Social Media Optimisation in 2010

The internet has evolved with more and more people getting social online. A recent Nielsen study found Australia’s social media audience is estimated at 9.9 million. According to Hitwise in the week ending the 16th of January, social media was just .4% behind search as an online category in Australia. This highlights the importance of Social media as an online strategy and how rapidly its been growing in Australia.

People are getting social online by chatting, blogging, networking and sharing. Sites which have allowed people to engage in this social activity and assisted with the growth of social media include:

  • Twitter (in January 2010 Twitter users in Australia were at 1.2 million users)
  • Facebook (in January 2010, Facebook achieved 8.6 million unique visitors with an average time spent on the site per month of 8:19 hours)
  • MySpace (2.1 million unique users in Australia in January 2010, with an average time on site of 39 minutes)
  • YouTube
  • Flickr
  • Wikipedia
  • Digg

Websites such as these provide a medium through which brands can engage in conversations with consumers. Whether you decide to engage in these conversations or not, they will continue to happen. SMO will allow you to monitor these conversations and decide how you can get involved to grow and establish your brand.

The chart below highlights the fastest growing social media activities for 2008 – 2009:

Also with more and more people using smart phones, people can now engage socially online via their mobile. Statistics show that 36% of mobile users access Facebook daily via their phone. With social media being so easily accessible, it is something which will continue to grow.

With universal search results, Google is now integrating social media as part of the organic search results. What does this mean for brands? This means that instead of your website appearing for your brand term, it may be a blog post or a tweet on your brand that appears in the top position. Social Media Optimisation works hand in hand with your brands online reputation management (ORM) to ensure that should a blog or tweet appear in the search results, it is one we are aware of and are happy for it to be seen.

VitaminSEO is a boutique agency that provides you with an integrated approach to your organic search results ensuring that your strategy includes SEO, SMO and ORM. As with a good SEO strategy, establishing your brand and building your reputation through social media takes time. Learn how VitaminSEO can help your brand increase its visibility in organic search, protect your reputation online, engage your consumers online and ultimately get more traffic to your site.