How to use social media to boost local search results

Social Media has become an imperative tool in the world of digital marketing. Gone are the days of boring traditional advertising on huge billboards or print media. Marketers and advertisers have woken up to the power of social media, where carefully constructed campaigns on shoestring budgets can be hugely effective. With the right social media strategy, you can engage your customers directly, help your advertising go viral and ‘humanise’ your brand by giving it a personality of its own.

The first step in creating an effective social media strategy is to identify the key drivers of your campaign. Choose which of the following sites are best suited to your overall strategy – Groupon, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Yelp. You may choose some, or all, depending on your budget and availability of time. If you are managing a national brand, it is important to have your locations rank prominently in location-specific searches. 


This strategy is especially important for multi-location businesses such as restaurants, retail and hotel chains. A social media strategy that focuses on prominently displaying the business’ locations is essential for search engine optimization since search engines such as Google focus on prominence as a primary factor in local search rankings. Listed below are a few pointers on how to improve your local search results:

·         Build Facebook fan pages: Analysts estimate that up to forty percent of Facebook users follow a brand and more than fifty percent of these users will go on to buy or consume that brand. Facebook ‘likes’ are a speed marketing tool that help your brand go viral by delivering essential messages to news feeds.

·         Use Twitter to engage potential customers: Social media analysts estimate that up to one in four twitter users follow a brand, and an approximate 67% of those followers will end up purchasing that brand.

·         Encourage reviews and ratings of your products: Sites such as Yelp may help you promote ratings and reviews of your company. Yelp users wrote 6 million reviews in 2010, and that figure is bound to go up to 9 million in 2011. Reviews and ratings help customers realise what others think about a product or service.

·         Reward customers for sharing information: Provide “Share for rewards” programs to encourage consumers share offers with their friends via social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in exchange for discounts on products or services.

·         Use Groupon to promote deals: Group buying sites such as Groupon or LivingSocial provide an easy way of promoting deals via huge subscriber bases without spending much money on advertising.

·         Embed Youtube videos: One way to put a human face on your business is to embed Youtube videos in Google Place Pages, web pages and social profile pages.

These tips will help you streamline your social media marketing strategy and increase your return on investment, while increasing brand awareness. Pipon Solutions is engaged in providing SEO consulting services to clients, but are always interested in learning how you use social media to market your brand.  Have you found it effective?  And have you considered how your social media marketing campaign can boost local search results?  Learn more about social media on this blog or contact Pipon Solutions for more information.