Why Social Networking Helps Performer Leads

I imagine one of the questions that must be on performers minds is – why is GigMasters focusing so much energy on MySpace, Twitter & blogs when what they should really be focusing on is getting us performer more leads? It’s a fair question

The short answer is that our efforts in the social networking space do help drive more leads to performers, but in an indirect way. Let me try to explain.

One of the reasons GigMasters has been so successful in delivering leads to performers has been our ability to rank highly on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. So, for example, when someone types ‘big band boston’ or ‘mariachi band texas’ into Google, our performers come up near the top, if not first.

In the "old days" (and when I say "old days" I’m not talking the 1800's, I'm talking 1998), ranking highly in the search engines was a matter of having:

• highly optimized page titles and H1 tags;
• search engine friendly pages;
• lots of websites linking back to you

The more things change, the more they stay the same. In other words, these basic rules still apply today. That last bullet point ‘having lots of websites linking back to you’ is where the social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace really come into play. These sites are fertile ground for backlinks. In other words, if I post a message on Twitter and in that message there is a link back to GigMasters, then that backlink is going to help GigMasters rank higher in Google. If one of my facebook ‘friends’ posts a link on their facebook page back to GigMasters, that’s yet another backlink. The more backlinks the better.

Why? Because the search engines go by a basic principle: if site A links to site B, it’s a vote of confidence for site B. The more votes of confidence site B gets, the higher it comes up in search. Consider GigMasters "site B" and consider the social networking sites "site A"

Let me clarify though - that is BY NO MEANS the only reason why we’re involved in social networking. It’s also a great way for us to have an open dialogue with our customers in a more informal way. With Twitter, we can give daily updates to our customers in a way that we never could before. With MySpace, we can show performers our fun side. With our blog, we can post useful tips to party planners and maybe draw some new customers to the site.

But from a search engine optimization point of view, its all about the backlinks. The more backlinks, the higher our performer listings rank in Google, and the more leads performers will get.

So I want to personally assure performer that we are firmly committed to use every tool at our disposal to generate more leads for performers. And social networking is a big way to do so.

NOTE: One thing I do want to clarify is that GigMasters is firmly committed to playing by the rules with the search engines. We won’t employ techniques that risk getting us banned. What do I mean by this? Well, some sites try and create the illusion that there are lots of sites linking back to them by registering a large quantity of domain names and pointing those URLs back to their main site. This practice is known as 'Content Rich Doorways'. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doorway_page). While companies might get away with this for a while, it can eventually catch up to them if the search engines gets wind of it. I’m pretty certain one of the reason a competitor of ours was banned from Yahoo a few years back had to do with their questionable SEO tactics such as creating doorways. Be very leery of any site that employs these tactics!