Too many web businesses silo off SEO and Social Media separately, sometimes SEO comes under marketing and Social Media ends up with customer services or content: they are inextricably interlinked though and your use of Social network websites is essential to your SEO, as is making your website a social hub.
Twitter, Facebook and other Social Network websites including social bookmaking sites, may have no follow links telling Google to ignore them but Google don’t and actually look at and use Social Network links in many more ways than normal web links.
Google will look at a social network website like Twitter or Facebook and not just find links but look at who has put up these links: how many likes, friends or followers that person has affects how valuable the link is as does how often they add links. This means you should be using social networks not just to link from your account to your site but to reach out to other users to get them to retweet and share your posts.
Google have ways of analyzing almost anything now it seems and how many people like you, follow you and even more importantly retweet you affects your search rankings, even when they don’t include a link as Google have almost certainly traced your account or accounts and associated them with your website. If people on a social network website respect your opinion then Google want to share your website with more people so their results are more relevant.
Of course social media sites aren’t just about SEO and there is no reason why you can’t achieve different benefits at the same time. Social Networks are communication tools but in the same way you could use your phone to cold call potential customers or use it to offer customer service to an existing customer social networks can be used in different ways too.
Awareness is definitely a good way to use any social network from Facebook to Linkedin, though the best choice will depend on who your potential customers are. Once setup with your account the best way to get started is to communicate and find existing customers, then get them to share your posts, news and offers with their friends and though at first things may grow slowly things can start to snowball: once you have followers of course you need to communicate with them and give them news and updates as well as making them aware of what you offer and of your brand values to encourage sales.
Customer Service is a useful part of social media usage too, many people don’t want to communicate by phone or even e-mail, they find a social network website much easier and are more likely to use it for giving feedback they wouldn’t have bothered to send via phone or e-mail: this feedback can often be positive but even if negative dealing with the problem professionally for everyone to see can still become a positive.