Ranking
How can you build “social media links” through social media sites?
While there is no exact formula for this as of yet, successful brands on social media sites will engage their fans through content and conversation on their pages, as well as through the fun and interactive applications available on the social media platforms themselves.
Following are some steps, advice, as well as a guide on how to gain a stronger social media presence and build “social media links.” This information is also based off of what I have found to make the most sense in regards to what seems to be the purpose of what social media optimization and marketing is for in the first place.
1. The person needs to spread his or her content onto social media sites. These can be ways to get what you want to talk about out to a wider audience. Now how can that affect search engine optimization (SEO)? If you get hundreds of followers, one of them can write a blog post or give you a link that can eventually flow page rank or send more visitors to your site through the social media site itself (in other words, you initially met the person through the social media site and they added a link to your website.)
2. You need to spread great content. This means you have to have some reason why people would want to link to you, and then you need to tell people about it by following Step 1.
3. You need to know and follow people who are of “quality,” and people who follow you need to be “quality” people. You need to know who you are talking to by doing Step 2 correctly.
4. Social media networks should be used to build conversation or a social presence with these “quality” people noted in Step 3. Simply put, the ability to use non-personal communication (marketing) to build a relationship is a must for this step. Like face-to-face conversation in your store, you can use social marketing or optimization in order to capture, engage, and turn these followers into profitable leads. Social media balance equals a little bit of personal, a little bit of business. People care about you being genuine online, social media users want to talk to real people, not robots.
a. Users want to engage with stories not necessarily Ads because stories are more conversational and participatory.
b. Content can be promoted from a social media site—on the social media site—directly from a page via a sponsored or promoted story. This works especially well on Facebook.
Before a person goes out and spends money to get more “likes” and “follows” for his or her company, it’s important to have a plan for how you will retain and engage those fans. No social media optimization (SMO) strategy can be successful unless there is the right amount of involvement from the company. In other words, the company must be/should be active in their SMO campaign.
Some ideas to promote your brand on social media include offering:
1. Discounts
2. Coupons
3. Offers
4. Polls
5. Pictures
6. Questions
7. Contests
8. Newsletter Sign-up
9. Something Free
Social media “link building” can be a part of a natural search campaign, but ultimately it is not replacing SEO link building anytime soon. Social is important in sending out the right signals to the correct people in order to stimulate their engagement with your company, but it has not entirely replaced the role of trusted and quality links linking to your website that happens during the SEO process.
Inevitably, websites are still winning and having your brand on social media sites should expand its authority, but how do you make your social media sites have “a lot of links” and what can be the “value” of a social link to a particular social media site anyway? These are questions I still find unanswered, and I’m open to comments and ideas 
