For today’s consumers, competition is a good thing, keeping the providers of the products and services we love on their toes, knowing that if they don’t meet customer needs there will be a rival waiting to step in!

However – cue dramatic music – in the big, wide world of the internet, one company has a monopoly when it comes to the billions of searches that take place every day, and that dominance has remained unchallenged since the days of dial up internet. 

Until now, that is!

Google isn’t vacating its throne any time soon, but a new way of conducting internet searches has risen, and Search-First Social Media® is here to stay. 

Understanding Social SEO

To really grasp the rise of Search-First Social Media, or Social SEO, you need to understand how and why social media habits have changed in recent years. 

Facebook and Twitter remain hugely popular, and they perform their particular functions exceptionally well. However, the meteoric rise in popularity of video-based platforms such as TikTok has scratched an itch that many social media aficionados didn’t even know they had.

Authentic and compelling short-form video content, made by real people, has added a new dimension to the social media experience, educating and entertaining in a way that was rarely seen before. 

Spearheaded by Gen Z’ers and Millennials (who else?), Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have been the main beneficiaries of a rise in appetite for video content on social media. The fact that all three platforms also allow you to actively search for videos has opened up the opportunity for people to use them as a search engine.

And why not? Instead of looking up something on Google and having to scroll through pages of text with limited information, you can just type what you seek into TikTok and be able to find authentic information and reviews from a whole host of different content creators.

Sceptical? We don’t blame you. However, just try it for yourself and we promise you will be pleasantly surprised at the power of Search-First Social Media.

And speaking of power, Social SEO, which is the process of optimising your social media profile and posts to make them more visible to users performing social media searches, is a mighty way of harnessing the might of social media.

Key Elements of Social SEO

So, you’re interested in leveraging Social SEO to increase the visibility of your brand or business. That probably means you’re interested in how it works in practice, right?

At Social Chameleon, when it comes to social media, we follow many of the same principles that we apply to traditional search engine optimisation. Keywords are still invaluable, particularly when it comes to the captions that accompany videos, with the added bonus of being able to use hashtags to tap into popular searches on your preferred platform.

Creating relevant, high quality content, always with your core audience in mind, is as important as it ever was, as is crafting accessible posts, where text is left-aligned, and free from bold, underlined, and italic typefaces, for example.

The Power of Subcultures

Understanding the different quirks of your chosen platform is also crucial to Social SEO, and let’s take the world of TikTok subcultures as an example. PR 101 dictates that if you’re a beauty product, then ensuring you reach the #BeautyTok brigade is paramount. 

However, the world of TikTok subcultures is so vast, if you can think outside the box, targeting a niche audience that may not have already sprung to mind over a coffee and digestive in the breakout area, could lead to a huge number of fresh eyes checking out the story you want to tell.

And lest we forget the ever-increasing power of Influencers and Content Creators, who each play different, but important roles on social media platforms. 

Leveraging the power of a ready-made audience that has been carefully cultivated, and more importantly, is looking for “real” content, will not only boost your own authenticity as a brand or business, but allow you to take your creativity to another level.

Tools to Enhance Social SEO

At The Social Chameleon, we’re experts in SEO, of the traditional and the social variety. However, part of our expertise is realising that there are external tools that can help with Social SEO, and knowing which are the best ones to utilise.

One of our favourites is SEMRush, a company which was started over 15 years ago by a couple of SEO enthusiasts not dissimilar to ourselves.

The SEMRush platform offers keyword research, backlink tracking, and as of 2022, a nifty beta tool for content generation, that suggests the best way to ensure effective SEO through written content.

Social media platforms are also getting in on the act, with TikTok, in particular, realising that their increasing popularity as a search engine was an opportunity that could be capitalised on. 

And capitalise on it they did, as in early 2024 TikTok launched its own Creator Search Insights feature, which gives insights into the topics that are being searched for, so that Content Creators can tailor their posts accordingly. 

The Benefits of Social SEO

One of the biggest benefits of Search-First Social Media is that it has unlocked the door for digital marketers to utilise social media as a sales tool. 

Social SEO has provided another option to reach people, beyond the use of standard adverts, which many of us find intrusive, with younger users in particular, proven to prefer authentic content that comes up as a result of organic searches that they instigate. 

Another huge plus is that Social SEO can increase the shelflife of content beyond an initial flurry of views when it is first posted, as you can give yourself the best opportunity of your videos being viewed again and again.

Lastly, one of the best ways to evaluate the effectiveness of any digital marketing strategy is by providing tangible results, which is possible with standard SEO, but there is far more information available when you can track key metrics across social media. 

Social media metrics can provide a whole host of invaluable insights, including follower growth, increases in likes and shares, changes in brand sentiment, click rates, and even the profiles of who is checking out your content.

The Future of Social SEO

We knew that Search-First Social Media was here to stay when Google started to incorporate images and videos into some of its search results, while at the same time launching the Tik-Tok-esque YouTube Shorts. 

If the big boys are taking notice then you know you’re doing something right, and we expect that influence to continue in the future, with TikTok’s Creator Insights, in particular, becoming a benchmark for a new age of insights and analytics. 

Social SEO has been proven to be an effective way of increasing your social media profile in an authentic way, and the billions of people frequenting Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube on a regular basis aren’t going to lose their appetite for video content anytime soon!

The range of Social SEO insights available to digital marketers, from third party software developers and social platforms themselves, is also set to grow. Of course, AI is sure to play a pivotal role, both from a data analysis perspective and as a force behind the increasingly sophisticated social media algorithms that help to facilitate Social SEO in the first place. 

Implementing effective Search-First Social Media techniques will be key, and who better to help you through than the people who coined the phrase in the first place? We are experts in every element of social media marketing, with a particular expertise in Social SEO.

So, if you’d like to know more, we’d love to bring you up to speed!