Meet Ryan O’Keefe, Social Strategist

Ryan O’Keefe joined Boxless Media in August of 2014 after earning his MBA in Marketing. He is a copywriter, social media marketing enthusiast, musician, entrepreneur and contributor to DenytheBox.com – the official blog of Boxless Media. If it’s about music, movies, craft beer, social media, or entrepreneurship he loves to talk about it! Shoot him an email at RO@boxlessmedia.com

Most small business owners already know that there is a lot of potential value in providing content through a blog and getting their content shared on social media. However there is still quite a bit of confusion on how to get people to share and interact with this content. The most brilliant blog ever written can’t take off on social media and search engines if it hasn’t been properly optimized for sharing. So today we are going to discuss how to design a viral worthy blog.

Prep Your Content with SEO in Mind

When you are writing your blog post, making sure people can find it organically via search engines is key. Utilizing a good WordPress plugin such as Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin can make things really easy. It will help narrow your focus down to a few key areas to make sure your post shows up on Google’s radar.

• Focus Keyword: The focus keyword for a blog should be one key word or phrase that your blog is about. This will help direct people searching for your blog’s topic right to your post. They will know the topic of your blog post and whether or not they want to read it very quickly. After all SEO isn’t just about the volume of visitors, but the quality of those visits. So make sure to choose a word that represents your blog’s topic.

• SEO Title: The SEO title is the title of your content on the search engine. It is the first thing people read about a search result before reading the meta description. It plays a huge role in whether or not someone clicks your content or your competitor’s during a search. It is important to keep this title short, relevant, and truthful to the content you are providing.

• Meta Description: The meta description is essentially a quick elevator pitch for your content. This normally shows up as the black text under the blue title of a search result. Ideally this should contain your focus keyword that we discussed earlier, and once again be short and to the point.

Utilize Social Media Plugins

The major social media platforms all have plugins that can help connect your company’s social media page to your blog and website. These can show up as simple buttons that when clicked will direct a user to your Twitter of Facebook page, or as a stream of your Twitter’s content next to your blog. Including this access to your company’s social media presence can change what would have been a quick interaction with a potential customer into a longer two way conversation and possibly a business relationship.

Get Visual With Properly Sized Images

Using pictures to appeal to readers and break up long sections of text is always a good idea when blogging. People want a quick read with interesting pictures and infographics so they can get the answers they seek fast and have fun doing it. Make sure the images you feature are sized properly for the social media platform you plan to have your blog shared on. For example a great size image for Twitter is 1024px by 512px.

In this day and age companies need to have some sort of social media marketing strategy in place, large or small. If you need help developing a strategy, feel free to check out more of our blog or give one of our helpful social media strategists a call at (773) 313-3530.