When I Google myself, it feels great!
Sounds dirty doesn’t it?
If you can get your mind out of the gutter for a moment I’d like to make a small case for why you should participate in social media.
Google Me
If you Google “Jeff Gibbard” you will find pages upon pages of results. I own those results, almost entirely. I own those results because I created the majority of the content that shows up in the search results. You might be able to go 7-8 pages deep and find something that I didn’t create, but overall I am in control of my own reputation online.
I blog, I tweet, I create and share tons of content from photos, to videos, to comments on blogs.
But I’m just one person.
So you’re a company
As a company you may have more press than a single person would. You may have people talking about you. You may have fans and also critics. That means that content is being created by OTHERS.
On the other hand, you have more resources, presumably than a single person. Figure out how to utilize those resources…or bring in a social media agency to help with that.
You will need to create content if you want to balance out the content created by others and influence your own search results.
Are you interested in influencing your search results?
You should be. If you aren’t please read this article on Wikipedia about the Internet.
We get our information online now; get with the program. Most of us use Google or another search engine to get our information. And here’s the real deal, EVERY search engine is trying to figure out social. Every search engine is trying to make search results more relevant by integrating social content from each individual’s social and interest graphs.
So what can you do?
To start with: participate.
Join a few social networks and join in some conversations. Find things that interest you, find people that inspire you, share information that’s valuable. The larger and more engaged your network is, the more likely you will show in search results when appropriate. Additionally, the mere act of having profiles will add new search results, so go protect your brand and generate some new search results, but remember, only join sites where you are willing to or plan on participating.
Next, start a blog. Yeah, seriously. If you are blogging yet, you are leaving a ton of searchable content off of the web. You are awesome at something. Trust me. Take your knowledge of whatever your business is good at and get to it.
Next, make sure that you are being deliberate in how you share. Start to understand keywords, and if you can’t do that, at least get ScribeSEO for your blog and let software help you optimize your posts.