Does social media work with boring clients?
-
OK, I'm not being rude, but I have a few clients who work in areas that really don't stimulate people - they are just needed.
Examples are:
Accountants
Chartered Surveyors
Forklift truck suppliersNot the most inspiring list...
So my question is whether to pursue the whole social media side of SEO with them. I mean, who wants to "like" their chartered surveyor? Do they have anything interesting to "tweet" about?
If anyone has experience of this type of field, then any suggestions would be greatly appreciated,
-
Accounting, at least, doesn't have to be boring. They could use social media to share their own content about small business tips, home budgeting tips, tax tips, etc. or to share and comment on news stories about the industry. Will you have a giant following? Probably not. But it's still worth a few minutes a day.
As for the other companies, those are very niche and not sexy. In that case, social media might be primarily about branding and relationship-building -- positioning yourself as a friendly, fun, family company by sharing stories about the workplace, the owner, etc. Then again, there might be a B2B network in those niches. You just have to expand a little. Who buys forklifts? Who hires surveyors? What would they find interesting?
-
We are an industrial manufacturer and although it probably does not help us directly, it still helps.
An example of this is for branding purposes. If someone is doing research on us, the content that we generate and distribute in social media may help them to chose us (we may be a "subject matter expert" in something they are looking for).
-
A lot of different niche's don't necessarily benefit from social media but as mentioned previous it is still good to have them. You need a platform to keep customers/users updated when things happen, such as site going down, press information, and relations.
Social media has a wide range of platforms, and it will most likely take time to find out which platform is most beneficial. Google+, Facebook, Twitter are usually obvious pluses, but I noticed LinkedIn works very well for a lot of these businesses.
LinkedIn is extremely good at connecting B2B relations.
-
Thanks for the tips, but I've got to say - a chartered surveyor trumps an attorney on dullness - or at least mine does!
-
Very difficult to get off of the ground and getting it to convert into any significant traffic is definitely a challenge and often not worth the effort.
However, how strong are social signals to Google. For instance does setting up automated twitter feeds to make 20 posts a day benefit you more than simply having a twitter account? For all we know Google could just give your site a checkmark yes or no if your company has a twitter account. I would at very least set up accounts for FB, Twitter and G+ and reciprocally link between them and your site so that Google knows you are in the social media space. Post a couple times a week, for an attorney there should always be some interesting cases in the news you could comment about for example, or just post about your work or a collegues work.
example: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tom-Anelli-The-DWI-GUY/127968698749
-
Niches like this are in the need for an advertising company if they will need to get social about it.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI - that was not done by an SEO company - it's done by an advertising company. It's a boring vertical and they did it. It's not an exact recipe for success but the basic idea is the same - if tehy can go viral they have the social side covered - if not - the ROI on social will be for sure negative.
If going this route - with something exceptional - is out of the question I would focus on other areas - you can have a good visibility and organic coverage without social with no problem - a lot of people are doing great without being involved in social.
I might be wrong - this is juts an opinion
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Social media marketing strategy for an ERP company?
Hello Everybody, We are an ERP company and want to get into social media marketing. We have decided to use Google+ over Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Any ideas what we can do besides regular updates and getting our clients link to us? Regards
Social Media | | IM_Learner0 -
Social media signals from Facebook comment plugin on your site?
If you are using the Facebook social plugin on your site like ThinkGeek does for comments: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/ed6b/ Are there any positive social signals from people leaving comments that could impact the SEO of the page? I searched the text of some comments in quotations in Google and it appears that the first few comments are indexed but most are not.
Social Media | | ProjectLabs1 -
About Onlywire, stumbleupon ans social medias?
Hi, 1/I want to ask do you use onlywire service for you websites? Is it beneficial for a web site? 2/ Can Google see so many links from different social medias after you use onlywre as a spam (coming immediately every time you put new url in onlywire) or as something positive, especially for a website which doesn't have so many links from different web site per day? 3/ Do you think stumbleupon, delicious.com, etc are all helpful for SEO of a website and have influence in Google ranking? I know about facebook, twitter but there are so many social media websites and is it worth to have accounts all there and post the same stuff? Thank you 🙂
Social Media | | vladokan0 -
How does SEOMoz Code its Social Badge on Blog
On the blog section (and most other pages of the site) there is a social badge on the right hand side of the page where it shows the number of followers on Twitter, FB fans, etc. How does SEOMoz pull those numbers? It seems like its not using the normal Javascritps supplied by FB and Twitter, Feedburner. Thanks
Social Media | | Heydarian0 -
How to best promote this content via social media to gain backlinks
I have created this content http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-music/the-worst-function-bands-and-wedding-bands-ever in order to promote it via social media. Ideally I want it to be shared across the web in order to gain backlinks. My question is how can I best do this? I know I can post it on twitter, facebook, google plus etc... but is that it? I'm new to social media and don't really understand how to use it to good effect. By posting it on social networking sites am I risking people copying the content and duplicate content penalties? Any help would be much appreciated!
Social Media | | SamCUK0 -
SEO w/o Social Webinair experiment - how can RTs of a URL of a google search possibly affect the position of one of the search results?
I missed the webinair but have just been going through the slides. Looking forward to watching the video when its up. I have a question however regarding the experiment conducted by Rand to find out: Is Social Influencing Primary Algorithms (slides 7 - 20) The suggestion is that an RT of a google search URL affects the ranking of one individual ranking site. The +1 side of the experiment I understand completely - it is clear how Google can see that there is a social preference for the site and reward accordingly. But how would retweeting the search result URL possibly affect its rankings? Is the suggestion that those doing the experiment also clicked on the relevant link? And if so, how is Google discerning that this additional traffic is down to Twitter? I feel I am missing something incredibly obvious. Anyone want to help me out here?... otherwise I'm not going to sleep tonight...
Social Media | | seomasters0 -
Social Bookmarking
Hello, In our SEO package that we use to sell our product to clients we list Social Bookmarking as one of the services we provide. What is the appropriate amount of social bookmarks that we should obtain monthly? How heavily do these weigh in your opinion? Thank you for your time
Social Media | | imageworks-2612900