Tag: business

Not all SEO is good SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is one of the key elements of any good online marketing strategy to give your business a competitive edge and attract new customers. Keeping your website in top shape is the key to earning Google’s respect and achieving a Page 1 ranking.

Performing SEO involves using a number of tactics to help your website rank for specific keywords in the natural search results. Most search engine users will only click on the first page of results, with the #1 ranked page or site receiving about 35% of clicks, #2 17% and #3 8% with the rest receiving around 1% and lower.

Search engine optimisation is not about typing in your business name and seeing it in results, the proof of success is in seeing your business rank well for the products and services you offer.

The recipe for a successful SEO campaign involves four ingredients: Keywords, Traffic, Competition, and Relevance.

Keywords

SEO providers can get your page a top ranking, but you want to make sure that it’s for the right keywords. There’s no point achieving a high ranking for keywords that your customers aren’t using, so this is something you’ll need to discuss with your provider. A good SEO provider will get to know your business and research the best keywords to give you long lasting and quality results.

Traffic

Investing in good SEO practices will help drive traffic and build your brand. Strong keyword selection is very important as it can determine how much traffic will be driven to your site. Sharing on social media is also becoming increasingly important for website referrals and brand exposure. Google + is especially useful as content is indexed efficiently and appears in search results for a long time.

Competition

Something to remember is that other businesses are competing for the same keywords as you. SEO providers will measure how difficult it will be to rank for a particular keyword and can estimate how long it will take to achieve a good ranking for that keyword. Page 1 rankings don’t happen overnight; it can take several months to achieve a high ranking for a competitive keyword.

Relevance

Make it easy for your potential customers to find exactly what they need. Very specific keywords are more likely to lead to conversions as they are more valuable to the person searching for them. The example used in our video is that, if you make gluten free cupcakes, you’ll want to focus on that instead of a generic term like ‘cupcakes’ which will have a lot of competition. Choosing relevant keywords is more important than choosing high traffic keywords.

SEO is never done. Google constantly changes and updates its algorithms and you will need to keep up. It is important to have fresh content to get noticed by the search engines, as an old page which hasn’t been updated in a long time is going to be deemed less relevant and up to date for search users. A basic way of producing fresh content is through blogging on relevant topics and sharing content through social media.

Think of SEO as fuel for a boat engine – your boat needs fuel to get up the river and without it, it will drift slowly backwards. When you put fuel back into the boat, you’ll be starting again to get back to where you were. Search engine optimisation is a long term investment that reaps long term rewards, and shouldn’t be left out of your online marketing strategy if you want to succeed.

If you have any questions about SEO, give us a call or send us an email. We’d love to help you out.

The Social Media Principles

Keeping up to date with all latest news and inner workings of social media is a part of my job that I really enjoy. I love learning new things and discovering how and why people interact with social media content, what works and what practices will get the best results.

I was reading about Jonah Berger’s new book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, which highlights six principles that make people share content, ideas or talk about products. Understanding why people share things is very important to social media marketers and businesses so they can make the most of their social media efforts and avoid wasting time. These ideas come back to a necessity that we have pointed out in previous blog posts, which is, use the right bait for the right fish. That is, know your audience and use the right message to reach that audience.

Keeping Berger’s six identified principles in mind when creating content or campaigns for social media will certainly help in the success of those endeavors. Obviously, most things you post will not become a viral success like Psy’s Gangnam Style, but can still be shared and interacted with by many.

Watch our latest video to learn more about these six principles and how you can apply them.

Why you NEED to understand Edge Rank

As Facebook is the ‘go-to’ social network for many businesses, it is important to understand how the site works so that you can get the most out of it.

Understanding EdgeRank

Facebook’s News Feed is organised by an algorithm that determines which stories will show up in your newsfeed. To ensure the newsfeed is not completely overwhelming for users (imagine seeing every one of your friends’ activities in your newsfeed!) Facebook uses the algorithm to determine which stories will be of most interest to you and cuts out what it perceives to be junk.

Why should I care?

Because your fans won’t see your updates if they aren’t engaging and interesting! Facebook ranks stories by their score, which is determined in three parts:

Weight
Affinity
Time Decay

A story (or, edge) is given Weight with comments, shares and likes. Generally comments and shares are worth more than likes. Certain content, such as photos and videos can hold more weight and thus be more visible in the newsfeed, but it depends on the type of interaction the story receives. A text post with lots of comments and likes will rank higher than a video with no comments. The lesson here is to try and make each post engaging so it can show up in your fans’ newsfeeds and spread virally to the fan’s friends’ newsfeeds.

Affinity is a one-way relationship between users which rates how ‘connected’ you are. If you post on a friend’s wall and have lots of mutual friends, etc. Facebook will assume you want to see more of that person’s posts. As it’s a one-way score, that person won’t necessarily see all your posts unless they frequently interact with you also. It is important to note that affinity scores can wane due to inactivity, so keep your fans coming back to your page!

Time Decay is pretty self-explanatory. As a story gets older, it’s score drops because it’s less relevant than something posted two minutes ago. EdgeRank is a running score and your post in competing against all the other updates for that moment in time.

As you can see, it is important to understand how Facebook’s News Feed works to make the most of your social media activity and avoid wasting time. As this can be tricky to grasp or keep up with Facebook’s constant changes, please give us a call if you need any help. You have the option to outsource your social media management or receive consultation to get you on the right track.

5 types of social media strategy you need to be using.

One of the most common questions that business owners have when it comes to social media, is,

“How do I make money from it?”

You can increase your sales and grow your business using social media, but it won’t happen overnight. Building a loyal customer base takes time, and you will need to use social media to grow and nurture your community of current and potential customers.

As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, you need to start by knowing what it is you want to achieve from using social media. If sales are your primary focus, you need to remember to keep your online communication broad and forget the hard sell.

Increasing sales from your social media efforts should be approached in a similar way to how you would attempt to increase sales offline; with superior customer service, occasional discounts and special offers, product demonstration and information and brand development. Think about what sells in-store and apply it to your online activities – happy and rewarded customers are more likely to be loyal and repeat customers.

When creating social media networks, keep in mind what elements of your business you want to build, what weaknesses you can strengthen and what strengths you can promote.

Below are five types of social media strategy you should be using. It’s up to you to decided whether you focus on one strategy, combine a few or go for the whole hog!

Brand maintenance – monitor mentions of your brand, respond to comments, queries and complaints. Post updates.
Community building – build relationships with internal advocates, and external brand ambassadors or groups of similar interest. Join groups to share your business and exchange advice. Nurture your community, be engaging and social.
Influencer outreach – identify and engage influential people around your passion points or industry. Consider collaborating with like-minded people.
Reputation management and development – repair a damaged reputation, develop thought leadership. Add recommendations and positive testimonials.
The big splash – big creative campaigns, which garner a lot of short-term attention, such as competitions, discounts and offers. These campaigns don’t have to cost much, and are great for brand exposure and tapping in to the best part of social media: virality.

Think about your calendar of events, upcoming products, etc. as to how you can combine these strategies to promote your business.

Remember; don’t get discouraged when results aren’t happening quickly. Most people dedicate about 20% of their Facebook use to interacting with brands to learn about products, offers and discounts. Be social, be engaging and find creative ways to keep your fans interested (not just on Facebook).

The 5 Key Principles to a Successful Social Media Strategy

Like with any business, there are 5 key principles that will set you apart from your competition if you want to be successful with your social media. The game may have changed but the rules are still the same.
Identify – It is important to understand that before you even begin, you need to know who your target market is. Now this is not just the basics of age, sex, location, income etc but more about what makes your target market tick. What are the characteristics of target market, how to they behave, what will make them take action? Ultimately the point of your social media is to engage and to do that you have to know how to speak the right language and to do that you need to know in depth knowledge about your customer base. Otherwise your messages are going to fall short or miss the mark all together. Even though you may have identified that women between the ages of 25-54 with an average income of $65,000 pa are your market, your communication may not connect with them and all your efforts will be largely lost.

Locate – Next is to be able to locate this target market online, what social media channels best suit them. Just because Facebook is the largest, it doesn’t necessarily make it the most effective. With so much communication Facebook is great losing its cut through to the end user for businesses trying to get their message heard. So on top of having the right message you also now need to think about if it is even being heard. Torrents of messages from friends, businesses and others are constantly streaming to people walls and in boxes and without investment in advertising Facebook is becoming increasingly difficult to get any ROI. So perhaps Pinterest or YouTube may be better or, dare I say it, a good old fashioned email. Yes email is a social network albeit very sterile, it is a form of communication that can be shared and forwarded. Many believe that mail is making resurgence due to its cut through to the end user, allowing them to make a decision and not be confused with other social media messages.

Infiltrate – Once you located and defined your target market you can then start to infiltrate them through engaging and informative content that leaves them with the subtle feeling that “this business understands me and my needs”. This infiltration process is what breaks down the walls of distrust and opens the doors of trust. To become a knowledge base in your industry will encourage users to stop and listen to what you have to say, to comment, to share and to interact and that is what makes social media so important. I am more likely to use the services of a referral from someone I trust.

Educate – The process of engaging with your target market is the process of education. Why should I believe you? Why should I use your services and not someone else’s? Why should I trust you? How do I know you know what you are doing and what my needs are? Social media allows you to do this by not only allowing you to deliver your message to people who want to listen but also by the sharing of your content with other who may want or need your products or services.

Convert – Finally once all the previous steps are in place your target market are in the prime place for you to convert them. Your message is clear, you are contacting them in the right place and they are in need of the product or services you offer and you are someone who they can trust that knows what they are doing. All these pieces now fit together and the conversion process becomes relatively simple as they have been given the opportunity to engage with you without being sold to. This is fundamentally what is so attractive about social media as a form of business.
Now all this doesn’t happen overnight. Too many people believe that social media is an event when in fact it is a journey. If you expect to see the results straight away then you don’t understand how to be sociable and you probably lack social skills yourself. An analogy I like to use when I describe this is as follows. When you go to a networking event or a party you are not likely to know anyone and in some cases you may not know anyone at all. Let’s assume you know no one, you don’t go in there and suddenly expect to magically know everyone, you have to take your time to walk the room and introduce yourself, you tell people about yourself and you find out about them. Some people will like you and some won’t, some will remember you and some won’t but it didn’t happen by clicking your fingers and neither does it happen by clicking your mouse button. In fact you will likely have to attend to multiple events and parties before people remember you depending on how well you engaged with them.
So remember the 5 principles of Social Media are just like meeting people in real life, you need people to warm to you and build relationships with them before you can expect them to want to know more about you and to use your services.