Keyword Development and Social Media

I’ve blogged previously about content creation and the anatomy of a tweet when developing a social media program.  

I must be hitting a nerve somewhere because I receive more questions as I continue to blog and speak about these topics.

But, the questions continue to drill down and become more specific which I take as a good sign!

The questions now seem to be:

1)  What do I say?

2)  How can I improve its chances of being read?

3)  Where do I start?

There’re actually many things that can be done here to increase readers and followers but I’ll only focus on one with this article.  It’s the most basic.

This fundamental step is keyword development.

Keywords are the lowest level of reference to a topic but provide an excellent opportunity for search engines to find your content and place it higher in search results.  In my opinion, everything in a successful social media program starts here.

The approach for a successful keyword development plan has three steps.

First, determining the relevant key words for your particular discipline.

Next is identifying how to validate them for possible use.

Finally, using the identified keywords is the last step.

Determining the relevant keywords is not as difficult as many believe.

Many clients and people whom I talk to on this point don’t seem to understand that they the primary source for relevant keywords in their own area of expertise.  Unless you’re starting over in a completely new and different discipline, you can generate your first pass of the words that are topical for your business.  I’m always amazed at how many overlook this first stop on the way to producing a strong list of keywords.

Next, expand your net our from yourself.  Check with your industry or professional associations, colleagues in your industry, trade journals, newsletters, websites, and blogs for keywords relevant to the opportunities and challenges that you face.

Validating the keywords comes next.

Start with Google (or whatever other search engine you prefer) and enter your list of keywords.

Look at what comes back.

Is is relevant?  Is it current?  Does it make sense?  Can you identify any additional keywords?

Next step is to use the Google Keyword Planner  to check and see just how frequently these words are used.  Here you can begin to develop some metrics to assist you in selecting your primary keyword.

Now, that you have a good list of keywords, the last step is to actually use them.

This is going to depend on the social media channel being used.

With your blog (You have set one up right?) include the keywords in the body of your post.  Use them as your tags or labels depending on which blog application that you’re using.

With Twitter, employ your keywords with hashtags (#).

For other social media apps such as LinkedIn and Facebook incorporate the keywords into your posts.  Facebook uses hashtags (#) now too so I’d recommend using them.  LinkedIn Publisher is still too new to see how keywords will work with it but they can’t hurt and I suspect they’ll be an important part of the tool in the future.

After this, the important thing to do is to continually use and review your keywords list.  Over time, you’ll find that you have to remove and add words that’s a good thing.

We’l talk about reviewing analytics in future articles.

In the meantime, thank you for following and reading my blog!

I look forward to any and all comments that you may have.  I will reply to any comments made to this blog post as promptly as I can.

Remember!

I work with social media for a living and if I can be of any assistance to either you or your organization, please feel free to call on me.  Our initial discussion will be of no charge to you.

I can also be reached at conpsweeney@someddi.com.

My Twitter handle is @conpsweeney.

Stay well!