This Week On Twitter: Social Media Boosts SEO Ranking, How Journalists (And Burglars) Use Twitter

Need a little weekend reading? We’ve compiled our top ten Twitter stories of the week, which includes a look at how important social media has become to SEO, news that 59 percent of journalists worldwide now use Twitter, how burglars are using social media, how social media increases productivity and how to get your fix of Twitter, Facebook and more in just 60 minutes a day.

Here are our top 10 Twitter stories of the week.

1. Facebook, Twitter Hugely Important In SEO Ranking, Reveals Study [INFOGRAPHIC]

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is all about the quality of your backlinks, right? Wrong. Not any more. At least, not wholly, as anupdated study from those good people at Searchmetrics has revealed just how important social media signals are to a strong SEO ranking, with well-positioned URLs almost always having a high number of Likes, shares, tweets and +1s.

2. 59% Of Journalists Worldwide Use Twitter, Up From 47% In 2012 [STUDY]

In a study titled “The New Normal for News,”Oriella PR Network surveyed more than 500 journalists spanning 14 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US). The main finding? Digital media is more entrenched than ever before.

3. How Burglars Are Using Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]

With the rise of social media, burglars have easier access to specific information regarding homeowners than ever before. More than 75% of burglars reportedly use Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare to target potential properties. But that doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself.

4. Social Media Increases Office Productivity, But Management Still Resistant, Says Study [INFOGRAPHIC]

46 percent of workers say that their productivity has greatly or somewhat increased because of social media use in the office, and more than one-third (37 percent) say that they could do their job better if their organisation’s management was more on-board in the use of social tools in the workplace. Social media means business: big business. So why are so many big businesses still seeing it as the enemy? Ipsos and Microsoft surveyed almost ten thousand information workers across 32 countries and discovered that 34 percent of respondents believed that their management underestimates the benefit of social media in the workplace, even though two in five employees believe social tools encourage more collaboration and 31 percent say that they would be willing to spend their own money on a tool if it made them more efficient at their job.

5. How To Get Your Social Media Fix In Just 60 Minutes A Day [INFOGRAPHIC]

How much time do you spend using social media? If you’re anything like what’s increasingly becoming any other normal person, the answer to this question is two-fold: one, you’re using it a lot, and two, the time you’re spending on these channels is getting bigger all the time. And if you’re using platforms such as Twitter and Facebook for business, as well as personal, you’re probably almost always using social media. So… how do you find the balance?

6. How 5 Top Brands Are Using Twitter To Drive Sales [INFOGRAPHIC]

How are brands using Twitter to drive sales? Etsy proactively boosted traffic by encouraging all of their sellers to connect their shops to Twitter by adding the Tweet and Follow buttons to their stores. Bonobos used an exclusive Twitter sale that pushed followers to “flock to unlock” by sharing an offer, which was released after a certain number of retweets. And Paramount Pictures used a Promoted Trend to alert Twitter users of a sneak preview of the film Super 8, followed by a second Promoted Trend to keep the conversation going.