The terms "social media" get tossed around a lot by marketing firms but many small business owners may not actually understand what they mean. The Internet has become an increasingly social place where people share personal information, photos, experiences, and videos with one another. This is easy to see on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Businesses that fail to exploit the opportunities offered by social media sites are missing out on a vast number of potential clients and customers. Social media management involves not only an account on some of the most popular social networking sites, but also creating relevant videos and article content.

There are many facets of search engine optimization, or SEO, which can help a business climb to the top of the relevant search results when individuals go hunting for particular items or services online. It is a fairly well known fact among marketing companies that the average users rarely go past the first page of search results when they are online. This makes getting to the top of the search results more important than ever. The higher a website ranks, the more visitors they will get. So, how does social media management help a website to rank higher?

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing sort the results according to relevancy. A company that has a greater presence on the web will also be recognized as more relevant when certain terms are used to search. This is where social media management comes in. Regularly adding videos to sites like YouTube or regular Twitter updates can go a long way towards increasing the number of visitors to a particular site. Likewise, even if a company has an official website, it is a good idea to have a well maintained and regularly updated Facebook account or LinkedIn account as well.

Another aspect of social media management to consider is the use of well written article content. Relevant information that includes keywords can be written into blog form or as an article and posted on different directories and websites. While any one of these different aspects of social media management can be undertaken by the average individual, a comprehensive approach that includes each factor will greatly increase the number of visitors to a website and search engine ranking. This can be a time-consuming and exhaustive process which is why many businesses often rely on professionals to help them with their online marketing rather than trying to attempt it themselves.