Search Engine Marketing News | Tips for Facebook Marketing

If you have spent any time building content or looking into organic search engine marketing tactics, you undoubtedly have come across Facebook as a possible platform. Since Facebook started as a personal social site, you might have some reservations about building Facebook into a search engine marketing blog for your business. As we dive into this topic, you will hopefully find your niche in this rich marketing soil as well as come to understand a little more about content marketing in general.

As with any professional search engine marketing you do, you’ll want to consider the value that you’re providing to your clients and search engine bots. Your content should contain at least one of the 3 E‘s. Provideeducational information, empower your audience with the tools to succeed or simply entertain them. Do any one of these things–or several of them if you’re up for it–and your readers (both real and robot) will boost your ratings, driving better traffic to your site. This is one of the reasons we talk all day long about quality content here.

An extra little trick that Facebook adds to your usual SEO playbook is engagement ratings.  Employing the three E’s is a great way to get your audience to LIKE your posts, leave comments of their own and interact with other elements of your site. This interaction is called engagement. Better content = better engagement.

The better your engagement score on FB, the higher and more often you end up in the NewsFeed. Here’s an insider tip: Before you do something significant in your business, get your engagement up on FB a week or two before. Be sure to ask questions and tell your fans to LIKE the post if they agree. By the time the metrics have run their course, your site will be riding a high wave of engagement right as you release the news about your significant move.

With high engagement you can further seduce the robots scanning your search engine marketing blog for signs of life. But there are some other gems that make FB your friend when doing any kind of professional search engine marketing. FB can be a great hub wherein you collate your online presence. It is the perfect bluejeans and blazer combo. FB can be perfectly dressed for any occasion. Professional or personal. By linking your other social media sites to your fan page you are, in a sense, humanizing your online business. This is a great way to capitalize on the personal element that might have been off-putting.

Another trick to make the most of your Facebook search engine marketing blog is to exploit the ability to use images. Insert your images with a call to action. If you are small, get in the habit of shooting your own images with your smart phone and keeping a library of them. You can even slap a few words on the image to make a stronger point. This will give the bots something to chew on and the low-tech quality of your shots can give the feeling of a “back door” look at your business.

You can also take a screen capture of your actual blog post and embed that into your Facebook post. This mixes up the content to give it a more interesting flair. But by embedding a post you had on another site, you can extend the life of your content without sending red flags to the search engines.

Another thingabout FB images is that they have recently been upgraded. These new ginormous picture capabilities can skyrocket your engagement. There is a lot of luck with selecting imagery to make the search engine marketing news, but you can narrow down the guesswork by reading our take on using visuals in content marketing.

For some real visual pop you can also add some video to your Facebook page. People are more likely to click on your post if there is video in it. Videos are a great opportunity to communicate your more difficult messages. Use videos sparingly, however, since you don’t want end up in a competition with YouTube.

Remember that most people are on FB to have fun, not to do business. So keep your messages simple and  relevant with an element of entertainment or some light-hearted thought-provoking. The more curious or eye-catching you can make it, the better it will be received by your fans when it is sandwiched between searching for old college sweethearts and their nephews soccer pictures. Or, if you are really struggling with the fun/business balance maybe you can use your Facebook page to just tell a story.