If you have an online marketing and promotional strategy, you undoubtedly have a strategy to research keywords and employ them into your content and paid search advertising. However, while researching keywords is vital to a successful SEO campaign, most online marketers fail to research the most popular places for keywords: social media sites.
Why is Social Media Keyword Research Important?
The main goal to keyword research is discovering what your target audience is looking for. What keywords do they use for search engine queries? What are current hot topics for your intended customers? Knowing what keywords are pertinent to your customers gives you the edge in determining what words and phrases to include with your online marketing efforts.
By researching keywords through popular social media sites like Twitter and Facebook you can gain a much more focused picture and insight of what terms, words, and subjects you should apply to your own SEO.
What can you learn from keyword research through social media?
Track trending topics and subjects.
Find keywords that are in demand.
Look for frequencies or trends in certain topics.
Determine consumer interest in products or services.
Understand your target consumer better through topic conversations.
With this in mind, how do you begin your keyword research in the most popular social media sites? Here are a few tips:
Twitter Keyword Research
By the end of 2009, Twitter became one of the most popular trendy social media sites. Users post their thoughts, ideas, and opinions about what is going on right now. Usually their short updates contain keywords that are pertinent in news that happened today, or even within the hour.
- Trending Topics – Look at the trending topics list provided on your home page or profile. This usually contains the most-used keywords in use right now.
- Search Hashtags – Hashtags are simply words with the “#” symbol before them. Many Twitter users utilize hashtags to help others find their posts on that topic.
- Twitter Search – Use the Twitter search tool. Here you can employ advanced search options for keyword research.
Facebook Keyword Research
You can target new customers and trending keywords easily on Facebook, which is the most popular social media site with hundreds of millions of users from around the world.
Use the search function located at the top of any Facebook page. Enter a keyword you are interested in and click the search icon to the right. Facebook will usually provide relevant page and friend or fan results, but you can click on “Posts by Everyone” to expand your keyword results. Find out what’s the buzz on your chosen keyword.
YouTube Keyword Search
Video clips on YouTube have become one of the hottest and trendiest items watched by web users. Find out what is interesting and trendy by using three methods on YouTube.
- YouTube Home Page – Right on the main homepage, YouTube offers links to “Videos Being Watched Now,” “Featured Videos,” and “Most Popular”.
- Get Suggestions – Simply enter a keyword or portion of a keyword in the search field. YouTube will offer a drop list of suggestions for the most widely watched and searched videos.
- YouTube Keyword Tool – Use the YouTube Keyword Tool. Similar to Google Adwords tool, this interface can help you discover what keywords are most popular on YouTube.
Use your keyword research time wisely. Learn to expand your keyword research into social media sites. You will be better equipped with words and phrases that can promote your business or brand more successfully.
Twitter: dragonblogger
says:
Social Media trends and keywords are important, especially for getting potential traffic and notice fast. However, I found that since most trends vanish rapidly, if you tailor too much to trending topics then your information or target can have a huge traffic drop after a period of time as the trending topic becomes yesterdays news or interest.
I saw this first hand with a few blog posts targeting new releases and trends.
Justin Germino´s recent blog post ..Gmail Like Drag-Drop Files To Share On Twitter- Facebook Or Any Website
Great post. I recently began to experiment with trending topics using both twitter and Google trends and if you knwo how to monetize theses topics, there is a real opportunity to make some good money. Of course, you could also use it to find targeted audience for your blog and drive them there with an enticing offer or what have you. Thanks.
satrap´s recent blog post ..10 Fun Ways to Make Money Online
Twitter: lavenderuses
says:
Hi Houston
Thanks for your interesting take on this important topic. I am in a small niche and when I started tweeting a few months ago, I targeted those in my niche and with similar interests. I have just unfollowed heaps of them last week!
They are not my target audience or even those who visit my site and interact with me. My blogging friends who love what I blog about (but are all in entirely different niche to me) are the ones I tweet and whose blogs I visit and comment on. I add to those as I get to know other bloggers.
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia´s recent blog post ..Lavender Products Galore-Must Be Party Time
Twitter: yourmarketingfriend
says:
Good information, but it still leaves a bit of uncertainty as to how many searches a keyword gets in that network, how many local searches, what type of competition is out there, etc. I make use of the Google Keyword tool All the time, and I wish there was software that could track keywords in Social media the same way.
Anyone know of anything like this? I would love to purchase for my campaigns.
yourmarketingfriend´s recent blog post ..Is it Possible to Make Money With Wealthy Affiliate
Twitter: rwperkinsjr
says:
Of all things SEO related, keywords have baffled me for years. I guess I just can’t grap how to use the keywords I identify with the posts I am posting.
I have used the Google Keyword Tool and looked through all the information but it doesn’t seem like I can put it all together in a way that Google likes.
I have been able to push my sites up in PR, not knowing how I did it only to watch them fall to 0 again and the only two things I can think of is bad keyword management and the use of traffic exchanges.
I would like to see a step by step, laymen terms tutorial on understanding how to identify keywords for your site. I have seen the Google suggestion tool but it does not explain why.
Richard´s recent blog post ..Maybe You Can Help – Spray Nozzle
Twitter: gilbertocintron
says:
Great post. I’m just beginning to explore social media keyword research and this article has given me some really good insight. Thank you very much.
Gil
gilbertocintron´s recent blog post ..grateful that I can still see at all
This post was a good read glad I came across it, the trouble with twitter is so many automated tools that everyone is using making it harder to seek the real users
Twitter: rwperkinsjr
says:
My wife and I were just talking about this exact same thing. I have over 11,000 twitter users but the response seems to be almost nil. This proves to me that out of 11,000 people I am only reaching about 11! It’s a few more than that, about 50, from looking at the clicks but it is not good still.
I may have to start cleaning out my followers and making sure they are real.
Richard´s recent blog post ..Why I Am Going To Stop Using Traffic Exchanges
Twitter: coopetitions
says:
Thanks you so much for sharing this huge tips, this is something new to me and I’ll be doing my research as soon as possible …
reinier millions´s recent blog post ..product-reveiw- AffiloBlueprint
Twitter: airen01
says:
I’ve been studying about how to promote stuff on the internet and surely what you posted there is the essence of it all. Most people now a days are really using these Social Media and so it is the best up to date top trending information you can ever have.
niairen01´s recent blog post ..Club Asteria – You Way to Financial Freedom
Very nice post, it sure did help somebody like me to gain more ingsights about how to do key word research using the different website mention above.
James´s recent blog post ..Social Networking Media updated Tue Dec 14 2010 8-32 am CST
Hello Houston!
Very glad I came to read this post! Googleadwords had been my keyword search bestfriend. I’m not ditching googleadwords though (definitely not) but will surely give your suggestions a good shot! Thanks so much Houston!
Thanks Everyone for all your great feedback!
@ Richard – don’t worry about your website PR. The page rank bar needs to be called a fool’s bar. The pr is just one small metric in Google’s algo. I know of many sites with low pr that out rank sites with pr 5 & 6s. At the end of the day pr doesn’t matter and rankings do
Twitter: aimee1986
says:
Hi this is a really interesting article. I love learning all things seo related. I use market samuri for keyword research othersise I use google keyword tool. My site is still a low page rank but I am working hard to improve it and have startedto write a series of posts on this.
AImee´s recent blog post ..My uber Social Week