Google´s latest search engine updates have imposed a specific emphasis on Social Networks and, what we in the industry call “social signals”. For many businesses who´ve shied away from Social media or, stayed on the fence about whether to incorporate it into their marketing efforts, Google´s recent changes are a rude awakening to what is now a compulsory facet of online marketing.

Social signals are those links and comments emanating from social media. Whether this be a link from twitter or a post on facebook, if you´re not getting them, you´re set to lose rank on Google, if you have not already done so…Yes, if your website is to be looked on favorably by Google, you had better be getting your daily “fix” of social media signals back to your site, or else!

None of us know how long this latest “requirement” will last, or if social media will be forever part of our lives but, one thing’s for sure, right now you need it in order to maintain rankings, whether you like it or not.

My recommendation if you´re not too familiar with Social networks or, simply don´t know how they fit into your business niche, is to utilize rss feeds to harness their potential. The best way of going about this is to get an rss feed straight from your website and use this to automatically update twitter, facebook, pinterest and such. All of these social networks allow an rss feed to be utilized as a mechanism to update their varied timelines. If you do this, every time new content is added to your website or blog, the rss feed will automatically relay this to your social media outlets. Of course, this achieves the desired results by:

a) Ensuring your content is displayed on social networks

b) A link back to the new content is provided from the social media platform

c) Your fresh content is aggregated across multiple platforms

d) The RSS feed is “add and forget” and will do its job all by itself

By choosing this route, you manage your social media profile “in the back ground” and only seldom enter these networks directly when a unique message needs to be transmitted to followers on that particular network. For instance, you could have 20 automated RSS feeds updating your facebook profile and enter every now and again to add a single post directly.

The aforementioned is also a good “let it grow” approach, meaning that you don´t divert valuable people resources to the social platforms until you have some followers, that have been naturally drawn by your automated and systematic reposting via RSS of your habitual content updates on your normal website.

Using your website image content to update pinterest and then using the pinterest automation of posting the update straight to your facebook and twitter profile also allows you to dredge your “old” website content of all past information and freshen up back links from social media platforms to your old content.

My personal take on social networks is that it’s a new wave of the internet. Its age based, like going out to clubs and partying. Older people will use social media to communicate with loved ones but won´t “leave the door open” to outside influences like a younger person would.

Therefore, social networks will become generational and, as such, less effective when your target audience grows older. Buy hey, if you´re selling things to young people, being “social” is a must.