Wow, I cannot believe I haven’t blogged in over a month. Happy New Year by the way. That was a big no-no what I did. But here I am now. Over the last year I have been focusing on writing about mental health but for 2017, I want to mix my content up more- mental health and social media, etc.

When people ask what social media really is, the best answer is that really it’s a public online instrument for interacting with others. Social media came into existence long ago, with Napster, which was social media in its initial form. Do you remember that? And yes, Myspace has been around for a while too, whereas, Twitter and Facebook were newer and caught on. However, now you have Instagram, and Snapchat, which will not help you with your website SEO, however, they are still very important to have since others use them. They are only accessible from your mobile phone and everyone is using their phones these days. However, since these avenues of communication are here to stay, social media SEO is extremely necessary. Especially when it comes to Facebook and Twitter.

We all need social media to stay connected. Otherwise you could go out on a worldwide tour, and give lectures to innumerable people so that the world can discover what you have to say. Of course that cannot work.

You can connect with people on the Internet through chat, but usually chat tools are quite insufficient for large scale interaction. Basically there is no way around this. You definitely need social media, because everything else is history. Not to mention, many people realized the potential of social networking quite some time ago, which is why Mark Zuckerberg is such a remarkable success story.

The first and foremost, increased coverage is how you can make gains through social networking. When you make a status update or a post, your friends can see it, like it, share or repost it, all within a few seconds. When their connections see this, some of their friends may share the same status, and the cycle continues. Obviously, this will only happen if you can get your basic concepts right. You need excellent content and a very clean website structure.

The second benefit is improved page ranking. Your website will gain advantage from greater exposure. A larger number of people will be able to connect with you and link your site to theirs. With more legitimate back links, you will be able to gain better search engine optimization.

Here are some basic social media SEO tips

1. Keep your posts relevant to the discussions that you participate in.

2. Choose well known social networking sites to share your website or postings.

3. Never reuse the same content again and again, and use new content each time.

4. Always be respectful even if you don’t agree with an opinion.

5. Always be helpful to build a network of connections.

6. Reach out and try to establish connections with people in your niche.

7. People love free stuff, which can be graphics, books, or anything else you are good at and share these online with the public.

8. Build your reputation so that people can identify you as an expert in your field and trust your judgment.

9. Join other blogs, like them and post interesting comments on the articles and content, which may encourage these people to like your page.

It’s easy to do, and all you have to do is get started.