 Hello, so welcome back to track two The following talk is was gonna is gonna be in English We're gonna welcome Michelle. She's originally from the US, but she now lives in Lisbon She's a specialist in digital marketing Specialized in travel content or travel related content and Today she will talk about how using social media for website How you can use social media for website SEO? Thank you, Michelle All right. Thank you all so much for having me my goal here today is to broaden how you think about social media for your website or your business and To provide some inspiration for how you might use social media to amplify your website SEO So social media is a great way to communicate directly with your audience to your target market and to help build your brand trust I hope you were able to catch Cheryl's talk on social media earlier this morning because she made a great case for the importance of social media for business But a downfall of some social media is that the value can be lost in the rotation of the algorithm So today I want to talk about thinking about a different way to think about your social media presence Your businesses social media presence and how using social media platforms as a marketing branch for your business can provide long-term Value outside of pushing direct sales or traffic So first I want to give you a little bit of understanding about me. I am originally from the United States I grew up on the West Coast and moved around a lot most recently I lived in Austin, Texas and two years ago. I moved with my husband here to live in Portugal. He's sitting right there Everyone say hi Dan I come from a background in corporate digital marketing working on websites and applications for companies like Whole Foods Market Target and Coca-Cola and now my husband and I work together on our travel business Honeymoon Always So Honeymoon Always is a website that focuses on Honeymoon's luxury destinations and couples travel We monetize through ads affiliate links and marketing partnerships So for us getting track of to our website through organic search via search engine optimization is the name of the game my husband's background is also in digital marketing so he focuses on the website and Content strategy and we wanted to see how we could use my digital skills to support the website in new ways. So I Started focusing more on our social media and content creation with the goal of strengthening and amplifying our brand on new platforms We already had an Instagram account that's this guy here So the first thing we did was shift our Instagram strategy It used to feature generic travel contents and then we shifted to focus on featuring us and our travels to help Amplify brand trust and to open up opportunities for future paths of business We started a YouTube channel and then later we started a TikTok account which frankly I knew the least about so there was a big learning curve there So I want to talk a little bit about our content strategy shift because it will inform some of what I tell you later So specifically our YouTube content strategy shift So for our first year on YouTube, we really grow our channel mostly talking about our Experience moving here to Portugal and I actually two people in the audience today Vardy like said hi because they watched our videos about us moving to Portugal Which is amazing This was the main thing consuming our energy at the time and also other people's YouTube content had been really helpful to us So we wanted to contribute to that as well and you can see that our top videos are about our move to Portugal It was a really great for community building It really helped me get in the practice of putting out content even when it wasn't perfect And I really got to learning how to edit and produce better video and obviously it helped to build our channel following But after about a year, we started realizing it was time to shift focus a Lot of really great things came out of growing our YouTube channel with content about moving to Portugal But it wasn't matching our overall business goals of helping people plan honeymoons and romantic travel So we took a risk and decided to launch a completely new project Specifically for our YouTube channel, which we called the ultimate Caribbean honeymoon tour this project would follow us visiting 10 plus Caribbean islands 20 resorts and Sharing our findings on YouTube to help people plan their next great resort vacation So when we started this Caribbean project We had a foundation of content and brand recognition outside of our website on these different social media platforms, which was important Okay, now I'm gonna tell you about When we went viral so Last September like seven months ago We embarked on the first leg of our Caribbean honeymoon tour starting in Jamaica and our first week there We went on a romantic excursion that included horseback riding in the water and ziplining and hiking up a waterfall very romantic excursion All of which we were documenting for inclusion on our website and on our social media channels When we went horseback riding we learned that when horses get really deep in the water They relax a lot and I will show you what happens next Okay, I can't see it up here. So it definitely played It'll be romantic they said Okay, sorry that video is kind of gross But if you couldn't tell what was happening all of the horses pooped and we all waited right into it The tour guides made us stay in line and keep our legs in the water They were yelling at us that we couldn't move out of the way the water was up to our waist So this video captures about the third time in this short horseback ride experience that we waited right into horse poop Which explains the noise that I was making in that video So I posted this video to TikTok and Instagram where they currently have a collective 31 million views So what do you do with a viral video? So while we were waiting through the funny comments and the internet trolls We learned that there are news organizations that scour the internet for viral videos and they write articles about them So soon we learned that our video was featured on websites like MSN and Yahoo and Newsweek For each news publication that was displaying our video We reached out to the authors of each news article and asked that they insert a link to our website as a condition of playing Our video which they all agreed to do. This is what's known as a backlink So a little bit of an explainer on backlinks a backlink is when one website links to another and getting backlinks Improves your website rankings and search engines because it's basically telling the search engines Hey, this website has authority and value So the more quality backlinks your website has the higher your website can rank in search terms for Google It's particularly valuable to get really big quality websites to link to your website and because of our social media Video going viral and being featured in the news. We were able to gain backlinks from websites with very high authority So what does this do for us? This increases Google's perception of our website's authority. So our articles are more likely to show up higher than our competitors in organic search Obviously, this is how we make money showing up higher in search rankings than our competitors means more money And this is long-term value for our website, which will last much longer than our 15 minutes of fame on the internet So some takeaways from this going viral on social media sounds great But it doesn't always translate to long-term business success or money So if you do happen to go viral turning it into PR and backlinks is ideal And one note is that even though our video has more views on Instagram And we have a bigger community on Instagram all of our news coverage came from tiktok So if you're not on tiktok yet, I'd recommend it all right, so We can't all plan to go viral because if we could we'd all do it and then we'd realize that the internet is a scary place And we'd all hide so the next thing I want to share with you is how you can use video content on social media to improve your Website rankings regardless of how many views it gets on its native platforms So I talked a little bit about our YouTube channel before as part of our ultimate Caribbean honeymoon tour on YouTube We started making individual YouTube about specific resorts This was a shift from our high-performing content about Portugal But here are some reasons why I think this was the right move This is establishing ourselves as trusted honeymoon travel experts on a platform other than our own website YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google YouTube allows us to link in the description so we can link to our website and convert traffic that way and YouTube videos last much longer in the algorithm than other media platform now Here is what I actually think is the most surprising and important takeaway here is that we have seen that by embedding our YouTube videos on Correlating articles on our website our Google rankings for that blog article have improved So here's an example of one of our videos where we talked about one specific resort we went to in an article about our resort and whoop here is a Mysterious Google analytics view for this article so we chopped off most of the numbers But when you're looking at here is the orange line is the time frame from before we embedded the YouTube video in the article And the blue blue line is the time frame after So you can see that traffic to this article immediately increased after embedding a YouTube video in our article Here's another example, and this is not an exact science. It didn't happen to us every single time but overall we have seen an increase in organic search traffic to articles where we have embedded a related YouTube video and Now we have a presence in both Google search and YouTube search, and we're showing up higher in Google search We've seen a direct correlation and increase into traffic on our website after this YouTube project, which means greater earnings for us So some thoughts on which social media platforms you should use this obviously depends on your business goals And what you're trying to do for your business, but here's how we think about the different platforms YouTube so YouTube is great for search increasing brand awareness and improving website authority when your video is embedded It has the biggest long-term payoff because it is basically a search engine And so it will last for years and years and years It takes the most time to create quality content for this platform and it has the biggest learning curve So there is definitely Some painful trial and error there My recommendation is if you're just getting into YouTube content take time learning YouTube SEO thumbnail optimization because that's how people are going to choose to click on your video over someone else's and Make sure that you're providing real value not just pretty footage Tick-tock is where the fastest growth is and the biggest opportunity to go viral in my opinion this is where news sites are crawling for content which can lead to quality backlinks and Linking customers to an external site is clunkier on this platform They obviously want you to stay on this platform as much as possible So we are careful about what we post here versus YouTube like we don't give all of our Details and information away on tick-tock where we otherwise would on YouTube because the payoff for us from a business perspective is higher on YouTube The best way to get better on tick-tock is practice and to be a user of the platform because tick-tock has a language of its Own to understand and if you don't understand kind of the language in the lingo It can be really hard to kind of get running This is another trial and error situation In Instagram and Facebook are both good for marketing branding and fostering community and authority Most content is not long-lasting So whenever we have a business partner who wants to work with us for something and they say hey We want three Instagram stories and an Instagram post We think no you don't because this is going to be a flash in the pan moment for you And we know that our value is where the content is going to last longer So we oftentimes will move partnerships to other platform Some people have success can bring traffic manually through these platforms, but we haven't done that personally Some final thought the best thing that you can do is to get started today Yeah, okay great The best thing you can do is to get started try it out put yourself out there if you're not putting your signal out There no one can find you as you learn you may change and pivot and that's okay our biggest numbers on YouTube the biggest vanity numbers came from our Portugal content, but that wasn't serving us from a business perspective and We have found that shifting content even though it was risky on the platform ended up being a really good opportunity for us So if you do end up needing to grow and change your direction It's all a learning opportunity and that's the best you can do Ultimately social media can be a great tool for business Thank you Michelle we have time with plenty of time I think for Questions hey, yeah, I'm just wondering I'm just wondering what other strategies you implement beside social media to kind of like increase your organic Ranking and which one of them is like worked out for the most for you in which one you think you need to change Especially now with like AI and all that sort of stuff. That's a great question so I Think the best choice that I personally made was marrying an ex SEO expert who's sitting over here So our website SEO is handled by Dan and so that's his bread and butter He corporate handled SEO and so all of our tips and tricks live inside his brain And so for us it was a matter of marrying my digital marketing skills and social media in with the learning the SEO learnings that I learned from him He's been really great about being active in communities where a lot of conversation about SEO is happening so I know he's picked up tips tips and tricks from Facebook groups and colleagues and having those types of conversations, but for actual website SEO proper I would talk to an expert who was not me So What would you suggest to someone that is starting because you know it can be very overwhelming to receive all this information and Not to know what to do, you know, what would be what would be your suggestions? Yeah Yeah, I do think social media can be really overwhelming And I think it can be really hard as a business owner or someone who's trying to start their own business to Figure out where to start and I think my first tip would be to not try to do it all at once to just start with one thing and Grow that when you feel a little bit more stable on that grow to the next and grow to the next So I think it really depends on what your business goals are Me personally, you know, there have been other business ventures where Instagram was a really great opportunity for me to put My signal out there about the product and services that I was offering, especially in a specific location our content is For a North American audience, so YouTube works really well for us. It's not specific to one necessary destination so for us We know that people are searching for different Resorts and so we want to be there where they're searching. So for us YouTube was a really big Growth opportunity for us So I'm I'm happy to have a conversation afterwards and see if we can Troubleshoot what the business goals might be and maybe which social platforms to start with because I do think it can Be overwhelming to try to tap them all at once Anyone else, okay Thank you, Michelle Let's run of applause