Local Marketing Online: Part 6: Share Content

In Part 5 of this series: City Sites, Reviews & Recommendations, I discussed the impact of customer reviews on your local marketing search results and your online authority. Just as reviews and ratings are a form of recommendation, sharing your optimized, highly focused and strategically developed content by posting it to other social media and networking sites also functions as a recommendation.

You will recall in Part 5 that I discussed the Facebook ‘Like’ button that allows users to share your content on Facebook with Friends in their social circle. There are similar tools that make it very easy for you and your targeted readers to share your content on a variety of social media platforms.

Share Buttons: There are many widgets and tools that you can have implemented on your web pages that allow you and your readers to do just as the tool implies: share your content with others by email or via a variety of popular social networking platforms. Two of the most commonly implemented tools are the ‘Share’ button developed and provided by AddToAny and the ‘ShareThis’ widget by ShareThis.com. Simply by clicking on the desired destination, such as Digg or StumbleUpon, for example, you or your readers can post the content directly to the other platform for others to interact with. Typically you or your readers must register with the destination social media site first before having access to post content. Once registered, a simple process of identification and classification of the type of content being posted is all that’s required to share it with others.

It is to your advantage to register with all the social media sites you feel are likely to reach your targeted audience groups so that you too have the opportunity to share your optimized, highly relevant content. You probably invested a lot of time and money to develop the content so why not get the most mileage out of it that you can. If you have prepared your content the right way by making it topical and ensuring it contains the search terms that are part of your authority building strategy, then it is likely to be found by your targeted audience groups on the other social platforms as well. The more your content is accessed, commented on, and shared, the greater your authority score and your chances of achieving top rankings for the terms important to your strategy.

Here are some social networking sites you should consider registering for:

Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Twitter
Bebo
Google Buzz
StumbleUpon
MySpace
Orkut
Technorati Favorites
LinkedIn
DailyMe
FriendFeed

A lot of these sites have login associations with Facebook, Twitter, and a few other popular social networking sites. This allows you to use your already established login, say your Facebook login, to access some of these other platforms. One thing to keep in mind: it is important to separate your business and your social accounts so you can accurately monitor results. For example, if you use Twitter for yourself, either socially or professionally, then establish a separate account for your business to market and promote it. Be attentive when you are making posts that you post to the accounts associated with your business so you can develop Friends, Followers, and Subscribers that will help you to build your online authority and improve your search engine rankings.

Tweet: Exclusive to Twitter, the Tweet button can be implemented with your website, blog, and other social media content, allowing users to Tweet a link on their account to your content as well as make comments that are publicly viewable. The Tweet button also publicly displays the number of Tweets your content has received by other users. Many Twitter users have also linked their account with the professional networking platform LinkedIn, which means your content will appear on two platforms as a result of a single tweet.

Sharing content is a form of recommendation that works to build your online authority and improve your search listing results by demonstrating the interest others have in it.

In Part 7 of the Local Marketing Online series I will talk about email marketing and how you can strategically follow-up with reader interest to turn Followers into Customers.

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