You may already use keywords as part of your SEO strategy. Still, you may not realize that you should also use keywords on social media .
Keywords on Social Media Work the Same as on Your Website
There’s good news regarding social media and keywords. You can use keywords on social media platforms just like on your website. The more keywords you include without resorting to overstuffing, the larger your reach will be.
Social Media Keyword Tips by Platform
Every social media platform is slightly different, so you need various keyword strategies. Here are some tips to help you make the most of each of the most popular social media platforms.
Facebook allows for a high level of segmentation. Incorporate this into your keyword use and choose highly specific keywords for each segmented group of your audience. As always, choose those keywords based on the priorities, interests, and searches of your audience. Facebook’s business tools make this fairly easy to do.
To make the most of keywords on Instagram, use geotargeting. Take advantage of the wealth of keywords and hashtags for specific states, cities, and regions.
LinkedIn tends to be more conversational. This means that the keywords that come up in your keyword research tool may not always be a great fit. However, you should still be able to incorporate some of them into your posts.
Use the search bar to your advantage when generating keywords to use on Pinterest. Just remember that trends on this platform change quickly, although not as quickly as on Twitter. As such, you will have to update your keyword research regularly.
Tweets have a very short lifespan, and trends on Twitter are constantly shifting. As such, you need to be sure to update your keywords for Twitter regularly. Get into the habit of updating your keyword research for this platform more frequently than others. Don’t forget to include hashtag research when doing so.
YouTube
You can research keywords on YouTube using similar strategies to what you would do on Google. This includes typing queries in the search bar and getting ideas from the user-generated topics and automated suggestions YouTube provides.
General Tips for Finding Social Media Keywords
In addition to platform-specific tips, there are also some general keyword research techniques you can use on most social media platforms.
Consider Your Other Keywords
Consider whether the keywords that came up in your SEO research for your website are a good fit. There’s a good chance that many will be.
Consider Lay Terms
Think about how someone would describe your product or service if they didn’t know your company name.
Check the Competition
While the competition for social media keywords isn’t as important as on-page SEO, it is still worth checking. You don’t want to waste your efforts on a keyword with incredibly high competition, as you are unlikely to rank for it.
Where to Use Keywords on Social Media
Once you have the keywords, the next question becomes where to use them on social media. There are a few important places to include them.
Photos
The best place to put keywords on social media will usually be photo captions. Including keywords in your photo captions is simple yet effective.
Statuses
Try to work keywords into your status updates naturally. This is easiest on Facebook and LinkedIn, where there are no limitations on status length, but it is also possible on Twitter.
Hashtags
Hashtags are another effective place to use keywords on social media.
Your Headline and Profile
No matter the social media platform, try to naturally work keywords into your headline, summary, about section, or any other relevant part of your profile. This should be easy to achieve but remember not to overstuff your posts with keywords.
Conclusion
Savvy companies include keywords in their social media strategies in addition to using them on their websites. You’ll have to take a slightly different approach to finding keywords depending on the social media platform, but it should be easy enough to include keywords in your statuses or posts, photo captions, and profile.
