by Jonathon Hyjek | Jul 14, 2012 | Social Media
In a world full of choices, choosing which social media platform to use is an important choice for any company or organization. Just a hint: You SHOULD be using social media for marketing purposes not matter the size of business that you own/manage.
Between Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ and a number of smaller social media platforms, it can get confusing trying to choose which one will be best for your company or organization. I realize that not everyone has the time and resources to devote to regular social media interaction, so it’s important to think about your audience and target market and the way that each one of these platforms works.
Facebook
As a general rule, the one social media platform that you can’t afford to miss out on is Facebook. Facebook has by far the largest number of users worldwide, now with nearly 1 Billion users. It’s reach is incredible! The great thing about Facebook is that everyone from teenagers to grandmothers are on Facebook. It’s created an online social life for many, even those that aren’t overly outgoing in person.
For a business or organization, having a Facebook page is nearly essential. Gathering up “Likes” from people is what many call “permission based marketing.” These people have invited your company into their Facebook stream, giving you the opportunity to tell people about your business, your specials and more. The thing to keep in mind here is that no one wants to see constant marketing on their Facebook stream. It gets irritating. Keep it fun. Post some promotions, post links to your content and then post some fun stuff like pictures of your events or whatever else your target market may find interesting or funny.
A word of caution here. Make sure that you sign up for a Facebook business PAGE and not just a personal account with the name of your business. Doing this wrong won’t help you at all. The difference with the two accounts; A personal account means that people have to request you as a friend or vice-versa. Your customers are NOT going to request you to be their friend and they won’t accept your friend requests. It’s just weird. You want Facebook “likes” which come through having a business page.
Twitter
Twitter can be powerful. It has less users than Facebook, but can still bring traffic to your website. It’s great for a quick update (under 140 characters) and you can amass a large number of followers easily. How engaged those followers are though, is different than Facebook. They’re slightly less engaged and may not see your Tweets if they are an average user. Also, Twitter followers tend to attract followers from around the globe, so if you are a local auto mechanic, having a ton followers from around the world isn’t going to help you much. Regardless, it’s still a powerful marketing tool. The thing about Twitter is that the community will tolerate a lot more tweets than your Facebook page will. For example, imagine the people who login to Facebook at the end of the day to check out what’s happened in the lives of their friends and family. If you have posted 8 times in a day on Facebook about your promos or with pictures you are eating into their Facebook feed. If all they see is your company, they’re going to be annoyed. I know I am when this happens. Facebook is more personal. I don’t mind some advertising. For example, today Starbucks is giving away a free Refresher beverage between 1 and 3pm. I WANT to know this and am glad they told me on Facebook, but they didn’t post about it 8 times in a day letting me know. Twitter on the other hand is much less concerned about volume. You can post every hour if you want. Some people post more than that (which I find irritating) but it’s up to you.
Linkedin
Think of this more of a personal resume and networking tool. You need to use it, but it’s less focused on your business than it is on you. You can do a good job of combining the two in your descriptions of what you do. People will look here to see what qualifications you have, so most definitely use it. You can also meet a lot of people on Linkedin (although I have met more through Twitter personally.)
Google+
I put this one at the bottom because it’s my least favourite, although VERY powerful from an SEO standpoint. Google+ profiles rank very well in Google, so you will want to have one. I find it far more confusing than the other 3 and so I tend to use it less. It doesn’t have the same audience appeal as Twitter or Facebook at this time, but it will in the future, so you certainly cannot afford to ignore it. I see Google+ as a Twitter/Facebook hybrid. It can do what Facebook can do, it can do what Twitter can do and blends the two together. They were pretty late to the game with it, so they had time to take a look at Facebook and Twitter and choose the best of both worlds.
Linking Social Media Accounts
I would recommend that unless you want to maintain all your social media accounts individually, that you link your accounts together with various tools so that when you post on one, it posts to a few. For mobile users, I HIGHLY recommend Tweetdeck as a great way to share information on Facebook and Twitter at the same time. Another great tool is Seesmic. You can use either of these tools online or on your mobile device and choose where messages will go. Some messages I choose to just Tweet about, while others I want to land on both Twitter and Facebook. These tools allow you to do that from one interface.
Hopefully I have shed some light on the topic of social media and which platform you should me using for marketing purposes. If you have more questions, just head over to my contact page or chat with me at the bottom of the site.
by Jonathon Hyjek | Jul 13, 2012 | Search Engine Optimization
One of the websites that I co-own and manage is enjoying some wonderful long tail keyword success! I love logging into Google Analytics each day and looking at how people found the website.
On a side-note, it’s always fun to look at what people actually type into Google to find a website. Some people really don’t get search engines…
The website in question has a lot of content on it and I suspect that’s why it’s getting the long-tail keyword searches. With enough content on almost any website, it’s almost inevitable that you end up with traffic from long-tail keyword searches. In fact, it makes one take a good look at all the content on a website and ensure that there’s enough of it to tempt the search engines to rank the website well for these searches.
Of course there’s that list of coveted keywords that every website wants to rank for, but maybe we (myself included) spend far too much time optimizing for those few valuable keywords, all the while, missing out on the vast amount of traffic that’s available for the taking from those odd long-tail searches.
The best thing about the long-tail success that I am having, is that it’s accidental so it means the website doesn’t look spammy. I didn’t try much at all; It just happened.
What’s the key to long-tail keyword success?
1 word: CONTENT
It’s as simple as that. No blackhat SEO tricks, no keyword stuffing, no spammy content. Just real, quality, fresh content and lots of it.
by Jonathon Hyjek | Jul 12, 2012 | Online Marketing
About 6 or 7 years ago I went into a mattress store, looking for a mattress that was a little softer. Because of the overly slick and annoying tactics of the mattress salesman, I walked out with a mattress (well…they delivered it) with a mattress that cost WAY more than I should have spent and more than I could afford. The mattress salesman was slick…almost to the point of sleezy. You know the type; Like a used car salesman, eager to push anything out the door for a sales commission.
Informercials…
Another bad experience for me was with a certain product that they had been pushing on an infomercial. I saw the product at a local fair, watched the overly dramatic presentation and remembered all their marketing gimmicks from the TV infomercials…and then I decided to buy the product. It didn’t live up to their claims (big surprise) and I felt like I was taken for a ride by their slick marketing campaigns.
Marketing and Sales professionals have, in some cases, developed a bad wrap over the years because of these less than credible marketing techniques.
Today’s customer is looking for authenticity in marketing. They don’t want empty promises and they certainly don’t want scams or gimmicks. Customers demand that marketers get to the point and relate to their customers in a sincere and authentic manner. Most savvy marketers, both online and offline have caught on, but there are still those that just don’t get.
If you’re marketing to customers online, here are a few tips to think about.
How do you market with authenticity on the internet?
– Be sincere, interact with your customers and clients through a blog or social media in a humble, thoughtful, authentic and helpful manner.
– Don’t just try to push your products down customers throats; It doesn’t work anymore. It just makes people annoyed.
– If you’re passionate about what you do (and you should be) let that come out in your marketing efforts.
– Show people how much you know, without being the guy that knows everything and wants people to know how much you know.
– Use social media in a real way, sharing information that matters. Don’t just spam Social Media outlets with your crappy content.
– Provide good content, that’s well-written and timely.
– Unless you’re a freak, let the real you shine through in your communications. People like you.
All of the points above will help you be a stellar online marketer, but there’s one more thing that’s even more important.
You MUST have a good product or service. Focus on that first and foremost and then authentic marketing is much easier to do. If you don’t have a good product or service, you always have to slip into questionable techniques to market, trying constantly to compensate for your product/service shortcomings.
by Jonathon Hyjek | Jul 8, 2012 | Online Marketing
When websites were first introduced, it was revolutionary. No longer did a business need to get a paper brochure into the hands of your prospective customers. The business owner simply pointed their prospects to their website address and the customer could get information about the company right from their company website. For the first 5 years or more, this was amazing and worked fairly well. We all thought this new method of marketing was amazing.
That was then…
This would be a good news story for most businesses, if it wasn’t for the fact that many businesses are still using early 90’s online marketing methods.
What do I mean by that?
Here’s the typical scenario. Businesses approach a web designer to build a website that includes the standard stuff; A contact page, a page that details their services, a bio page and maybe a few other random pages or a portfolio. The website goes up and the business owner expects big things to happen, only to be disappointed by a lack of interest in their website.
So what’s the problem?
The problem is that much has changed in the marketing world and in society in general. We have become a highly interactive society, very attached to technology and we expect businesses that we interact with to be at the forefront of our tech savvy, interactive world. Visitors to your website no longer want to visit a boring website that just tells what products or services your offer. They are looking for a website that gives them up-to-date, valuable information. They want to interact and connect with the business, have their questions answered, have their fears or concerns addressed and they want to know that you are the best company or service provider for them to do business with.
This requires a change in the way that websites are built. It requires businesses to seek out companies that can do more than just built a website. Businesses need to work with an online marketing company that they trust and one that they can build a long-term relationship with.
If you require help with your online marketing strategy, contact us for more information on how we can help.It’s not good enough to toss up a website and wait for results and it’s not a one-sided conversation anymore.
by Jonathon Hyjek | Jul 5, 2012 | Online Marketing
Why is it that we’re willing to pay for quality products or services in some aspects of our life, but not all?
Sometimes it comes down to budget and we just don’t have the money for what we want, so we look for the least expensive option, but in other areas we don’t mind paying for better quality because we realize that we’re getting a vastly different product or service.
Here’s what I mean:
When you want your car fixed, you have the option to take your brand new Mercedes-Benz to the dealer at a cost of over $100/hr, or you can opt for the less expensive local mechanic that may charge $65 or $75 per hour. Chances are good that even though the first option is more money, you will choose it because you know that the Mercedes dealer will do the job correctly. They know your car and they have the genuine parts that it will need.
Another example of cheaper vs. better is when you set out to buy a new pair of shoes. You can go to Wal-Mart and buy just about any style of shoes you might ever want at less than $50. So why is it that you don’t mind paying $150 for a pair of Clarke’s or Rockports? It’s because there’s a difference in quality which you don’t mind paying for.
Now let’s bring this concept into the world of SEO, websites and online marketing. There are all kinds of people offering a website for prices from $100 to $10,000. There are “SEO experts” that offer their services for $10/hr while others charge $250/hr. If you’re a bargain-hunter, you may be drawn to the $100 option and you decide it’s best solely based on the low price. The trouble with doing this, just like the car dealer or your new shoes is that there’s a good chance you’re not getting the same thing. You’re not comparing apples to apples.
Price can only be one of many considerations when choosing an SEO company or website designer. It shouldn’t be the only criteria or you risk getting something that’s vastly different than what you actually need.
Cheaper rarely equals better…
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