Tag Archives: local seo service provider

7 Social Media Strategies You Need to Know

Social Media Marketing, ,

Social media is the most popular online activity. It’s even more popular than Web browsing, according to Jay Baer’s webinar, “7 Steps to Create Winning Social Media Strategies.” During the webinar, Baer shared useful information for companies who want to utilize social media for marketing purposes to help promote their brand and drive business to their website and location. Here are 7 tips from Baer to develop a winning social media campaign for your company.

  • Recognize that social media impacts your business in ways that nothing else does. Anything that happens to your company (whether it’s good or bad) has the potential to become public through social media, whether your company wants it to or not. When it comes to social media, it’s smart to get suggestions from people in all departments of the company. Everyone in the organization should take some ownership and participate in social media in order to keep the company’s image positive.
  • Listen to online conversations. People are already talking about your company online. Listen in to those conversations by exploring Facebook, Twitter, review sites and more to see what people think of you. Once you figure out what’s being said about you, you can use that information to guide your marketing strategy.
  • Set your goals. What’s the point of your social media campaign? Do you want to educate others, raise brand awareness, generate sales or increase customer loyalty? Maybe you want to do all of those things. The best thing to do is pick one to concentrate on. Once you’ve mastered that, then you can take on another goal.
  • Get people excited about your business. Think about who your customers are. How do they use social media? What is their age, gender and location? These are important things to think about when posting on social media networks. You want to make sure the information will appeal to them and encourage them to get excited about your company. The customer relationship looks like this: Unaware (have never heard of your company)à Aware (have heard of your company but never tried your service/product) à Trial (have tried your service/product once) à Repeat/Enthusiast (use your service/product frequently) à Advocate (encourage others to use your service/product). In order to move people from “unaware” to “advocate,” you need to get them pumped about your product or service.
  • Figure out what your “one thing” is. Find one thing that’s special about your company and use your social media to highlight that unique thing. If every company in your industry has the same special offer as you, what makes yours so special? Example: Apple = Innovation, Disney = Magic, Volvo = Safety, You = To Be Determined. Until you find out what your “one thing” is, it’s going to be hard to get people psyched about your company.
  • Find your “home base” social media network. Instead of trying to conquer all of the different social networks (which can be a daunting task,) find out which social media outlet is the best to connect with your customers. This will be your social media home base. Then use the other social media networks to drive people back to your home base. For example, Jay Baer said he uses his blog as his home base then uses Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. to drive traffic to his blog.
  • Track your progress. Use reporting to figure out which methods are working for you and which are not. Without reporting, you may be wasting time on some social media networks or marketing techniques that don’t work. Make sure to review and analyze your reports so you can see what’s working and what doesn’t. Then you can keep revising your marketing strategy in order to find success.

Professional SEO vs. DIY

Local Maps SEO, Local SEO, Organic SEO, , , , , , , ,

SeoSome business owners are squeamish when it comes to working with a local search engine optimization (SEO) company. This is mostly due to the unfortunate truth that many local SEO firms are scams or use unaccepted SEO techniques. However, not all SEO companies are out to get you and although many SEO tactics and tools are free to use, getting to the top of the search engine rankings takes extensive time and knowledge. Here are the pros and cons of both utilizing the services of a top local SEO provider or taking a DIY approach.

DIY SEO:

Pros:

  • Most tools used for SEO are free and there’s plenty of free information about improving SEO on the Web. So to do local SEO for your company, it would essentially cost for your website and time.
  • It’s a great learning experience. Teaching yourself this valuable skill is advantageous and will continue to be as your business grows.

Cons:

  • DIY SEO is extremely time consuming. Achieving top rankings on Google and other search engines can be tedious and a lot of hard work.
  • There’s a lot of misinformation available on the Web and if you aren’t sure which sources are reliable, you could end up hurting your rankings or wasting your time and effort on an SEO campaign that doesn’t work.
  • Carrying out an SEO strategry is a full-time job. SEO is a long-term growth strategy and a huge commitment. It requires a lot of research, repetition and as time passes it only gets more complex.
  • Building an effective website or landing page can be expensive. You must pay for web hosting, copy writing, optimization and design.

Professional Local SEO:

Pros:

  • Let the professionals do all the heavy lifting. The hard, time consuming work can be passed off to a professional or company that has the time, tools and knowledge to get the job done efficiently. You can throw some money at the situation and leave the worries and stress to someone else.
  • Results come faster. Since an SEO company’s sole purpose is to perform Internet marketing and search engine optimization for companies like yours, they already have systems and tools in place to get started right away. They don’t need to teach themselves SEO first like you would have to do. Since they’re experts, they know all the best techniques and have the necessary connections to get you ranking as quick as possible.
  • Internet marketing is constantly changing. It’s hard to keep up with the ever-changing world of SEO. Search engines are always changing their algorithms and as a business owner, it would be hard to keep up with your employees, business location, customers and the ever-changing Internet marketing industry. Chances are, you don’t have the time. A professional can put full attention on the search engine optimization of your business so you get maximum results.

Cons:

  • It can be hard to find a legitimate company to work with. There are many unreliable black hat SEO companies out there, you must be tough when deciding who to work with in order to avoid the Google black list or losing money on less than desirable results. Check out the company’s credentials before deciding to work with them.
  • It costs money. Help from a professional costs money. However if your SEO company is doing its job and getting your business found on the first page of the search engines, you will be getting more leads and it will be well worth the money.

When you weigh the pros and cons it’s easy to see that if you have the funds, leaving the local SEO to the professionals is your best option. Although SEO can be done on your own, if you’re inexperienced it can be easy to make a mistake and hurt your rankings or waste your efforts on techniques that don’t really work. When choosing a local SEO provider, be aware of possible black hat SEOs and be sure to gather as much information about the company as possible before agreeing to work with them.