This month’s column is very different from most of my topical social media columns and I will apologies in advance for being a bit on the technical side at times.
The reason for discussion your website’s speed has a direct link to your social media marketing. It’s like this, all the effort you do online with your social media marketing is meaningless if your website visitors come to a site that loads slowly. It’s a known fact that visitors will wait for at the most 5 seconds when visiting a site before moving on to another when doing a random search.
The other day I was with a client who is very social savvy. He's one of my students from a social media course from RACC and credits his continued knowledge from our frequent conversations. These are his nuggets of knowledge. That's what he calls them. I found it interesting that he was so observant to see that Google had changed their platform from Google+ to Get Your Business Online. Yes, they made a very good change.
One of the biggest issues I hear from business owners about being involved with social media and marketing as a whole is, “I don’t have time.” My answer is to take time to plan — which is three quarters of the work.
It’s all about planning.
This year, in an effort to help our clients focus on planning, we created a Marketing Calendar. It includes marketing ideas for a variety of focus areas: marketing with your clients or employees; marketing through social media, your website, through print and outdoor signage; and finally through networking.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short is one of those mystifying marketing pieces for business owners. In fact, one of the interesting emails I receive from clients is when they forward me an email that says, “We have noticed that your website needs help in being found when searched on Google.” They wonder if they need to do anything. I always ask them this question, “With the millions of websites online, how did they find your website?” There is usually dead silence on the other end while that question computes.
What is all this hype about Big Data and how can our businesses capitalize on Big Data?
As I was doing some research for a presentation about the trends for 2017, this was mentioned more than once. I was curious as to what it was all about.
Over the past few weeks I've been hosting workshops on Planning Your Marketing and have found the workshops very informative not only for those attending as well as myself. In an effort to extend the reach of our Aha Moments at the workshops, I've included three of the ideas discussed in hopes that you can take advantage of these in building your client base to market your business.
One of the biggest issues I hear from business owners about being involved with social media and marketing as a whole is, “I don’t have time.” My answer is to take time to plan — which is three quarters of the work.
It’s all about planning.
This year, in an effort to help our clients focus on planning, we created a Marketing Calendar. It includes marketing ideas for a variety of focus areas: marketing with your clients or employees; marketing through social media, your website, through print and outdoor signage; and finally through networking.
It’s that time again. Time to take a look at your marketing program for 2016 and create a plan for 2017. One of the things we do with our Pick Your Own Marketing Plan clients is meet with them in November or December to look at any change they may want to do for 2017. We discussed their goals and plans for growth? We review what is currently working and tweak what may not be working or needs improvement.
It’s 2020 and the importance of video content is not going away. It's favored by all the algorithms and people will stop their scroll to watch it. Now is the time to make a plan to regularly incorporate video into your social media strategy. It’s pretty easy and you can do it right from your phone.
Social Media Bios help potential customers find you. They can also be the first impression a customer will have about your brand. It’s important to make a good impression.
Two factors to keep in mind are the platform and your audience. If you are writing your bio for LinkedIn, it will be more formal and professional than if you are writing it for Facebook or Instagram. For all platforms, think about keywords that your ideal customer will be searching for when you write the bio. Someone should read your bio and have a clear understanding of what you will do for them.
It’s that time of year again. Are you ready? You might be thinking it’s too early, but it’s not. This is the time to be building your audience and making plans for the upcoming season. It’s important to grow your audience as much as you can before Thanksgiving. Or before; the entire week of Thanksgiving has become a sales week.
The best way to create engagement on social medial is to be consistent. As a business owner, that can be a tall order. You can make it easier on yourself if you have a process. If you sit down and plan for the next few weeks or months, then you can batch schedule your social media.
Even local businesses can reap the benefits of maintaining a social media presence. If you haven’t, now’s the time. Here are a few facts: 78% of the US population has a social media profile and 97% percent of consumers aged 18 to 34 read online reviews. Just to bring this local, there is a Facebook group, called 422 Families, where people regularly ask for recommendations about local businesses. That group has over 7,700 members.
Video is becoming an essential part of social media content. It's favored by all the algorithms and people will stop their scroll to watch it. That’s why businesses should try to use video when they can. The great thing about video is that you can do it right from your phone.
Here are some helpful ideas for using video as social media content.
Facebook has signaled that their algorithm is changing again. If you’ve been thinking about starting a Facebook group, now might be the time to do it. Facebook is favoring more personal engagement, so your page might not reach as many people as it has in the past. Here are some things to consider about creating a group.
Give people an incentive for joining your group. You could offer early bird discounts to the members or previews for new products. Then once they are in, give them more information about your products and services.
Recently, I watched a video on YouTube on a subject of interest to me and after watching the video, decided to click on the “infamous link” below the video. Part of the reason for clicking on it was to experience the engagement funnel with this individual, as well as see how long she would send emails to me about it. Well, it is two weeks later, and I am still getting emails from her daily. They have taken different directions along the way.
Have you thought about Instagram for lead generation? If you haven’t, I have some hacks to generate leads from your existing followers. As you grow your business account you can use these strategies going forward.
Your profile should have the following:
• A picture that reflects your brand.
• Your bio should be concise and clear about what you offer people.
• A link in the bio — your website or a link to a newsletter signup.
Should I be using hashtags? That’s a question I hear a lot. The answer depends on the platform that you are using. Hashtags are used to index keywords for search results. They are more prevalent on some social media platforms than others.
