by Myra Stacey | Mar 8, 2019 | Inbound Marketing, Services
Let’s face it – if you don’t have an active social media presence in this day and age, you may as well not even exist. As a business, your goal is to reach out to as many people as possible, and there is hardly any medium of communication that is as easy and as far-reaching as social media.
Still skeptical?
Here are a few reasons why you should definitely be using social media!
1. It Has a Wide Outreach
People from all age groups, genders, and geographical locations use some form of social media. This means that you have access to people from across the globe and in most cases – it’s absolutely free! The iconic global brand ‘Happy Socks’ became a sensation purely due to their smart social media marketing, which created a demand for its colorful, funky socks like never before.
If you are smart about using the analytics that are made available to you, and have a sound marketing strategy in place, social media will only help boost your outreach.
2. It is Interactive
Most traditional mediums of communication like print media or even emails are restricted in the amount of interaction that happens between you as a business and your consumers. Social media is interactive by its very nature. This opens up channels of communications that are quick, easy, and effective.
From hosting competitions to creating polls on public opinion – social media allows you to express your creativity to expand the way you’re interacting with your consumers.
3. It Allows Multimedia Marketing
The ability to share text, pictures, videos, and gifs allow you greater creativity with the kind of content you post. Studies have shown that consumers are more likely to respond to advertisements that have some multimedia in them. If you are not jumping the bandwagon quite yet, you’re seriously missing out!
4. Crisis Management
Even if you are not using social media as a brand, the chances of your consumers using it are pretty high. In the event of any kind of crisis where your brand’s reputation is at stake, social media allows you to respond quickly and efficiently before the matter gets out of hand.
Not only does this serve to save defamation of your brand, but it can also increase brand appreciation because people will come to view your business as one that has good customer service and value.
What Social Media Platforms Are Available?
Facebook
Probably the most popular option for businesses to use is the social media giant, Facebook. It allows businesses to create ‘pages’ that are open to all users to follow. Facebook also gives you the option to ‘boost’ your posts through paid promotion or use sponsored content to drive relevant traffic to your website.
Twitter
Twitter is a great platform to create a brand voice and interact with fellow brands and consumers. It is a less detailed medium than Facebook; however, it is a great place to keep your consumers updated about your business.
Instagram
A very visual medium makes Instagram ideal for businesses that have a lot of creative content to post. It is also a great place to use visual storytelling and get your point across.
Youtube
Youtube is a classic option for posting video content. However, Youtube presence alone will not be enough. It is best to use this platform in conjunction with others for the best possible result.
The platform you choose can vary on any number of factors from the demographic you are targeting to the kind of tone you want to set for your brand. There’s no fixed formula! You can play around until you find the platform and strategy that suits you! Print and Web Design can help you with deciding which platforms are best for you, contact us today for a free consultation.
by Myra Stacey | Mar 5, 2019 | Entrepreneurship, Inbound Marketing
The fact that businesses continue to communicate with customers through email speaks a lot about the popularity and effectiveness of the tool. Had it not been effective, it would have gone extinct as others started to take its place.
And yet, despite the influx of other mediums such as social media, email has continued to be a benchmark for professional marketing. And it doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere soon. But does email marketing work for business, generating the same level of ROI that other forms of marketing do?
The Upside of Email Marketing
There are a number of reasons using email as part of your marketing technique is a smart move. We’ve outlined some of them below;
1. Efficiency Tracking Analytics
Most email service providers will allow you access to analytics that let you know when your email has been opened. This allows you to track engagement with the content you’ve been sending out.
2. Personalized Communication
Unlike more generalized communication through social media marketing or even traditional media marketing, email allows you the option to customize communication.
People will be more likely to interact with and respond to communication that is personalized.
3. Increase in Brand Awareness
Emails can be an effective way to increase brand awareness by keeping people up to date with progress, new offers, and deals you may have. It is more targeted than social media posts which can easily be missed.
4. Cost Effective
Email marketing will not drain your budget. In fact, it can be virtually free depending on the service provider you use and the frequency of your emails.
The Downside to Email Marketing
Though there may be a large number of pros to using email as a marketing medium, it does have its fair share of cons as well.
1. Requires Time and Effort
In order to curate a successful email marketing campaign, you need to have a fresh, interactive email design and new content to share. This can take copious amounts of time and effort.
You can get professional help by working with businesses such as Print and Web Design, who make your emails look more appealing. They offer free consultations through their website and can help you understand what your communication design may be lacking.
2. Difficult to Break Skepticism
Many people may not welcome the idea of an email from an unknown source. This could be a difficult hurdle when it comes to connecting with new customers.
There is also the chance that the analytics you are getting regarding how many times your email was opened is not truly representative of how many people are reading your content.
1. Spam Filters
Spam filters used by many email providers can filter out your email from your target audience’s inbox. This will mean that you can be doing all the right things and they still won’t be getting your emails.
2. Easy Opt Outs
Emails make it easy for customers to opt out, and unlike social media where people continue to passively follow you, providing you the chance to win them back, if someone opts out of your email subscription, it can be very difficult to win them back.
Like with any marketing strategy, email marketing requires a carefully planned out strategy. Sending random emails in the hope of engagement will be a poor starting point. However, if used effectively, it could be a fantastic and cost-effective way to boost your brand!
by Myra Stacey | Feb 22, 2019 | Inbound Marketing, Training
Facebook dominates the social media landscape today due to its massive user base. Official statistics show that over 1.5 billion people use Facebook every day and over 7 million advertisers use the platform to promote their brand.
With that kind of reach, it’s no wonder that brands like Happy Socks have been able to become global favorites through the strategic use of Facebook marketing. But is marketing your business on Facebook all that it’s hyped up to be? Here’s our take on it.
How Does Facebook Marketing Work?
Facebook Pages are not like traditional Facebook profiles that require friend request approval on both sides before you can interact. There is no limit to who can like and follow your page, and liking a Facebook page requires no approval. Businesses can create a Page for their brand and interact with consumers in a personalized, targeted manner.
There are three main ways to promote your business through Facebook Pages
Posting to the Page Itself
You can post text, links, images, videos, gifs, and create polls on your timeline.
Boosting Posts
Because of Facebook’s algorithm, not all posts are shown with equal visibility across the platform. You can pay to boost the visibility of certain posts on your timeline, so they show up on news feeds of people in your target demographic.
Facebook Ads
Instead of boosting certain posts, you can purchase Facebook advertising space. This can be in the form of traditional ads, video ads, or Facebook Story ads that show up as ‘sponsored posts’.
The Up Side of Facebook Marketing
- Wide Audience
In comparison to more local options of say, running an ad in a newspaper, Facebook marketing will allow you to access a much wider audience across the globe.
- Multimedia Marketing
You don’t need to be restricted to text adverts. The multimedia platform allows you to market your brand through a number of creative, interactive ways to boost engagement.
- Important Analytics
The analytics that Facebook generates makes it possible for you to understand who is interacting with your brand and allow you to customize your marketing techniques accordingly.
The Down Side of Facebook Marketing
- Expensive
The cost of advertising on Facebook can add up in the long run. And given the Facebook algorithm, unless you boost your posts through paid promotion, it is quite unlikely that it will get the kind of visibility you’d like – especially if you’re just starting up.
- Risky
Because the platform allows users to post freely on your business page, there is always a chance that negative feedback from competitors can pile up and tarnish your image.
- Time Consuming
A successful Facebook marketing strategy requires time and commitment. You need to invest in creating a cohesive brand image, brand tone as well as stay relevant and stay up to date with new trends. If you don’t have the kind of resources that can keep your page running and updating frequently, this may not work out as well as you want.
If you really want your business to stand out among the sea of business pages on Facebook, you can always invest in a cohesive, creative layout for the page that uses Facebook’s default design and adds a personal spin to it to make it appealing to users.
Hire professional designers like Print and Web Design to help take your Facebook business page to the next level and draw in much more interaction.
by Myra Stacey | Jan 8, 2019 | Inbound Marketing, Web Design
If you’re baffled at why your website isn’t getting the traffic that it should, it could be that you’re making these four mistakes.
1. You haven’t jumped the SEO bandwagon yet
Search Engine Optimization, more widely known as SEO, is the first thing anyone talks about when discussing website traffic. If you don’t already know, SEO is the process of increasing the online visibility of a website. The higher a website is ranked by search engines such as Google or Bing, the more chances there will be of user traffic and engagement.
If your website isn’t receiving the kind of traffic you want, there’s a chance that you haven’t been paying attention to SEO techniques. There are two ways to go about fixing this. The first is fairly simple (and free); research things like keyword optimization and SEO marketing to understand how it works and begin incorporating the techniques in your content. It may not make a significant change in traffic immediately, but slowly and surely you’ll begin to notice a difference.
2. Your website design isn’t user-friendly
One of the biggest turn-offs for users is a website that is slow, clunky, and full of broken links. There is so much that goes into designing websites that people overlook. Everything from color scheme to the code to embedded media and layout – there is an endless myriad of factors that will determine user experience, and it is important to nail every single one.
Skimping on a great website design means you are risking users getting frustrated and leaving your page before they could engage with the content you wanted them to see. If you’re unsure of how to optimize website design, contact us for a free consultation.
3. You don’t have the right content
So you’ve got a great website and you’re putting in all the right SEO savvy keywords. Still, no one gives a flying scooter about your website and traffic is as slow as ever.
Well…maybe it’s time to review and asses the actual content you’re posting. Just because your posts have prime keywords and your topics are relevant, it doesn’t guarantee that you will generate traffic.
Is your content original? Is it clearly understandable, free from grammatical mistakes? Is it formatted properly? Does it have value?
These are all questions you should be asking yourself while reviewing your content. A page is only as good as what it posts. For traffic to stay consistent and engaged, your content needs to be top notch. No compromise!
4. You aren’t following the three C’s
a. Cohesive
Your website needs to be cohesive. This means your brand’s theme needs to be present throughout. You can’t have a website that is devoted to environmental preservation talking about the latest superhero movies, can you? From your posts to your design, everything needs to remain cohesive and holistic so your brand is reinforced properly for the user.
b. Creative
You will need to stand out. Chances are there will be hundreds of websites that mirror the kind of content you are producing. In order to make users who visit your page interested enough to come back, you will need to make sure your website is fresh and maximizes creativity in everything— from design to content.
c. Consistent
Consistency is key. You will need to have a steady stream of content and marketing presence for your website to grow and increase traffic. Don’t be sporadic about posting content. Stay up to date with trends. Maximize marketing through different collaborations and posting on different platforms.
Generating organic traffic and keeping it coming back is harder than it seems. But if you focus on fixing these four problems, trust us – it’s going to turn your website over!
Do you need a hand?
Get in touch with us at Print and Web Designer to increase your web traffic.
by Myra Stacey | Dec 18, 2018 | Inbound Marketing, Services
This post is the fifth of a five-part series on Inbound Marketing campaigns and the different pieces that go into them.
Website security is a challenge for every business, whether it’s a multi-billion-dollar company or your soloprenuership in Cary. We often write about security because it’s so easy for small business owners to overlook it. You might think hackers don’t target such “small potatoes,” but in reality, small companies are far easier to hack and thus, seem appealing to cybercriminals.
On that face of it, your website security may not appear to connect to inbound marketing campaigns. But as you gather data about customers and ask them to sign up for your newsletter, you must take into account several things.
General Data Protection Regulation – GDPR
The European Union law has a lot of restrictions regarding emails, far more than the CAN-Spam act we follow here in the U.S. Most small companies in Cary, North Carolina aren’t sending email to EU citizens, but if you are, you must adhere to the new regulations.
The thing is, you may not know if you’re sending emails to EU citizens. That one reason to clean your email lists on a regular basis, removing people each year who never open your messages. Also, most experts expect such restrictions here in the U.S. later, so many large companies are following some of the GDPR regulations ow as a way to be safe. Learn more about the GDPR and how you can follow it.
Consent
The main thing to know right now is that you need permission to email people. To get consent from now on, include a checkbox with your email signup forms that says something like, “I agree to receive email messages from you.” The box cannot be pre-checked for users; they must click it to fill it out.
Then, send out a message to current users asking them to opt-in. Your email software will help you with this process. Once you have consent, you must keep a record on file of it. Again, your email program is invaluable here and should offer options for this. (If it doesn’t, ask us for help!)
Consent Using Joomla!
Our Joomla!-based websites give you easy paths to request consent as you collect email addresses from potential customers. The tool includes a time-based privacy consent expiration and a way to inform users of any Privacy Policy changes on your site.
A Few Other Notes
- Track Team Members – Many cyber attacks come from disgruntled staff. Our websites come with action logs so you can see who has done what with your website. If something goes wrong, we can figure out why and then fix it.
- Privacy Policy – We know you probably don’t have a lawyer on retainer. But you should create a basic privacy policy and terms of use for your website and post them in the footer.
- Credit Card Numbers – If you accept credit card payments, make sure you are not hosting that information on your own servers with your website. Chances are, you are using a third-party payment processor, which should mean you’re OK. But if you’re not 100 percent sure, ask that vendor about their security.
- SSL – If you don’t already have a secure domain, get one!
- Backups – Backing up your website is another piece ignored by many. If you don’t back up your site, you will come to regret it one day. Backups are easy to put in place and cost very little.
If you’re not sure about security or consent for your website, contact us for a free consultation!
by Myra Stacey | Dec 18, 2018 | Inbound Marketing, Services
This post is the fourth of a five-part series on Inbound Marketing campaigns and the different pieces that go into them.
Deciding to start a blog may seem overwhelming, but once you get organized, it is simply a checklist of tasks that result in an online space full of information for your customers to visit again and again. Planning, producing, and promoting a blog is more approachable than you think. If you are feeling lost, here is a rundown of how to start a successful blog.
Benefits of Blogging
Simply put, blogging makes you visible. Blogging regularly allows your website to be found and trusted. The more people that visit your website to read your blog, the more likely it is to be found again in the future and the more credibility you’ll build over time. Each time you create relevant, informative, quality content you are boosting your authority on a particular subject matter. Your readers will come to appreciate your expertise and continue to visit your website and better yet, search engines will recognize this and continue to boost your website in relevant search results. The more you blog, the more you attract readers and the more traffic is driven to your site.
A Moment of Pedantry
You’ll hear a lot of people say they are writing “a blog.” However, it’s good to know that your blog is the collection of articles on your website, the entire thing, like a newspaper. When you sit down to write, you’re writing a blog post or a blog entry, the single article on your blog.
Planning a Blog Schedule
Planning your blog schedule is the first step in blogging. Having a schedule and list of relevant ideas will keep you accountable and will inspire you to keep writing. Start by thinking about your buyer personas. Coming from your buyer personas’ frame of reference, think about why they would visit your blog, what information they want and need, and what search terms they would use to find it.
Jot down a list of relevant topics or angles for new blogs and begin filling in your schedule. Plan to write at least one blog post per week if you can. To stay organized, think of a few broad topics or areas of interests that your customers would benefit from. For example, if you’re a digital marketing expert, maybe your topics include Blogging, SEO, Lead generation, and Branding. Under each topic, come up with several ideas for individual blog posts. You might also take a list of FAQs from customers and turn each one into a blog post. Now arrange these blog post ideas on your calendar.
When Planning, Ensure Your Post Ideas Are:
Producing
Producing content is certainly the most time-consuming step in the process, but this is where your voice and writing style shines. Write a clear outline of how your post will progress. Include a clear question or problem, credible information about the problem, and steps to resolve it. Offer your readers solutions to confirm why they visited your website in the first place.
You also want to make sure you format your post in a way that makes it easy to read. If no one is reading your posts, what is the point? Always be sure to break up the body of your post with headings, subheadings, bullet points and always include images and multimedia elements where possible.
You must add a call to action at the end of your post. A call to action directs readers to their next move. Maybe it’s a link to other relevant posts or premium content, a link to your contact page, or a sign-up form for your email list, whatever you’d like your reader to do.
Finally, there are a few steps that ensure your post will be more easily seen in search results:
- Fill out backend search engine optimization elements (there are plugins and extensions for this with your website).
- Rename images.
- Define keywords.
Before you begin writing a years’ worth of content, it is helpful to create a separate document that details step-by-step what should be included in each blog post. This document acts as a quality control checklist to make sure you don’t miss any important steps. Here is an example.
Blog Post Quality Control Checklist
- Include your keyword in the title of the blog post
- Organically mention the keyword and long-tail keywords throughout the content.
- Include the keyword in the image name and caption on your post.
- Format the post to be visually appealing and easy to digest.
- Include images and multimedia.
- Add outbound and inbound links.
- End with a call to action.
Promoting
Once your blog entry is written, edited, and published, it’s time to promote it. Promoting your post does not mean linking to it on various social platforms and calling it a day. Blog post promotion works best if you diversify your approach. LinkedIn users are in a different mindset than those on Instagram, even when it’s the same individual. Think about which customers use each networking platform and how to best speak to them on said platforms. Present your blog posts as helpful solutions to each community. Specifically, craft your updates to speak to each community individually to ensure increased engagement.
Promote Your Posts Via:
- Facebook
- LinkedIn
- Twitter
- Instagram
- Pinterest
- MeetUp
- Cross promotion on other blogs
- Author bio links on other websites
- In person
- Email signature
Once you have a pile of content written, browse the Joomlashack and explore which extensions and plugins can optimize your quality material and streamline your blog process even more. Joomla plugins can improve your search engine optimization, help you organize all your content into a single calendar, ensure your websites’ forms are easy to fill out, integrate all your multimedia elements seamlessly, and so much more.
No matter how your approach to blogging differs from the techniques presented here, always aim for quality over quantity. Gear your efforts toward offering solutions for your customers and use your buyer personas to get into that mindset. If you consistently offer relevant information and helpful solutions for your audience, you will retain readers and begin to see more website traffic.
For more tips on inbound marketing, explore our entire series.
