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Twitter used to help a new site get indexed by Google a little faster, I don't think that it makes much of a difference now.

Pinterest links can show up as follow links, and a lot businesses use them to showcase products and link directly back to a product page for conversion. That's better than SEO frankly. Closing the loop for a quicker transaction.

I agree that you should focus on using these channels for the value they provide on their own, not for trying to game a particular search. I do think that there is value in SEO for creating these profiles, branded search is still important and it's always good to create potential SERP results for you brand.

I was just going to say this. I've seen bit.ly/brand_name show up in backlink searches, same with goo.gl. So if they get indexed, they get treated like a link as a 301 redirect.

Twitter used to help a new site get indexed by Google a little faster, I don't think that it makes much of a difference now.

Pinterest links can show up as follow links, and a lot businesses use them to showcase products and link directly back to a product page for conversion. That's better than SEO frankly. Closing the loop for a quicker transaction.

I agree that you should focus on using these channels for the value they provide on their own, not for trying to game a particular search. I do think that there is value in SEO for creating these profiles, branded search is still important and it's always good to create potential SERP results for you brand.