The power of socials for brand building.

When I was working as a full-time SEO consultant, I was fixated on websites (and occasionally Google Business Profiles).

I believed every brand needed a robust website to tell their story.

That led to tracking page clicks and average position of queries in Google Search Console.

It also led to a fixation on SEO strategies, including all of the on-page, off-page, and technical essentials it takes to ensure content is indexed and understood to maximize its chances of visibility along targeted user journeys.

I still believe SEO matters, don’t get me wrong.

But a big piece of the puzzle I was missing was socials and video.

Google is showing more UGC content these days because people crave authenticity and firsthand experience.

In addition to forums, I believe a robust social presence (including video) is the gateway to get there. That means Instagram, X, LinkedIn, YouTube, and whatever else is relevant to your audience.

In another post, I declared SEO as we knew it to be dead. I also explained how I’m no longer an SEO, choosing instead to call myself a holistic marketer.

That’s because I believe the fundamentals of content marketing today should include focusing on social media strategies.

Today’s SEO is bigger than SEO, you might say.

I did a brand-focused breakdown of the SKIMS clothing company, showing how its Instagram page was a focal point of its web presence.

Also central to the SKIMS brand, however, was the personal brand of Kim Kardashian.

Let’s take a look at her branded SERP on desktop:

We can see it starts with her knowledge panel, which includes links to her socials like Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.

What fascinates me, though, is the first traditional search result, which is her Instagram page with sitelinks!

I’ve never before seen a social profile have sitelinks, as though it was a website. 🤯

Moving to the middle of the SERP, we can see related Instagram accounts in Perspectives (the news version), followed by a Facebook and X profile, and finally a carousel of her own social posts on Meta platforms:

This tells me that Kim’s personal brand is deeply enmeshed with her socials, rather than a website.

This isn’t uncommon for personal brands, as I’ve discovered when working with musicians, for example.

Lastly in the SERP, we see her Wikipedia page (which informs the about section of her knowledge panel, shown earlier) as well as a TikTok account and finally a People magazine profile:

There’s no need for a personal website in this instance, because the power of Kim’s socials act as pillars to hold up her online brand presence.

Of course, search isn’t always the way we learn about brands today, given generative AI.

If we jump to Gemini, for example, and ask, “Who is Kim Kardashian,” the principal citations aren’t socials but encyclopedias and YouTube (videos):

This might suggest that people using search engines are looking for Kim’s social profiles, yet when it comes to information that might feed into a RAG-based model, the options include third-party sites known for factual accuracy as well as video sources.

If I were advising a brand, especially for a business, I’d suggest having a website to tell us their brand story (SEO). That content would likely help feed Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI chatbots.

At the same time, pertinent socials should be built out with content production emphasized in equal measure.

These resources help feed the knowledge graphs that AI chatbots increasingly rely on for grounding, as well as satisfy different user intents across search and buyer’s journeys.

Stay tuned for this post to get built up in the coming days.

Until next time, enjoy the vibes:

Thanks for reading. Happy marketing! 🤗

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