The Benefits of Social Media

Starting your online business requires many tasks that need to be implemented in order for you to be successful. The benefits of social media will play a big part in how you can generate awareness and thus traffic to your website. Social media is where people hang out online and many of these people are potential customers for what you have to offer.

In this day and age you need to recognize and utilize social media as the best way to market and advertise what it is that you have to offer from your website. In order to do so you need to know which social media websites are right for you. I will explain in this blog post what I personally have come to learn from my experience in dealing with a few of the most popular social media networks.

GOOGLE+, PINTEREST, TWITTER & FACEBOOK

When it comes to sharing my website content on social media, I concentrate on 4 of the 5 big-membership social media networks. This is the order from most beneficial to least that I use when it comes to sharing my content. The best and most beneficial for increased Google rankings is Google+. DUH! No surprise there. The next beneficial social network for me is Pinterest, then Twitter and then Facebook.

Yes, Facebook is the biggest of all social media networks with approximately 1,000,000,000 members but lately more and more people who are in the know of social media have been leaving Facebook and finding better results with other sites. If you haven't read Gordi's blog post on Facebook Changes and the link she provides at the end of her blog, I highly recommend you do so here - https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/gordi/blog/facebook-changes

Google+ is the second largest social media network with approximately 500,000,000 members and growing quicker than Facebook. This is mainly because many like myself are leaving Facebook for better reach in the sharing of our content for increased traffic. I prefer Google+ because not only is it better for your Google rankings but there is less clutter to view which Facebook has way too much of.

Though I do not use LinkedIn as much, they are the third largest network with approximately 200,000,000 members. The fourth largest is Twitter with approximately 93,800,000 members and is the simplest and fastest way to share content because you are basically just posting a link to your website with a couple of hashtags and a few other words. You only get 140 characters spaces to use.

And last but certainly not the least is Pinterest, which is my second favorite of all of the social media networks. Their membership is approximately 70,000,000 members and growing fast. Why is Pinterest my second favorite? Because people are more visual by nature and it is easier to sell something when you entice people with a visual rather than text. This is why TV ads typically do better than any other form of advertisement. Because Pinterest is built on visuals it is very important that you have at least 2-3 images on every one of your web pages and posts if you wish to use Pinterest to share your content.

It's pretty obvious what benefits social media networks can have for the marketing of your website content. They bring your website attention and awareness which will increase traffic, as well as to help boost your Google rankings. Another great benefit of social media is the ability of shared content to be shared over and over again by other people. This is like free advertising because you don't have to do any of the promoting. If your content is well written it will advertise and promote itself.

When other people on social media start sharing your content you will also get other people linking to your content which in turn can increase your page rank. The more reputable a website or blogger is that links to your website content, the bigger the boost to your page rank. So let's say you share on social media some website content about how to get better gas mileage out of your car that is unique and interesting. It then gets re-shared and eventually someone from Car and Driver magazine, a highly reputable website, reads it and likes it enough to link to it. So now your page rank will get a nice boost.

By sharing your content on social media and sharing often, you are marketing your content with the hope of other people marketing it for you by re-sharing. If what you originally share is groundbreaking it could very well go viral and that is the ULTIMATE in getting a lot of website traffic. You NEVER want to pay for traffic or likes because they do not help your website. Doing the work yourself, by writing quality content and then sharing that content everyday will bring about better quality traffic.

THE PINTEREST EFFECT

One of the reasons why Pinterest membership is growing fast is because it is a great way to market what you are selling. Like I said earlier, it is easier to entice someone with an image rather than just text because people are visual by nature. The sense of sight is the strongest and sharing photos and images is a powerful way to market something.

In recent years this form of image sharing has also been embraced by Google+, Facebook, Twitter and others because visual sharing gets more clicks. I call this image sharing revelation by the other social networks, The Pinterest Effect. This is why when I share on social media I prefer to post a picture associated with the content I am sharing along with the content link. I do this knowing that it will get more clicks than if I just shared the content link alone which only posts a small thumbnail picture.

NOTE: Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook are the four that I use the most. You should choose which ones are right for you. Youtube is also another great way to market and share. I am actually starting to get into this myself. Once I know more about the successes I have with Youtube, I will write another blog post about it. Until then I know that Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook in that order are the social media networks that I use. If any of you have other favorites, please list them below and share with us what you like about them. Thanks!