blog post that can pay SEO dividends.
Need help repurposing your video content and growing your YouTube Audience?
At its core, YouTube is an amazing platform and a search engine with unimaginable scale, but you might not always get great results if your video SEO isn’t up to snuff.
So whether you’re looking for better YouTube rankings, more YouTube views, YouTube likes, YouTube subscribers, or anything else YouTube-related, my YouTube SEO + Video Optimization Bootcamp can help!
As any good agency (like Social HQ) or any good marketing coach (like me) would tell you, consistent measurement is important for any marketing strategy.
Measurement produces Data leading to Analysis that guides Strategy
When it comes to social media measurement, generally speaking, your Key Performance Indicators (aka KPI’s) can be:
When it comes to search engine optimization, generally speaking, your Key Performance Indicators (aka KPI’s) can be:
These are not exhaustive lists of KPI’s but they should help to give you an idea of good starting points.
Once again, it’s impossible to give one answer on when YOUR business will see results because there are so many variables depending on your resources, goals, and strategy.
BUT, here are some things you should know about social media and SEO results:
SOCIAL MEDIA
Hillary at Social HQ will tell you: social media results are fully dependent on what the strategy is for a client, and can start producing results in under 30 days if it’s something like a product awareness campaign. Then again, if it’s a sales focus, that could take significantly longer.
You will get an immediacy of engagement (likes, comments, etc) but, in and of itself, those things may not directly grow your business. Working with someone like Social HQ can help you connect your day-to-day engagement with your overall social goals.
If efforts are ONLY organic it could be harder to get traction.
SEO
Depending on your starting point, the initial lift could come as early as 30-45 days but don’t expect to jump to the first page in that time. More likely, with the right strategy, you’ll move from page 10+ to page 5.
Can take Google 6-9 months to index new content. This means that updates you make take time to even be reviewed and “accepted” by Google into their index that feeds search engine results.
Long-term dividends, but constant maintenance is required. SEO is not a “set it and forget it” strategy. Search engines are constantly updating and your competitors are also vying for those first-page results.
Peanut butter and jelly.
Spaghetti and meatballs.
Chips and queso.
All of these things are better together.
Sure, they are each delicious solo, but when paired together both are made better.
The same is true of social media and search engine optimization.
You can certainly have them separately but if you do them together, strategically, you will experience improved content efficiency, increased social media engagement, and better keyword rankings.
You can build your audience on social media who may become customers down the line while at the same time reaching potential customers who are specifically looking for solutions/services you provide right now.
So it goes without saying, if you need help with your social media, then you need to contact Social HQ.
If you’re looking to add SEO to your marketing, book a quick 15-minute Discovery Call with me. Tricycle Creative offers a one-off SEO bootcamp for starters and an ongoing “done for you” SEO service for those of you who are ready and able to jump in.
I also have a bunch of FREE podcasts and videos on TriPod, the Tricycle Creative Podcast, and on our YouTube channel.
Do you want to be a better marketer?
Join my free Marketing CLARITY Community and you’ll get access to digital marketing tips, strategies, bootcamps, and webinars designed to help you grow your knowledge and grow your business.
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I’m passionate about creating a space on the internet for brands to drive positive change for their audience. Whether it’s providing entertainment, education, or inspiration, I believe that brands have an obligation to their customers to invest socially in the loyalty that they seek from their buyers. And like any good relationship, it’s a two-way street.
That’s what I love about social. I mean, when’s the last time a billboard responded to your question?