In the last blog we hinted about inbound marketing as a marketing strategy that could be applied to social media and search engine optimisation (SEO). This is about drawing people in so that they find your business when looking for a particular product or service (that you offer). This differs from more traditional marketing, which uses newspaper or magazine advertising or flyers to catch the attention of potential customers. This form of marketing works by interrupting someone from the primary purpose of what they are doing to draw attention to the product or service being advertised. It can be argued that this is quite a hit and miss approach unless you are deliberating targeting your customer base, for example in specific magazines. It can also be quite an expensive form of marketing.

Every day there are likely to be people looking for the product or service that you offer. This more so on the web with search engines making it easier for people to find what they are looking for. You can take advantage of this by making it easier for people to find your website when they are undertaking relevant internet searches. Here’s where SEO can help. You can optimise your website for search engines, particularly Google, which is the number one search engine, for particular keywords and when applicable by locations. This can work for every page of your site not just the home page. This increases the chance of your website appearing in applicable searches over time.

Social media can play a big part here too, as you can build your audience on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. These platforms can then be used to drive people to pages on your website specific to particular products or services. To help further this process, and to distinguish yourself from your competitors, you can also use social media to promote yourself as an industry expert.

This is an approach we take ourselves, for example by writing blogs like this one and promoting top tips on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Providing free information that shows your customer base how they could best utilise the product or service that you offer demonstrates your knowledge in your field and helps build trust. Because of this, those looking to buy are more likely to buy from you than from a competitor. (Remember not everyone will buy from you and you probably couldn’t handle the demand if they did!) It also leads to referrals as the network of connections you build through social media are also likely to know others requiring the product or service you offer. Our intro social media training services benefit from this approach. Our connections are usually up and running on social media but we receive referrals through them for other people who need help in this media.

Blogs help with SEO too. They give you an excuse to produce regular fresh content about the products or services that you provide for Google and other search engines to pick up on. Search engines like this as it shows you are being active, which distinguishes you from inactive or less active sites. This pushes you up search engine rankings.

You can use online advertising (such as Google Ads) as part of your inbound marketing approach. Within the ad configuration you can mention keywords for your products and services and specify a location (when applicable). You can go even further with Facebook Ads by also targeting particular interests, job roles, age groups, gender etc to further narrow down the market you want to reach. This will all help to draw in your customer base to your business on a much more regular basis.

We hope you find this useful. For more top tips on SEO and how to use social media for business follow me on Twitter profile: @qChrisWood.

Thanks

Chris

Q Social Media

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Social Media can play an integral part in getting more people to visit your website. This in turn will help to meet the business objective of the site, such as generating more enquiries or raising public awareness of a cause or issue. SEO is about optimising your website in the eyes of search engines, particularly Google (which in the UK owns approx. 90% of the search engine market). This will ensure your site appears higher up the listings in search engine results.

When you first have your website built, unless you have specified up front, it is not likely to be optimised for search engines. Optimising your website usually requires extra time and resource from your website developer and therefore extra cost. However, it is worth considering if you want your website to be found by Google. After all there are millions of websites, so you need to help Google choose to list yours when it searches for specific keywords.

Before you optimise your site, it is important to understand the keywords for your industry that your customers are likely to use. You should also consider the location you are targeting – whether it’s local, the whole of the UK or the international market – and what you are trying to achieve with each page. Each sub-page on your website can be optimised for search engines so that they deliver that particular page to specific keyword searches. This way you are narrowing the competition down to those pages related to that keyword search, increasing your chances over time of it appearing in Google search results (ideally on page one or two).

However, an optimised website still doesn’t guarantee your place at the top of search engine results. You need lots of hits on the site too. Here’s where social media can help. You can grow your following to your customer base on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Then drive hits on a regular basis from these platforms to your home page and sub-pages of your website. Use industry keywords in the message that relate to the page link being mentioned. Google can pick up on this which will help to supercharge your page for related keyword searches.

We’ve benefited from this approach ourselves recently. Our website sub-page about a social media training seminar in Weston Super Mare is now top spot on page one of Google. This has happened within six months. We also have the second spot thanks to our monthly newsletter. Because of this we’ve started receiving enquiries via our website about training in that location.

NB The listings above our results are paid-for adverts known as Google Ads. The results below the Google Ads are known as organic search results, which is what you are trying to achieve in the mid to long term with SEO.

Earlier this year we added details of a new Bournemouth seminar (that we first ran in March) to the same web page. At the moment this appears on page three of search results for “social media training Bournemouth”. We are hoping that by the time we finish promoting the next seminar (which is in June) it will be on page one of the search results. This will be ideal for when we want to promote another Bournemouth seminar later in the year.

We run courses in specific locations, so we target specific location based search results rather than competing across the whole of the UK. If you searched just “social media training” Q Social Media doesn’t appear at all within the first few pages of results. But as the Weston Super Mare example shows, we show up much higher in the rankings in the places where we actually run courses. (The exception to this is that our Google Ads campaign is targeted on specific locations. So a generic search from someone in a particular area might mean our Google ad will appear.  This helps to provide a page one presence too but at a cost.)

If you offer services or products across the whole of the UK, you might need to allow one to two years before you are able to generate a good Google presence through organic search.

Appearing more often in search engine results should generate more hits for your website. In turn, this should lead to meeting the business objective of the site more often, such as generating more enquiries or further raising public awareness of a cause or issue. It is also possible for people to undertake searches within social media platforms.  More and more people are doing this prior to undertaking their search in Google. If you are using the same social media platforms that your customer base is using, your business profile might also appear as a result of one of these searches. Again, this can lead to more hits on the website.

The type of marketing that uses SEO and social media is known as inbound marketing. There are further strategies you can apply to enhance this, so watch out for our next blog to find out more.

We hope you find this useful. For more top tips on SEO and how to use social media for business follow me on Twitter profile: @qChrisWood.

Thanks

Chris

Q Social Media

P.S. Want to know more? Based in Somerset or nearby? We are running a seminar on SEO and how social media play its part at the Taunton Business Network on 23^rd May. We run this seminar with Mark Evans-Martin from SEO 736, who we often partner with on joint online marketing projects.

Mark also runs the SEO courses at the AME Solutions Training Centre in Exeter and London – these complement the social media workshops we also run for this training centre.

Our last blog took a look at how social media and Google tools should be incorporated into the marketing mix. This time we are looking at how they can be used to enhance your sales activity.

Reach the right person

Sometimes it can be difficult to find and contact the person in an organisation most relevant to you. LinkedIn can help you reach the right people. For example, connections can potentially introduce you to people you would like to speak to. These might be second degree connections in LinkedIn. Alternatively they might be people who are not using LinkedIn but who work in the same organisation as someone you would like to contact. Your connection may be happy to pass on your contact details to their colleague. They may pass on a recommendation too – personal recommendations are always more powerful.

Research your prospects

LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook can all be great sources of information for finding out more about potential customers before a sales call/meeting. You can find out about both a company and also the individuals you want to meet. This preparation will help you to tailor your offer for your potential client. It could also help you to build better a better rapport with them too.

Demonstrate how good other people think you are

LinkedIn in particular makes collecting recommendations from people you have worked with in the past a relatively easy process. These can be copied onto a testimonial page on a website and used in a sales proposal, email or letter. These will have even greater impact if they are from people your prospects know. LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook may help you identify relevant contacts for this.

Make sure your potential customers can easily find out about you too

Make sure that when customers Google you, your details appear on page one of the search engine. Ideally your website testimonial page and LinkedIn profile would appear. This will allow your potential customers to familiarise themselves with you and your offering, so they are more comfortable about meeting you.

Follow up once you have met someone

LinkedIn provides a great tool for following up with people you meet networking. It also provides an alternative channel to email for follow-up after a meeting or sales call. You can use this follow-up as an opportunity to refer people to relevant pages on your website or to remind them about your testimonials.

Sell your products online

There are a number of different ways to sell your products online. For example, upload them to Google Merchant Center and allow people to buy them via the Google shopping page. Sell products and services in Facebook Shop. Alternatively, you can use Google, Facebook and LinkedIn Ads to drive people to the pages on your website where you sell products, services or event places. Soon you will be able to use Twitter ads for small businesses for this purpose too.

Stay in touch with your customers

It is always easier to retain customers than to acquire new ones. Keep track of what your customers are up to on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. This will help you to make sure that your services continue to be relevant to their needs. It may also provide you with more opportunities to contact them regularly, for example in response to posts. This will help keep you at the forefront of their mind and help you to provide great ongoing account management.

We hope you find this useful. For more top tips on how to use social media and the Google marketing tools for business follow me on Twitter profile: @qChrisWood.

Thanks

Chris

Q Social Media

When planning your marketing strategy, think about combining online marketing activities with more traditional offline activities.  Online tools such as social media and the Google tools should form part of the overall marketing mix. Many marketing gurus say you should have six to ten marketing channels to keep generating leads and to avoid being over reliant on a single form of marketing. Online channels offer many extra opportunities for engagement with your audience.

Online activities ought to complement offline marketing activities, not replace them (a common mistake). This will maximise campaigns as you run them throughout the year, re-enforcing messages both online and offline. This will help to build brand recognition too (more on how to track this here).

For example, you may decide that a key strand of your marketing strategy will be to establish yourself as an industry expert on a particular topic. This will help to build trust and, in the long term, customer loyalty and a steady stream of referrals. You can do this using both online and offline activities. Offline, you may choose to demonstrate your expertise by speaking at events, organising seminars and writing articles in relevant publications. You may share nuggets of useful information with people you meet networking. Traditional tools such as direct mail, PR and telesales may be used to encourage people to attend your events.

Online, there are even more opportunities. You could promote your event using LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and or even using Google Ads. (Google owns approx. 90% of the search engine market, so it is important to consider Google in your online marketing strategy and to ensure your website is Google search engine friendly.) You could also use email to generate interest.

You could use social media to share your expertise with your customer base on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (ensuring you focus on the platforms where your customers are most likely to be). Over half the UK population now use at least one form of social media. In fact it is ranked the fourth most popular activity on the internet (above emailing)! For example, LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to pose and answer questions in industry related groups. Blogs (like this one) and video content can provide the means to share more detailed information. People viewing this content may then share it via their own social media channels, which will help build an online referral network.

You can also simply post useful content on your website and once again use Google Ads to drive people there. Social media can also help raise your ranking within Google by driving constant traffic to your website. Offline activities such as direct mail can be used to send people to your website to find out more and contact you. You can track hits to the website using Google Analytics, which will also help you interpret the effectiveness of your online marketing activities.

The potential combinations and uses of online and offline marketing are huge. Of course you need all your activities to be targeted, consistent and cost-effective. But don’t limit yourself to just doing things the way you always have. Online provides great opportunities to enhance the great work you are already doing offline.

We hope you find this info useful and if you are interested in hearing more on how to use social media to promote your business online come to one of our events. For more top social media info follow us on Twitter at @qchriswood.

Thanks

Chris

Q Social Media Ltd

We’ve just launched our new ebook Unlock the True Value of Social Networking: How to Grow Your business with LinkedIn. To celebrate, we thought we’d share six steps on how to go beyond just collecting connections on LinkedIn:

1. Complete Your Personal Profile – LinkedIn is all about the individual on behalf of the business. Ensure your profile has a photo. This helps others recognise you when they want to connect with you, especially if you have a common name. It also looks more professional. Update the summary and specialities using industry keywords. This will help your profile appear in keyword searches undertaken by LinkedIn members and in Google too. Mention your website (and up to two others) in your profile. This is one of at least seven ways to build referral links in LinkedIn for Google to pick up on.
2. Create a Company Profile – although the focus of LinkedIn is the individual on behalf of the business, you can also have a company profile. This tends to appear in search results when LinkedIn members undertake Company searches. You can add the company logo to this profile. When updating the description and specialities again use industry keywords so the profile appears in LinkedIn search results and also in Google search results. Mentioning your website here builds a second referral link for Google to pick up on.
3. Post Status Updates – you can post status updates to both profiles and mention your website in them too. Perhaps mention website sub pages to help build referral links for them in Google too. We suggest you control the message you post to your profiles, particularly on your personal profile. Many people on Twitter have their tweets auto update their LinkedIn status. The problem is that if they are mid-conversation on Twitter, their update on LinkedIn will make no sense. The personal profile tends to get seen most when it appears in search results or when someone you have met offline is looking you up online. So really you want a message that makes sense on your profile and something relevant to that week.
4. Get recommendations – LinkedIn makes it easy to request recommendations from those connections you have done work for. Some people will be checking you out online once they have met you offline. A recommendation from a trusted source can be a powerful endorsement.  One of our key clients came through this route as they knew one of the people who gave us a recommendation. We also copy the recommendations across to the testimonials page on the Q Social Media website and to other marketing material.
5. Message Connections – through connecting with people on LinkedIn, you are effectively building a second database of contacts to message (email). If you use this channel, we advise you not to bombard your connections with lots of messages.  Make sure what you do send is targeted and of interest to your contacts.
6. Participate in Groups – this we feel is the key to getting the most out of LinkedIn and reaching out to a much wider audience online. The key to social media is sharing information and being helpful to others. Remember not everyone using social media will buy, only those looking for specific help. So make it easy for these people to find you by participating in relevant group discussions. You can even kick off new discussions yourself with useful information that others will benefit from. This will allow those looking for help to find you over time. We find that groups are a great way to introduce people to our blog site. In turn this helps to push it up Google rankings so even more people can find it!

We hope you find this useful. For more top tips on how to use LinkedIn as an online marketing and resource tool for your business we’ve introduced a new Twitter profile: @UnlockLinkedIn.

Thanks

Chris

@qChrisWood

Author of “Unlock the True Value of Social Networking: How to Grow Your Business with LinkedIn”

Using social media with the right strategy can have an impact on brand awareness. We have seen the online brand presence of Board Game Extras, a business we work with; grow considerably over the last year. As part of an in-depth analysis of their online marketing activities (see here), we saw two significant factors in Google Analytics that hinted at an increase in awareness of their brand name.

Firstly, direct hits to the website (where visitors typed in the website address or used a saved favourite to visit the site) had increased by 60% over the year. This shows more and more people were aware of the business and visiting the site directly to purchase their board games and accessories.

Secondly, there was a significant increase in hits from Google organic search results; this is where visitors have used the Google search engine to find the site. Through looking at the keywords used in the search engine, we could see that hits on the Board Games Extras’ website had more than doubled (a 139% increase). These hits had come from searches that used one of three variations on the company name. Often people will just type the name of the business into Google rather than typing the whole web address directly into the address bar. These results show that more and more people were aware of the business name and using it in Google to visit the site.

In total, website hits increased by 77% over the year. A look at the marketing activities that took place during that time shows that the most significant activity was the introduction of social media. This was introduced gradually over the year as a fifth marketing channel to further engage potential customers online.

Social media was used to promote useful information relating to the board games sold on the site. For example, top tips on how to improve gaming strategies were provided and information on how different accessories could extend the playability of games. Social media was also used to complement existing marketing activities. For example, Board Games Extras was exhibiting at a consumer show and engaged with the social media profile of the exhibitor. This meant that visitors to the exhibition could interact with the company online both before and after the event.

From the Google Analytics stats we could also see that social media was having a direct impact in terms of extra visits to the website from social media platforms. Ecommerce stats showed it was often leading to sales with a conversion rate in line, or close to, other online marketing activities. From this we know that Board Game Extras’ social media activities are definitely engaging their customer base.

It is difficult to measure the exact influence social media has had in growing Board Games Extras’ brand presence. The fact that there has been good engagement directly from social media to the website means that some followers, who now know and like the site, will have started to go there directly. They might be doing this either by typing the web address straight into their browser or by searching for it using Google, In addition, they may have helped spread the word about the website by mentioning it to some of their friends. However, from evaluating the social media activity overall, and from looking at where the business was a year ago compared to where it is now, it is safe to say that social media has played a major part in helping to grow the online brand presence of Board Games Extras.

We hope you find this info useful. For more top social media info follow us on Twitter at @qchriswood.

Thanks

Chris

Q Social Media Ltd

Here are Five More Ways to Promote a Facebook Page (this follows the previous blog posting on Five Ways to Promote a Facebook Page):

1.      Post on other Facebook Pages

Once you have switched to the Page within Facebook it is possible to post on other Pages as this business Page rather than as a personal profile. For example there are often location based Pages that you can post on (large towns, cities and counties). The Devon Page, for instance, has approx. 30,000 likes and has new visitors to it on a regular basis, where if you were to post on this Page, those visiting the Page could pick up on your post. This potentially gives your business a much wider online reach, particularly if you did this on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis.

2.      Promote via other social media platforms

When using other social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIN etc, you can use them to promote the Page link to your connections on those platforms too. In addition, if you have created an Events or Notes page on the Facebook Page, these will have their own unique Facebook links. From within these you can take a copy of the link address from the browser address bar and then post these links via other social media platforms (as well as via steps 2 & 3 in previous blog & step 1 in this blog).

3.      Run a Facebook Ad campaign

Within Facebook, you can run a pay per click advertising campaign (similar to Google Ads, although potentially there is more criteria that you can set within Facebook to further target your market). You could run an Ad campaign to gain more likes for your Facebook page. Once a Facebook user has liked your Page then potentially you have them on a retention basis as they would then receive messages from your Page on a regular basis.

4.      Use Traditional Marketing

You often see now in advertising (magazine adverts, TV adverts, flyers etc) the Facebook Page being mentioned ahead of the website (or in some instances instead off). This is because if you were to like a Page, as mentioned above, they potentially have you on a retention basis, whereas website visits can often just be one-off visits. The Page can then be used to drive visits from the fans across to the website on a regular basis via the messages posted.

5.      Run Competitions

Facebook have some strict rules on this, in that you cannot run competitions via the Wall tab on the Page and you can potentially get barred for doing so. It has to either be via a Facebook paid for application or a custom tab developed via Facebook code (iFrame).  One site with paid for Facebook competition apps (that we were recommended by @socialize-media that are able to develop custom tabs too) is: www.wildfireapp.com, where their pricing caters for all sizes of businesses.

In undertaking all these activities to promote your Page, it is just as important (perhaps more so) to track the impressions per posting you get on your Page, as well as the number of fans. As you should be getting more impressions (views) per postings than the number of fans (likes) you have. More on this here in tracking the Facebook stats.

We hope you find these top tips useful. For more top tips follow us on Twitter at @qchriswood.

Thanks

Chris

Q Social Media Ltd

From the three key social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN, Facebook is often the trickiest one to build a following for. This is because you have to actively promote the page yourself to attract likes (often referred to as fans). Here are five ways to actively promote your Facebook Page:

1.      Rename Page Link

In Sept 20011, Facebook changed the rules and you can now rename the Page link without needing 25 fans. So the first top tip is rename your Page link, if you have not done so already. This will make it straight away easier to promote.

2.     Message Link to Facebook Friends

If you use Facebook personally, perhaps you have friends that would be interested in liking the page and you could message them within Facebook the Page link.

3.      Email Page Link

Email the Page link to your customer base, those that actively use Facebook may decide to follow you on this platform.

4.      Facebook Icons

On your website, blog site, e-newsletters and email signature (as applicable) have a Facebook icon on them that then redirects to your Facebook Page link. On the sites consider promoting the Facebook icon at the top of the page rather than at the bottom of page. This helps to make it more visible to visitors to your site that may then want to receive updates from the business via Facebook.

5.      Like Button

For pages with interesting content on (articles, product features, blog postings etc) consider having a “like” button per applicable web page. This allows a Facebook user to potentially “like” the web page, where their Facebook friends are then able to pick up on this and take a look themselves. For those that then take similar actions in liking a web page it can potentially help it go viral within Facebook.

Liking these top tips? See the next blog for 5 more ways to promote a Facebook Page.

Thanks

Chris

Q Social Media Ltd

For those using LinkedIN, there are stats you can track where the more active you are in this platform, then the more these stats should increase over time. (Note this blog complements the Google Analytics blog on how to interpret the stats as to whether social media is working for your business). On the Home page (scroll half way down on the right side) you can see how many people have viewed your personal profile and how many times it has appeared in search results within LinkedIN (this is one top reason to go and complete your LinkedIN profile now, if it is not yet 100% complete). It will also show you how your network is growing as you connect with more people online.

In addition to these personal profile stats, presuming you have a company profile, you can also see stats for this. The company profile stats show how often it has been viewed, how many are unique visitors and how you compare to similar businesses in your industry.

For the products/services you have listed within the company profile (if you have yet to do this, then perhaps now is a good time to undertake this), you can see how many times they have been viewed (known as impressions). As well as whether LinkedIn members have engaged (clicked, liked, commented or shared) with the recommendations regarding the products or services listed.

It should be noted that stats within the Company profile are relatively new and you would still rely on Google Analytics to fully interpret whether LinkedIN was working for your business.

We hope you find these top tips useful. For more top tips follow us on Twitter at @qchriswood.

Thanks

Chris

Q Social Media Ltd

For those running a Facebook Page with over 30 fans (likes), you can gain access to Facebook Insights, which are stats regarding your Page. (Note this blog complements the Google Analytics blog on how to interpret the stats as to whether social media is working for your business). Here you can see how often your posts have been viewed (known as impressions); hopefully you are getting more views than number of fans on a regular basis. As this would mean friends of fans are seeing the posts too, as well as drawing in visitors from other activities you undertake in promoting the Page (even if they do not become fans). This is why number of impressions is often considered more important than number of fans.

Above are the page posts for a business that has 166 fans, where they regularly get around 300 impressions (views) per post. This way they know that there reach is not just limited to their fan base, but beyond and that they are getting regularly high engagement in the content they are posting on to their Page.

Other useful stats are the Demographics in showing the age groups of the fan base and male to female ratio. Here you can start to target your market more and perhaps look to use this as criteria to setup Facebook Ad campaigns. This way you could maximise the affect of an Ad campaign on Facebook to draw in more fans to the budget you set.

You can get a further idea as to how you are engaging your fan base as to which of the tabs on the Page, like the Wall, are engaging them the most. Then you could look to improve this over time for those tabs that are not currently engaging fans. You can  also see where external visitors are coming from like for example your website (if you have a Facebook icon on it).

These stats can be exported in to Excel for reporting purposes. It is possible to receive them on a weekly basis via email too (although it is reported to not always be reliable). For those using the paid version of Hootsuite, you can set this to send you a Facebook Insights report by email on a regular basis (more on this here).

We hope you find these top tips useful. For more top tips follow us on Twitter at @qchriswood.

Thanks

Chris

Q Social Media Ltd

Read the next blog on how to intrepret the LinkedIN stats