Websites today have become increasingly complex. Pages are expected to have far more than just words: visitors want to see images, videos, well-crafted content, and social media integration. Content that features interesting and engaging images receives 94 percent more views than content that does not. Additionally, as many as 67 percent of customers also believe that clear images are more important than product information, descriptions, and even customer ratings when deciding what to buy. These extras give the website the impact it needs to attract visitors and convince them to spend time on the website, engaging with the brand.

Companies today have a variety of tools at their fingertips for creating these dynamic and engaging websites. For large enterprises, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) remains one of the most popular web content management systems available. For those who are unfamiliar with the system, here is a basic introduction to the capabilities of the platform.

Manage a website with Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager provides website developers with all the tools they need to develop and manage a high-class website. Development begins in the author environment, where people can create a variety of different types of content to publish on the website. This includes web pages, publications, and any other type of content. For those developing websites as a part of a corporation or business, with Adobe Experience Manager it is possible to coordinate tasks or establish workflows to control who on the team must review content before it can be published.

With Adobe Experience Manager, creating a page within the site the user simply needs to select Create Page from the drop down menu.

Once the page has been created and reviewed, select publish page.

From within Adobe Experience Manager, users can also easily verify how their pages convert to mobile viewing (learn more about mobile e-commerce) to ensure a positive user experience for those on smart devices. They can also tag the pages, edit manage page titles and meta descriptions and other features that help the pages get indexed and allow visitors to easily navigate the site.

To enhance the website even further, users can also easily upload, edit and use a variety of digital and rich media features with Adobe Experience Manager. Users can adjust details, such as the format and resolution, beyond the basic size and cropping edits available. It is even possible to create interactive rich media, such as doing a 360-degree spin of products.

Videos can also be edited, recut, and published right from the platform. These additional features within Adobe Experience Manager make it easy for users to streamline the production of rich media without having to use a variety of different types of products and platforms.

E-Commerce and Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager works well with sites interested in running eCommerce sites. Site owners can use the Product Information Management system to ensure accurate product entries. The platform will make it easy to keep track of inventory and pricing so that customers receive updated information when they visit the site.

Site owners can enable a few different types of search, including an eCommerce search or a third-party search. These features help to make the customer experience easier as they can search for terms related to the products they want to find.

Users can also create branded shopping carts to ensure that the entire shopping experience fits with the company. Creating a personalized experience for the visitor is also possible and easy to implement. Sites can include features such as ‘Recently Viewed Products’ and other options that keep users engaged and interested in what the company has to offer.

Marketing

AEM allows users to run successful marketing campaigns from the first step to the last. The easily customizable platform makes it easy to maintain brand identity throughout all the pages. Adobe Experience Manager also easily integrates with BrightEdge technology, allowing companies to optimize their content for SERPs and organic search.

BrightEdge Content Optimizer works by combining the power of BrightEdge’s groundbreaking Data Cube with the capabilities of AEM. Brands can research what topics potential customers are searching for and the types of information that they want to find. Content can then be developed and optimized to meet this need. Marketers can use the optimizer to check for the best content structure while also receiving real-time feedback on how to create the effective content being sought by the brand.

Once people have begun to use the website, Adobe Experience Manager also makes it easy to track and optimize the rest of the campaign. Using data derived from visitors, companies can perform tasks such as:

• Create more effective buyer personas for page visitors
• Analyze consumer behavior and use it to create a more personalized experience
• Use the data gleaned from subscribers to create emails and other communication from the brand that are as personal and relevant to the individual as possible

Since social media has evolved into such an important factor in any quality marketing campaign, Adobe Experience Manager also makes it simple and straightforward for users to add the various social tools to the websites. These social media tools help customers connect with brands they appreciate, offering more opportunities to engage with the consumer base and grow the reach of the company.

To further cater to the growing percentage of visitors who will be accessing the website from a mobile device, Adobe Experience Manager also makes it easy for companies to develop mobile apps that integrate perfectly with the wider brand and marketing objectives. These apps include analytics, a dashboard that makes them easy to modify, and options to review apps and test them on devices before release.

Additional marketing strategies, such as running promotions on an eCommerce website, are also popular implementations of the Adobe Experience Manager potential.

For customers interested in finding a web content management system that allows them to build a website that is easy to use and visually outstanding, Adobe Experience Manager is considered the industry leaders. It gives companies the tools they need to create a site at scale that will stand out from the crowd.

Earlier this week the BrightEdge New York team hosted an event for content and search marketers at the Yotel, a uniquely fun space in Manhattan. Over 35 attendees from leading companies, like SAP, Wyndham and The Hartford mingled with their peers and BrightEdge staff enjoying drinks and appetizers after hearing the latest insights from BrightEdge executives and other marketers. Brad Mattick, Product and Marketing VP, shared news about the company and with Kristi Faltorusso demonstrated the latest enhancements to the BrightEdge Platform.

Josh Crossman, VP of Client Services and Strategy, moderated a panel featuring BrightEdge CEO and Founder Jim Yu along with Richard Mastriani of Wyndham Hotels, Marcus Cohn of 2U, and Jesus Menez of Scripps Networks Interactive. They provided enlightening insights into how they address the challenges facing digital marketers today and how the BrightEdge content performance marketing platform is helping them win on the content battleground.

Join us at Share15 The New York event was just a small sampling of what you will enjoy at Share15 this year with great content and speakers, interesting attendees, and lots of fun networking opportunities. The BrightEdge staff is now busy preparing for Share15, our industry-leading event for digital marketers by digital marketers.

With over 55 speakers already booked from some of the world's largest brands, this promises to be the best Share yet. The event is September 21-23 at the Westin St. Francis in the heart of San Francisco. It offers a new venue, new formats with hands-on labs and discussion forums in addition to great breakout, and general sessions.  BrightEdge Certification courses are being held on Monday with a special “Share15 Update” course for those previously certified that dives deep into the latest enhancements to the platform.

Visit the Share15 website to learn more about the conference and to register. Take our digital marketing quiz to test your knowledge.

Creating a strong community based around a company through a forum is a fantastic way to build the bond between customers and brand. This connection to other customers and to the company itself is excellent to inspire loyalty in customers. It also provides the business ample opportunities for getting to know their customers and what matters to them. By listening to and participating in conversations they can gain far greater insight into their consumer base, improving the customer experience and further enhancing brand loyalty.

How to create a forum

There are a variety of different techniques that site owners can use to create effective forums.

• Create a hosted forum on one of the many free hosting sites
• Create a hosted forum on a hosting site and buy a personal domain
• Create the forum directly on the company website

A forum can be on the company website, which will ensure that the site is protected from ads and other extras. You also have much more control over the appearance of the forum. When the topics on the forum that show up in the search engine results page (SERPs), they will point traffic back to the company site, further enhancing backlink count and SEO results.

There are several different types of forum options for those who want to host their forum. Those using certain website hosts, such as WordPress, can use plugins that will easily create a forum with just a few clicks. PhpBB is the open source forum software that requires a little more work but can be a good option for those who are comfortable doing so.

Follow these steps to successfully download the program.

1. Secure the FTP and login credentials for the database from the host
2. Secure an FTP client if you do not have one already
3. Download the phpBB package
4. Unzip the package to find the directory (which can be renamed)
5. Login to the serve with the FTP client and upload the folder

Making the forum a success

Create a forum to find people in your preferred business niche and convincing them to stay and engage with others on the forum. While accomplishing this goal can become progressively easier as the forum becomes established, the most challenging aspect of running a successful forum is getting the conversation started.

Many people quickly click off an empty forum, even if they would have made the ideal participant. One of the fundamental decisions is whether to moderate and approve all comments, review and remove inappropriate ones, or let it be more wooly and open. If the forum membership has a reasonable hurdle, like being a paying customer or a certified user then regulation is less important. If membership is open, then the comments should be moderated to prevent competitors’ negative or specious comments.

In truly large forums of more than 10,000 the moderating effort may require a few hours a day. At BrightEdge we have more than 2,000 BrightEdge certified users who are admitted to a LinkedIn group, and we run our customer forum there. Both BrightEdge employees and customer forum members start topics and reply to questions. The forum helps define and support the community and improve customer satisfaction and retention. Additionally, a professional network makes an excellent platform because it allows members to display and gain career value from their BrightEdge certification.

Attracting people to the site

Like any other website, it is important to optimize the site for search engines. That means using keywords to communicate your purpose clearly to search engines and participants. Use keyword and keyword phrases in sections such as:

• the page title
• headlines
• the ‘about us’ page

The meta descriptions of the pages when you create a forum should also be strategically developed. This is the text that a search engine user sees when your forum appears in their search results. Use the text to include keywords and to invite people to explore your high-value forum. Here is what users see when the TripAdvisor Forum appears in search results: it is concise and appealing for those interested in learning more about travel.

You can also invite people to your forum directly. Let regular customers, friends and family know that the forum is ready for conversation and that their input would be appreciated. It can also be valuable to post links letting people know about this community option in places such as the business’s social media pages, at the end of communications from the brand-- such as emails or newsletters-- and on the company website. Many customers appreciate the opportunity to connect with the business’s representatives as well as other customers.

Create a forum that encourages conversation

A common mistake of many over-eager forum builders is to create a forum filled with dozens of different conversation categories. What they neglect to remember, however, is that having so many different options just makes the entire forum look empty. New forums will only have one or two conversations at first, so that leaves room for numerous empty categories. Instead, focus on building a forum with only a few categories, maybe even just two or three.

Define these options broadly to give people flexibility. Forums can always be restructured and new categories added if the conversation successfully attracts regular participants. Site owners should also show initiative to start conversations themselves. Most casual page visitors will not arrive at an empty forum and start conversations. Regularly begin new topics under each category and purposely invite people to respond to those particular conversations. It is important to remember the purpose of the forum. It is generally accepted for brands to create special areas of the forum to deal with topics directly related to the brand, as the company AVS did here.

At the same time, people do not come to the forum to receive a direct sales pitch. Even in the AVS forums, there are over 30 different categories, but only a handful that mention the company name. You should foster genuine dialogue among community members and not be afraid to step back when the conversation begins picking up speed.

Protect the forum

Forums regularly come under attack from a variety of different sources, including spambots and trolls. It is important to protect the forum from these sources to maintain the integrity of the community. There are a few practices that can help keep the forum secure.

• disable the search function for guests and only allow it for registered users
• enable CAPTCHA or similar visual confirmation for people registering
• enable CAPTCHA or similar visual confirmation for people making guest posts (or disallow guests from posting without registering)
• Use the GD CAPTCHA foreground noise to make it harder for spambots to recognize the text

It is also important to protect the forums from some of your registered users. It is not unheard of for people, protected by the anonymity of the internet, to say things that they would not say in real life. To make sure the community remains safe and secure for those who want to genuinely discuss issues related to your business, include a list of clearly define behavioral expectations for users. This would be an example of forum rules, as posted on the popular forum, Reddit.

The popular American Express Open Forum is more lengthy and more professional in appearance with each example fitting well with their intended audience.

In addition to SEO value, the legacy conversation makes an effective knowledge base that helps customer self-solve problems. This can help reduce customer service costs. Before beginning a new forum, companies need to establish a clear plan of how they are going to build the community, which at a minimum include goals, strategy, tactics/cadence, resources, budget/staff, and measurement system. Whichever route is selected, the company should assign at least a partial full-time equivalent as a community to operate, facilitate and police the forum.

Creating a successful forum requires a bit of work to establish the community and a few quarters to nurture and build it, but when done well, it contributes to loyalty, retention and efficiency. See some fun community content that is really working: check out BrightEdge's SEO Jokes post.  

According to KISSmetrics, even a one second delay in the time spent loading your website can result in a 7 percent decrease in your online conversions. Customers do not like to wait for a site to appear on their screen.

The tags that you have installed to track the site’s performance and customer behavior can be a major source of page load latency, and therefore could cost you money. Fortunately, companies do not have to choose between important tags or losing customers. Sixty four percent of companies who use a tag management system see faster website performance. You should understand why this happens to have a better idea if a management system will work for you.

What is a tag?

A tag is a piece of code that is inserted into a website to monitor particular parts of the website. These tags can be used to perform a number of different tasks such as:

• information gathering for remarketing campaigns
• website analytics
• conversion tracking

Tags can be 1st party, which means that they have been installed by the owners of the website for their own purposes. A 3rd party tag, on the other hand, was installed in the website to track information for an outside company, such as a contractor who is handling the company’s remarketing campaigns. Third party tags can also be installed by outside advertisers who will be showing advertisements on the site. When these outside tags are used, often the site owner has little control over the data gleaned from the site. There are two main types of tags.

• Image pixel tags

These tags create an invisible image on the website. The image requires the computer downloading the image to request it from the server, which allows the server to track how often the image is used. The request for the pixel is sent with valuable data information points about how the website is being used.

• JavaScript tags

JavaScript tags can sometimes use image pixels as well, but they are often more complex. These tags often use either first-party or third-party cookies. The tag may either read past cookies or install a new one. Google Analytics is a commonly used program that installs tags to help site owners monitor the progress on their site. This is a sample of what a Google Analytics tag might look like to track a transaction on a website.

Tags themselves have been around for years, but their use has improved dramatically.

When tags were originally developed, they tended to load in serial order, which means that the tags at the top of the page must load before the rest of the website loaded. If something went wrong with the tag, the rest of the website might not load. This would significantly harm the website’s reputation and could cost you customers.

Now the majority of tags load asynchronously or parallel. This helps to reduce the number of problems that tags cause on sites should something go wrong with the code on just one of them. While there are still some older tags that load serially, this is now significantly less common.

Tags have become a critical part of website analytics and site management for most website owners. They offer insight into the site’s performance and the behavior of visitors on the website pages.

Tags even make it possible to use real time personalization on websites. With tags, sites can track users along with data such as where they are located and what they are going on the website. This information can be used to produce personalized suggestions and information to improve the user experience.

On the BrightEdge platform, customers can receive customized dashboards that let them know precisely how their website performs on a regular basis, such as the dashboard below tracking a site’s performance with organic search and revenue. The information for this type of insightful analytics is only possible with the use of tags used by Google Analytics and imported onto the BrightEdge platform. That’s one of the ways BrightEdge provides marketers actual revenue and visitor information and does not rely on estimates and projections.

What is the benefit to using tag management?

Many companies, however, struggle with the sheer number of tags that need to be included in the website to track all the different types of data. Often once a website has been designed, the owners will find themselves assaulted by requests to add various tags into their site. These tags allow the contractors in charge of roles, such as marketing and analytics gather the necessary information.

Once all the tags are added, the site page load speed can begin to slow down as the tags load serially. Although the changes might not be obvious to website owners or users who have operate the site, there are now numerous commands that the computer must fulfill as it attempts to use the website. Tag management allows website owners to gain the data and information from tags without adding countless bits of code into their site.

Tag management can help control for the following potential problems:

• slow loading caused by too many tags
• slow responses by IT teams to include, modify, or delete tags
• human error when adding the tag
• having unused tags left within the website
• changes in website design that render the tag meaningless

How Tag Management Works

When a website uses tag management, you will only have to worry about one master tag that gets installed into the website. This master tag can be likened to a container that holds the commands for all the tags that will be run on the website. When you want to modify the tags operating within the site, you can use a simple web interface that will allow you to adjust the tags controlled by the master tag.

These changes can be performed simply by those in the marketing departments, rather than being added to the list of tickets sent to IT. According to Econsultancy, 69 percent of tag management system users can add new tags to their sites in less than a day. That is three times the number of companies that can do so when the tags have to be added manually by IT teams. Master tags also help simplify the commands the computer must fulfill as it loads the website, speeding up the loading process and enhancing the user experience.

Tag management also allows website owners to optimize the ‘data layer’ of their website and thereby standardize the types of data used by each application, regardless of the digital channel that is being used. This helps websites better sync their applications and understand the data that is coming in through the program, regardless of whether it originates in mobile or on a desktop.

When you have the power to unify your data layer through tag management, you will find the freedom to use different marketing vendors and other contractors regardless of the company. All of the tags will easily integrate with one another, giving you control over the data coming in and improving the analysis.

There are a number of popular tag management solutions. Google Tag Manager, Adobe Dynamic Tag Management (DTM), and Google Doubleclick Floodlight are popular options that help sites add tags and manage their existing tags. Satellite, Signal, Ensighten, and Tealium also can help businesses get more out of their tags.

Tags have given websites the power to track vital information that helps marketing campaigns to thrive and allows websites to better engage with their customers. More than 4/5 of companies believe that digital marketing complexity is only going to increase, and many sectors, such as ecommerce already face incredibly complex sites. With tag management, it is possible to gather the necessary information without hurting site performance or the user experience.

Google Search Operators -- 8 Popular and Useful Commands

Understanding how websites interact with Google is the key to SEO. Google offers site owners a number of different search operator commands called operators that can help them monitor their websites and their SEO progress. These Google search operators and commands are simple to use and are just plugged directly into the standard search box.

Here are some useful SEO tasks that site owners can complete using a few simple Google search operators.

Check how many pages have been indexed

To use Google search operators to check for indexed pages type [site:yourdomain.com]. For example, at BrightEdge we use [site:BrightEdge.com].

Knowing how many pages Google has indexed is important for making sure that each page of the site is capable of showing up on SERPs and driving traffic to the website. If all of the pages have not been indexed it might indicate a number of different situations such as:

• problems in the backend of a website, such as the robots.txt having User-agent: *Disallow:/
• 404 HTTP Status codes which means the page cannot be found
• a very low pagerank - which will limit the number of pages Google will crawl
• server problems that keep the spiders from reaching your content

With Google search operators, you can also dig deeper into your subdirectories by including the names of subdirectories or folders in the domain you search. For example, you can search for [site:http://www.brightedge.com/products/]. It can also be helpful to exclude particular subdirectories, such as [site:brightedge.com/products/ -inurl:www]. This can allow you to get a better idea of where the different articles are living within the website.

Find competitors with Google search operators

To find sites that are similar to your website, you can type [related:yourdomain.com]. REI would use [related:REI.com].

It can be very helpful for companies to analyze exactly what websites are commonly cited with them and who might be considered their competitors. This will allow you to compare how you and these competitors rank for certain keywords, where their sites might be stronger or weaker than yours, and where you need to improve to outrank the other sites.

Finding sites that link to yours with Google search operators

Use the command [link:yourdomain.com] to find websites that link back to your domain.

Backlinks are a known factor that add authority to websites and thereby influence SEO. While backlinks from quality websites can be excellent for SEO, it is possible for backlinks from poor websites to hurt your site’s reputation. Although Google assures site owners that it would be extremely difficult for competitors to hurt another’s webpage through spammy links, few people want to take that chance. If you find that spammy pages are linking to your website you can easily disavow the links.

Check for duplicate content with Google search operators

Use the Site:yourdomain.com to find all the indexed pages on your website. Then scroll to the last page on the list and look to see if Google has placed their duplicate content warning at the end:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the XXX already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

If this warning appears, it means that Google has detected some duplicate content within your site. Click the link to pull up the duplicate pages and begin to look through them to identify where the problems lie.

You can also run a search for suspected duplicate pages specifically by typing in, [site:yourdomain.com allintitle:keyword phrase] or [site:yourdomain.com allintitle:keyword * phrase]. In the second example, the * denotes an unknown word, allowing Google to search for the keyword phrase in any form that it might appear in the title.

Many websites with a duplicate problem will discover that they have had both www and non-www pages being indexed, or pages appearing in multiple subdomains.

Duplicate content can disrupt SEO rankings and make it harder to track the success of a website. When there are two pages that display the same content, the search engine has to decide which page is more relevant. This will hurt the page’s ranking.

Find pages most relevant to a keyword with Google search operators

To find the pages most relevant to a specific keyword, type [site:yourdomain.com keyword or phrase]. This will bring up the websites that are most relevant to a particular keyword phrase for which you would like to rank.

Armed with this information, you can adjust your marketing and SEO strategies to account for keyword relevance. It can be used in situations such as:

• If you are trying to rank higher for specific keywords, you know which pages will have the best chance
• If you are organizing content for specific buyer personas, you can sort through the pieces you have written related to different keywords that persona would find relevant
• If you are running a paid advertising campaign for a specific keyword, you know which pages on your site will be most relevant to the people who click on the ad.

As powerful as Google search operators can be, BrightEdge takes this analysis to the next level. While Site: will show you your pages indexed that day, BrightEdge visualizes this data in the Coverage Report, providing historical indexation insight into both your website and your competitors.

BrightEdge also goes beyond simply showing your indexed pages with Data Cube. Simply enter your domain, sub-domain or directory into Data Cube, and you will see all the pages that are ranking, along with the keywords they rank for and their estimated traffic (Data Cube Score). This analysis works just as well for competitors and can even provide rapid gap analysis against any two websites.

BrightEdge also provides a far more robust view into your links than Link: or Allinanchor: can provide. Within Recommendations, you will find page level link data, including number of back links, Domain and Page authority and more, all compared against same metrics from the top 10 competitors for any particular keyword.

BrightEdge SOV also provides more insight than related: by showing you the top competitors for any particular set of keywords, along with the keywords they rank for, the on page elements and industry standard SOV for the entire competitive landscape.

Other helpful commands

Google mentions a few other commands that you might find useful as well. To see what a website looked like the last time Google indexed a site use [cache:yourdomain.com]. To see the information that Google has stored about a website, such as similar pages, pages that link to a site, and cached versions of the site use [info:yourdomain.com]. To find pages that use one of several words use OR as in [site:yourdomain.com keyword 1 OR keyword 2]

Google search operators and site commands can be valuable tools for monitoring SEO and content, but the BrightEdge platform can help you understand and visualize at a point in time and over time.

Over the past few years, the value of social media platforms has exploded. When Facebook began as a social platform for college students in 2004, few people anticipated that—just over a decade later—social media platforms would be such an important factor in online marketing and search engine optimization.

Companies have found social media platforms to be excellent places to acquire customers and build brand loyalty. An estimated 77% of B2C companies and 43% of B2B companies have found customers through Facebook. Another 34% of marketers have sourced customers from Twitter.

Social media platforms have become the world’s water cooler, where people exchange ideas and discuss what they want to see from their favorite brands. Social media marketing, then, is the art of using that information to connect with potential customers, build relationships, and ultimately grow companies to new heights. Social Media is a channel to find and develop influencer marketing strategies.

Understanding the different social media platforms

Social media is not one-size-fits-all. There are different audiences that frequent the various social media platforms, and they each expect to interact with different types of content from their favorite brands. It is important to take the different atmospheres to heart and allow them to guide everything from a company’s profile to its target audience. Brands should use their buyer personas to guide the types of content they promote and the social media platforms where they need to focus their efforts.

Facebook - estimated 1.3 billion active users

Facebook received its start as a social site for college students. Although it has expanded far beyond its original restrictions, it has maintained its more light-hearted atmosphere. Companies tend to fare best when they post a variety of different types of content, from fun memes to informational posts that educate readers and encourage informative conversations. It is generally best to keep posts under 250 characters — if they get too long, you risk losing engagement. Include images and ask open-ended questions to inspire conversation.

Twitter - estimated 288 million monthly active users

It is best to think of Twitter as one giant conversation. Posts have to be less than 140 characters, but it is best to keep them under 120 so that your posts can easily be ‘retweeted.’ You will want to use #hashtags to call attention to the topics you are discussing, so that your posts are easily searchable. Pictures can also be fantastic for attracting attention on Twitter.

LinkedIn - estimated 300 million active users

LinkedIn is the network for professionals, and that is reflected in everything about the platform. The people on the platform are most interested in content that relates to them professionally, so any articles you post should take this into account. You want to promote pieces that encourage industry-related thought and conversation.

Google+ - estimated 300 million active users

When it comes to local SEO, Google+ is golden. It is generally recommended that brands publish a variety of different types of content on this platform as well. Images, educational content, and even videos can all perform well.

Understanding social media platforms and site performance

Social media platforms offer brands the chance to connect directly with their audience and leverage that connection to move them through the sales funnel. Success with social media platforms require more than just establishing a profile and posting a few times per week. The purpose of a social media marketing campaign is to build a strong community around the brand that will:

• Establish your company as an industry leader
• Encourage followers to trust and then buy from you
• Expand your brand reach
• Build brand loyalty

To accomplish these goals, it’s essential to devote time to building your social profiles and marketing campaigns — as well as monitoring their success. Keywords should be used on the social profiles because they are indexed by Google, but also because it will make it easier to find your brand through internal searches on-platform.

Programs like BrightEdge make it easy to see how well a social campaign is performing and how successfully it is interacting with SEO. You can easily track social SEO metrics, such as applicable keywords, to see where your pages can be improved to attract more visitors and improve your social media success.

Although many companies like to track basic social media metrics, such as the number of followers on various social media platforms, it tends to be far more beneficial to track metrics that look more closely at the level of engagement those followers have with your page. Look at statistics such as:

• How often your followers comment on and share your content
• The number of likes your content receives
• The number of people who enter the sales funnel through social media sites
• How often people who find your company through social media end up converting

These are the types of statistics that will give you insight into how well your social media is expanding your brand reach. As your campaign progresses, you will be able to use the social media platforms to drive more organic traffic toward your content, which helps boost your brand and site reputation. In turn, this will improve SEO value and position your company higher in search rankings.

Social media marketing is a fantastic tactic that gives brands the platforms they need to engage with the modern digital audience. Considering that over 70% of online American adults use some form of social media, these social media platforms offer an unparalleled opportunity to interact with potential customers. Properly leveraging these sites can help you take your marketing campaigns further, connect with new consumers and expand your brand reach.