By Sharon Hill
Remember the days when not everybody had a website. Yes, we acknowledge there is a small minority of companies that still do not have a website.
Today it appears there is an expectation for all companies to be involved with social media, especially Facebook.
There are all kinds of studies about social media success regarding engagement, persuasion, referrals, etc. Maybe or maybe not. It does appear the most successful campaigns have some promotional element such as a coupon, contest or giveaway or a place to play games. A good promotional element will generally work in almost all type of campaigns.
Another expected result from social media was helping companies in the search rankings. It is getting better but it truly depends on how information is available in news stories, press releases, Wikipedia pages and sister companies websites.
We randomly chose Lowe’s, Sears, CBS, Audi and Levis.
Facebook showed up in a Google search for Lowe’s and Levis on the first page of results. Twitter ranked higher than Facebook for Sears and CBS but neither were on the first page of results. Twitter was on the first page of results for Audi.
Using Bing, Twitter appeared on the second page of results for Levis and Facebook on the fourth page. Facebook and Twitter did not make the first 4 pages of results for Audi.
Interestingly, Facebook is the #2 result with Bing for CBS. The result looks like this:
This maybe an Ah Ha moment. The true Facebook listing for CBS shows on page 3 of Bing. In checking after NCIS Los Angeles aired, the result was not longer listed in checking back a week later, an alert for Survivor appears being delay is still present 18 hours later and after the show has aired.
Twitter and YouTube show results for Lowe’s on page 2 and 4 of results respectively. Facebook does not make into the first five pages of results.
Facebook for Sears showed on page three.
What does this tell us? If these five large companies are not getting higher results with Facebook and Twitter in the search engines, how will your company?
The key difference between a website and social media is the amount of updating, fresh content and monitoring it takes with social media.
Since the goal with social media is engagement, your company must be engaging first and always.
Look for our upcoming blogs regarding the level and depth of social media activity that is right for your company.
Check us out on Facebook to look for a new product announcement as well. Another key reason folks return to a Facebook page they have liked, is to find out about new products.
Tags: Facebook Google rank, social media engagement, social media rankings, Social media search engines, social media versus websites., Twitter Bing rank
