Where should social media posts originate?

December 11, 2013 1:18 AM

Greetings all, I work for a small company that provides educational services. We are quite active on social media in an attempt to increase traffic to our main website and push up our status on Google. We create various types of social media posts including memes and short videos. We currently post these directly onto the social media sites. My question is whether we could better serve our website by having them originate there (our main domain) and to then link to them on FB, twitter etc. Another idea is to embed the code from our Youtube channel onto our main webpage and to then link from social media. Would either of these have any impact on the traffic to our main page?
posted by tjabeijing to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Personally, I would put everything on the website that you can then push it out. That way you've still got it if something changes drastically with a social media outlet. If FB goes under or changes drastically you don't want two years of content existing only on Facebook.
posted by COD at 5:30 AM on December 11, 2013

I'm with COD. I believe that everything should originate on your website.
I would also consider posting only links or excerpts on your Facebook, Twitter, RSS feed, etc.
This way, if the excerpt or video description intrigues them, they must go back to your website to read or view the entire entry.

As COD said, you don't want Facebook to go tits up and lose years of content and discussion with one fell swoop.
posted by John Kennedy Toole Box at 6:04 AM on December 11, 2013

If your primary goal is to increase website traffic, then you should be linking to your website. If your primary goal is to increase general awareness of your company/brand, then maybe not. Photos/videos uploaded directly to Facebook often perform better than links to photos/videos. So think about your business goals and then tailor your tactics to help you meet business goals.

Be aware, also, that Facebook seems to have adjusted their news feed algorithm and a lot of business pages are not seeing the organic impressions they used to. I know that starting around December 1, my business pages are seeing something like half the impressions we used to see. (And speaking with other social media managers, it's not just me.) Facebook has admitted that they are trying to force businesses to pay to "boost" posts.

This article specifically says "Starting soon, we’ll be doing a better job of distinguishing between a high quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook."

My suggestion is to try it both ways and see what posts perform better for you (and be sure to define "perform": is it impressions, comments, shares, or clicks to your website?) Facebook is constantly adjusting their news feed algorithm so keep an eye on your analytics and adjust as necessary. My company is going to continue to post high quality content on Facebook, but we also expect less organic reach and are budgeting for more boosted posts. Good luck!
posted by misskaz at 7:36 AM on December 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Sorry for the second post, but if you are hoping to help SEO, consider a Google+ page. I know, no one uses Google+, but Google itself obviously favors it in search results so it might be worth just throwing all the same posts you put on Facebook up there. My industry does have a decent Google+ presence so we've been testing the waters there.
posted by misskaz at 7:44 AM on December 11, 2013