Archive for the ‘social media marketing’ Category:
Is your online marketing working? How can you tell? Do people know you exist? Can they find you online?
Here’s how you can find out if your social marketing is working. It’s really simple.
Google yourself.
When you do, is your business name first? It should be. If it is, you’re doing a good job of online branding. If it isn’t, you’ve got more work to do. How can you make sure you come up number 1 on Google when you Google your name? You need to get more content out there. Plain and simple.
How can you get more content out there?
Post more on Twitter. Blog more. Connect your blog to Facebook. Polish your LinkedIn profile. Create a podcast. Make some YouTube videos.
When I Google my business name, Tekkbuzz, my blog comes up first. My podcast comes up second. My Facebook business page comes up third. I’ve put my blog on blog directories, so that comes up. My YouTube videos come up on the first page of results.
How did this happen? I create content all the time. Every week I’m putting something out there. Google has noticed. If someone is looking for my business on the internet, they are going to find it right away.
This is step 1 in branding your business online. Get your name to come up first when you search for it on Google. End of story.
I would love to hear your comments. Leave me a comment and tell me, are you showing up when you Google your name?
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Earlier this year, I decided to offer services as part of my business model. Until then, I had mostly been building and promoting my free ebook and membership site, My Social Marketing Class. My efforts have been successful. I have acquired several clients who I’m helping set up Facebook business pages, set up Twitter accounts, build blogs, and help with overall strategy. I’m loving this work because I love working with a business, learning their goals and brainstorming on the best strategies they should use to move forward.
Working with so many other business owners, I am exposed to all sorts of industries. I’m working with a law firm, hair salon, law of attraction coach, legal marketer, personal success coach and other industries. With so many diverse industries, I’m getting to know the special challenges in each industry and the unique challenges of each business.
As I gain a better perspective on so many other types of businesses, I’m starting to see that my clients and you, my readers, need more than just instruction on setting up your social media networks. Not only do you need information on how to use social media, but you also need more information on how search engine optimization works, how opt-in lists can be used to really capture results. You need more information on how you can bring parts of your business online, how you can develop online products that will supplement what you already sell. You need more information on how to write better copy for your website. You need information on what you should try to outsource and what you should try to do yourself.
In the coming months, my own business is going to start to take a slightly different direction, and begin to expand what it offers for services. You will see me expanding what subjects I am writing about here on the blog as I learn which areas of internet marketing and online business are the biggest challenges for many of you. I’m excited about the new direction and I think you’re going to find it even more valuable to you.
Tell me, what is your biggest challenge when it comes to your business and the internet?
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Social media and search engine optimization are becoming inseparable. In working with social media for some time now, I am discovering over and over how well it works to gain my business visibility. In a few short months, I’ve seen my blog go from almost invisible to a site that is gaining a larger number of visitors each and every month.
I often work with clients who want me to get them started in social media. Some of my clients want me to set up only one social network, such as only Facebook or only LinkedIn. But because of the huge SEO value, I always recommend that they set up a Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Youtube accounts, even if they don’t intend to be active on all four networks. If they decide they don’t want to put as much time on all four acccounts, and only want to update Facebook every week, their other profiles are still going to turn up in search engine results.
To gain the most value with your social media profiles and make them findable, there are a few basics you want to be sure to include in your profile.
1. Link to your website. Always include the URL to your website or blog. If I search for you on Google, and I find your Facebook profile in search results, I know I can go to your Facebook profile and find more information about you. If your URL is in that information, I can easily click on it, come to your website, read more about you, and contact you with the contact information you provide on the site. This uses social media to drive traffic to your website and ultimately to you.
2. Place keywords in key places on your profile. You probably have keywords you use in your blog or with your website to generate search engine traffic. These same keywords should appear in your profile in areas such as titles, headlines, biographical paragraph, descriptions of your business. Using keywords allows you to control what searches find you and your profiles.
Social media profiles offer more ways for potential customers to find you. By implementing these basic optimization techniques, you will maximize our impact on search engines and become more visible to searchers.
Do you have your URL on every social media profile you own?
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I love it when readers contact me with social media questions. It allows me to share some of the things I’ve learned using social media. And I can show you how to avoid the mistakes I’ve made.
This week I received the following question:
Q. My only question about LinkedIn is are we actually able to advertise our business among the groups?
This is a great question!
Mistake to Avoid: You don’t want to come off to other readers as giving a strong sales pitch for your business. All mentions of your business should contribute to the conversation or point readers to useful information.
Here are two strategies that can work well when participating in group discussions on LinkedIn.
1. Direct traffic to your blog post While in the discussion area, post a discussion about an issue in your business and then provide a link to your site. For instance, I could start a discussion about how to use LInkedIn to establish your company’s brand, then provide a link to my blog post on the topic for viewers to read more if they are interested in the subject.
But what if you don’t have a blog? Here is another strategy:
2. Ask the group for input. If I am a human resource consultant, I could ask the question, “What are some of your challenges when hiring subcontractors?” This would start a discussion on a topic I am knowledgeable about and allow me to provide useful information in the discussion. I can also provide a link to my website or email if readers have further questions for me.
Have you tried one of these strategies before? Did you finding it a good way to connect with more people? Leave me a comment.
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Before I started using social media, if I Googled my name, I would find about four listings for a couple sites where I’d written an article or two, and results from 5K road races I’d run. That was it. Most of the other entries on the page were about other people with my name. One is a doctor. I wonder if anyone has mistakenly thought I was a doctor. That would be uber cool.
As I opened my business, Tekkbuzz Internet Marketing, I knew, if I was going to have any success as a business, I needed to be found when people Googled my name or the name of my business. I, of course, started my blog, adding posts each week about social media. I made sure I used keywords in my post titles, such as social media, entrepreneurs, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
As a social media consultant, I am active every day on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I’m even starting to use YouTube (which is a whole other post).
Now when I Google “Deborah Richmond” or “Tekkbuzz”, I see ELEVEN PAGES of search results that directly relate to my business and myself. What are the results showing? They are showing links to pages of my website, links to specific blog posts I’ve written, to my social media profiles, to guest posts I’ve written for other blogs. The road race results now appear on pages 6 or 7, which is too bad because my results were good!
This is a clear indication that social media is working to make me more visible to search engines. Now a searcher will find all kinds of information about me and my business. They will have a very good sense of what I am all about. And luckily, there are no questionable photos of me and an Elvis impersonator anywhere in the results.
Here are some key ways that using social media helps your search engine optimization:
1) Getting quality, relevant inbound links
A successful social media marketing campaign can result in thousands of new inbound links to your site. Inbound links are one of the most important things that influence the rankings of your site. Put two and two together, and it’s easy to see how social media can be a great way to improve your rankings.
The best thing about this is that the majority (if not all) of the links that come from a social media marketing campaign are natural links; they’re not reciprocated, bought, or solicited.
2) Fresh content = more hooks in the water for search
The more content you have on your site, the more traffic you will snag from search engines. Also fresh content keeps your site updated, which gives users a reason to come back. People don’t want to visit static sites, we’re already too used to sites being social.
3) The engines like frequently updated sites
Feed those indexes with fresh content and get rewarded with frequent visits by the search spiders. Search engines love fresh new content. They will see new content in your Facebook stream, LinkedIn profile, Twitter updates and blog posts. And they will direct traffic to all of those places for you.
When you Google your business name, are you seeing the results you want? Leave me a comment.
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Is your online marketing working? How can you tell? Do people know you exist? Can they find you online?
