The Five Elements that Every Seattle Web Design Project Should Include
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on April 4, 2014
If you’re looking for a Seattle web design company then you have to decide what you want your website to include. While a good designer will be able to help you with the process, you might also want to already have a good idea of what you want and need to help with finding your own web designer. Here are a couple of elements that will help you with a local Seattle based business.
Easy Navigation
Navigation is one of the most important elements of any website because it will make or break your exit rate. If you have an overly complex menu and navigation, or no search bar, then your visitors might have no way of finding what they’re looking for. If you’re trying to sell them things, that means that you’ve lost the sale. Keep your navigation simple, avoid too many sub-folders on your menus, and try to include a search bar in the sidebar or header of your website where it’s easy for visitors to find and use.
Mobile Design
Mobile friendly is the web design trend of 2014 and for good reason. More and more people are foregoing computers altogether and using mobile devices including phones and tablets to do their shopping, searching, and research. If your website isn’t easy to use and access on those devices, you’ll probably loose 20-30% of your potential traffic and sales.
Contact Form
You might not think a contact form is very important, especially not if you have a phone number up on your site but the truth is that a lot of people won’t want to or cannot call. For example, many people do the majority of their online searching after normal business hours. By including a contact form for those hours, you’re allowing anyone to contact you. Just make sure you check the email the messages are sent to and that you respond to them. If you want to go for extra points and you have the time to monitor chat during business hours, you can also choose to include a chat function, although this sort of addition is better for shops and restaurants that require reservations.
Google Maps Integration
Integrating a Google (or Bing) map directly into your website is a great way to make it easy for consumers to find you. Google Maps provide directions to and from the users location right on your site, so all they have to do is click. In fact, they can even print out or email the maps to their phone, and then just travel right to you. It’s probably not hard for you to see how this might benefit you as a business.
Style
Seattle is known for it’s style. From sweeping streets and stately skylines to picturesque restaurants, Seattleites want to look good. If you want your local website to go over well, you have to make it stylish. Integrate same fonts, bold prints, large graphics, and most importantly, plenty of space into your web design and you’re setting yourself up for a beautiful and stylish website. Don’t hire a web designer who doesn’t have their own stylish site either.
Want to know more about what goes into a great website? Contact Seattle website design company Rory Martin to find out what we can do for you.
Seattle SEO Management Tips for Business
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization on March 28, 2014
If you’re running a local Seattle business and you want to rank for local searches for your types of businesses then you have your job cut out for you. Without a professional Seattle SEO manager to help you out, you’re going to have to research, plan, and strategize an SEO plan that will hopefully get you onto search above your competitors. Unfortunately, that’s not always easy. Seattle is a hotspot of small and medium businesses that are growing under the huge job market thanks to big tech companies in the surrounding area. With that in mind, here are a few handy tips to help you rank higher in local Seattle SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).
Content Marketing
Content is one of your most powerful marketing tools because content attracts visitors. By ensuring that your pages are localized and relatable to local readers, you are encouraging the citizens of Seattle to read your website. You’re also giving yourself more fodder for sharing on social pages to make them more popular.
Hyper Localization
What’s more, you also want to hyper localize your content. Yes it’s important to tell your readers, your ads, and to put on your website that you’re in Seattle, but don’t forget your local area, neighborhood, and street. For example, if you search for ‘restaurants in Seattle’ there are over 3,397 competing restaurants. On the other hand, if you search for “Restaurants in Georgetown, Seattle”, there are just 125 restaurants within that local area competing with you in search. When you narrow that down to “Restaurants on Airport Way, Georgetown, Seattle, you’re looking at just five search competitors. Apply that concept to your local area and your business and you could find yourself capturing hyper local customers.
Website Speed
You’ve probably heard this half a million times already in 2014, but it’s important. Make sure that your website loads quickly on every device or you are loosing your hard earned clicks. Enough said.
Go Easy on the Links
While Google loves to see new content, they’re not so hyped about the links. Take it easy on linking to and from other websites, and try to avoid guest blogging for the same of links. If you do include guest blogging in your policy, try offering your website URL without linking it. This will allow interested readers to follow you to your site without bringing unnatural links that could result in a Google penalty.
You probably already know that the backend of your site has to be in shape, that you have to research keywords, and that you should use them sparingly. You should also know that quality is more important than quantity, and that you will be penalized for trying to influence search. With that out of the way, you just have to make sure that your website is for your readers, offers value, and is what it appears to be about. Other then that, you’re on your own with creating your SEO strategy.
If you want to know more about what a professional Seattle SEO manager can do for you in terms of results, contact us at Rory Martin.
How an All Service Web Company Can Help Small Businesses Succeed
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on March 21, 2014
It seems that everywhere you look companies are becoming more and more specialized. Social marketing is breaking down into Facebook specialists and internet marketing is breaking down into PPC, Keyword research, and conversion optimization. Unfortunately, as a small Seattle business owner, that means bad news. The more specialized the company, the less services they offer and the more people you have to hire. And that means spending more money.
While that’s great for big business, you might not be able to afford hiring all these different people for your marketing team. What you do need is a single all service web company with the right team already put together so that you can save money and hire just one company.
Let’s talk about some of the other benefits:
One Stop Shop
If you’re getting your Seattle web design, your SEO, and your social management all in one place then you won’t have to worry about talking to, dealing with, or paying multiple people. You talk to one person, they communicate your needs to the rest of the team, and that’s it. No spending hours and hours a week in meetings with different teams because you only have one team.
Everyone is On the Same Page
One of the hardest parts of working with multiple companies is that you will spend time in meetings telling different people what you want, and then spend time communicating what each team is doing across teams, or paying them to have internal meetings. When you go with a full service web company, you won’t have to deal with any of that because the entire team will already be on the same page. All you have to worry about is one type of meeting, and the team will create a strategy for your entire website.
Optimal Launch
If you don’t yet have a website then a full service company can perform what might seem like magic for your launch. How? They can co-ordinate SEO and social efforts to match up with your launch so that by the time your website is live, it’s already ready for traffic. A full service company can pull this off flawlessly, ensure that the website is SEO friendly, and make sure that your social pages and hype are ready to go, if you do that with different companies it could quite literally be a nightmare.
Cheaper
Let’s face it, when you pay different companies you’re not only paying for their services and skills, you’re also paying service costs, administration and management fees, and individual time. When you pay a single company you can cut costs because you’re only paying all of those fees to one person. What you’re paying to everyone else is just their service fees.
Want to know more about how a one-service company can benefit you? Whether you’re looking for Seattle based web development, design, SEO, or Social Media, Rory Martin can help you achieve your goals, and without the hassle of dealing with multiple companies. Contact us to learn more.
Seattle Social Media Management Tips Improving Social Engagement
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing on March 14, 2014
While statistics show that some 80% of small businesses are using social media, especially Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google +, but those statistics say nothing about active engaging pages. Unfortunately the majority of business owners have no idea how to engage with their fan base, and most have no idea how to grow their fan base, other than by inviting their friend’s list from personal pages.
Understanding Fans
The first step to improving any sort of Seattle social media campaign is to understand your fanbase. Depending on what platform you happen to be on, your fans may want to see entirely different things. You also have to consider how and why you asked your fans to join the page in the first place.
Did you offer coupons and discounts to fans on the page? Did you just invite everyone you know to the page? You can also use some analytics information to see what your fans are responding to the most, and you can also check to see what your most active fans like from their page (unless this information is private). Understanding what your fans want to see helps you to create a better content strategy that engages people, because it is what they want or love.
Balancing Engaging & Promotional Content
The main job of any social media site is to entertain and inform. You want your page to do this, but you also want to balance in promotional content. Unfortunately, most people don’t respond well to pages that simply share their products, or share things about themselves. If you want to share something and you don’t have a good reason (such as it being on sale), you want to do so in an interesting and informative way.
Sometimes that way is to share it with a customer photo and customer review, other times it is to point out that a celebrity or popular TV show used it or something similar. You can also write blogs about it and share those as a form of promotion as well. For example, if you sell modern lamps, blog posts about different types of modern lamps, how to style modern lamps, and even how to fit lamps into your modern styled house could all go over well. Finally, you can post humorous content relating to your topics, interesting photos of your products, or reviews and quotes about your products from around the web.
What Makes Good Content?
Good content varies depending on the page, but a good rule of thumb is to create your content, read it, and if it’s not interesting or informative in some way, you probably don’t want it. Consider “Does it ask a question”, “does it teach something new”, “does it make people think”, “does it make people laugh”, “If this were not my business would this make me want to purchase something?”. If you can say no to all of these, then it’s probably not worth posting.
Hiring a Professional
While many small businesses cannot afford to hire a full time social media manager, some 37% of small and medium sized businesses do. A well managed social campaign can and does improve sales, and paying for a social media service should pay for itself within a certain amount of time. Want to know more? Send us a message to find out more about a Seattle Social Media Company can take your social pages and turn them into highly engaging pages that market themselves to sell your products.
Seattle Social Media Tips – What You Can Learn From Analytics
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on March 7, 2014
Social media is a part of life for millions of business owners worldwide but few of them use analytics like they should. Whether they don’t have the time to sit down and monitor results, don’t know how to do so, or don’t understand the data, many businesses are missing out on the powerful information that social analytics can provide. With that in mind, if you don’t understand your data, then you may want to hire a professional Seattle social media manager like Rory Martin to help you out. Otherwise, here are a few important things you can learn from your social analytics programs.
Engagement
Engagement is more important than the number of fans, followers, or likes on your social page. This is because 50 fans who interact with your page are more likely to make purchases than 2,000 people who don’t even see your posts. By measuring engagement, you’re measuring how successful your page is. For example, if you’re on Facebook and you have 15,000 fans but only 200 people talking about you, you’re only really making an impact on those 200 people. You can take steps to raise your engagement to raise awareness, raise page success, and of course, increase consumer interest.
Demographics
While you may already have a good idea of what demographic your content appeals to, using social media to analyze your demographics will tell you a lot more. By looking at the age, location, and if possible, number of purchases from each fan, you can get a better idea of where you have to target future ads, campaigns, and even products. For example, if you’ve been targeting towards an 18-25 year old consumer base but your analytics show you that just as many 30-35 year olds are following your pages, you can redirect your content to include items and promotion aimed specifically at them.
Popular Content
Another great thing about any social analytics is that it shows you which posts are popular, which aren’t, and which types of posts get the most engagement over time. If you watch your analytics then you will eventually see a pattern and can start to tailor more of your posts towards what people want to see. By recognizing popular content, you are giving yourself the tools to duplicate it.
Traffic Sources & Conversion
For this final form of tracking your social media, you will need Google Analytics or another similar analytics program. Once you tell it what your social pages are, you can get to work tracking your conversion to see how successful your social campaigns are in terms of pushing sales and visits. This allows you to directly track the profitability of your social media in terms of web visits and sales. If that’s what your social pages are about, then it’s important to track this data.
Don’t know how to use any of these social analytics? Talk to Rory Martin, your local Seattle social media management company and we’ll help you out with creating a social marketing plan that works, and follow up with all of the analytics you need.
Seattle Social Media Tips – Social Customer Service
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on February 18, 2014
Social Media is one of the dominating forms of marketing, and has been for some time, but many businesses are just now beginning to utilize it effectively. However, with at least 80% of businesses saying that they are active on social media, and a recent survey of over 600 small business owners showed that more than 42% get a larger percentage of new customers from their social media pages. Those that do are using their pages for more than just promotion, they’re actively engaging, talking with, and helping their potential customers. Keep reading to find out how to integrate customer service into your Seattle social media strategy.
What is Social Customer Service
Social customer service is quite simply, the process of responding to, helping with, and solving queries and issues presented on a page via social. Unfortunately, studies show that approximately 80% of these queries currently go unanswered, which often looses a sale or a customer. Reasons people post on social media include questions about a product (answering could lead to a sale), problems with an order (answering could lead to a happier customer), and issues with a product (answering could help prevent a bad review). Because the majority of problems presented on social media are easily fixable, not answering them can actually hurt your business, while taking the time to answer them can and does make sales happen.
So How Do I Improve Customer Service?
Just like with ‘real’ customer service, social customer service requires work. You have to respond to and actively answer questions. While you obviously cannot do this 24/7, you should set aside a few minutes a day to check to make sure there are no questions, comments, or messages on your social that you should answer. In some cases, like with Twitter, these can be harder to find. In other cases, like with Google + and Facebook, finding questions and answering them is relatively easy. Remember to be polite, and to research the answer before you send a reply. Just answering is the first step to improving your customer service but you also have to make sure that you give the right answers.
If your consumers have issues, remember that they are no less important because they are using social. If you would normally offer a solution or a discount or partial refund to make up for the trouble, then do so on the page. Importantly, because this is public, it shows your other fans that you are willing to take steps to make sure that buyers are happy with your business.
Following Up
Customer service is an important part of any businesses success, and you have to make sure that yours is everywhere that you are. This means making sure that your customers are happy after they ask questions by following up within a week to ask if they are happy, (this also increases engagement), sharing customer questions and your answers as status posts, and staying on your toes when it comes to actually answering questions. If you’re getting too busy to handle this sort of thing, then your best bet may be to hire a professional Seattle social media management company to do it for you, because your online reputation and customer service does drive sales.
Seattle Website Design – How Fast Does Your Site Have to Be?
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on February 18, 2014
In late 2013, Matt Cutts, head of webspam at Google, announced that Google was now using website speed as a ranking factor. That, plus increasing amounts of new data that visitors want your website and they want it NOW, means that speed is an incredibly important factor in any part of website design. Just how important? While that does depend on your website and what you’re doing with it, the following covers the basics. If you’re planning on making your website faster, try talking with your Seattle website designer about whether or not that’s possible and what changes have to be made.
How Fast?
Studies show that around 40% of people will click the back button in their browser if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load. That means that your site should be under that cutoff. An additional study showed that every second of load time decreases your conversion rate by around 7%. So essentially, the longer your website takes to load, the fewer sales you are making. Google recommends that your load time be no more than 1.5 seconds, although you could definitely benefit from having faster load time.
Speed is More Important on Mobile
While Matt Cutts has specifically said that Google does not use a faster speed ranking factor for mobile than computers, it is true that mobile users expect websites to load faster. The majority of mobile users are looking for something to purchase rather than research, which means that they are often impatient, and on the go. In addition, some 60% of consumers who are using mobile devices for research make purchases within an hour, which means that optimizing your website for mobile speed could very well increase your sales.
Google’s guidelines suggest that a page should load in 1 second or less, which is a far cry from the average 7 seconds or more found on most mobile web pages. Why is optimizing for mobile speed important? Mobile traffic grew by 124% in 2013, as opposed to just a 12% rise in desktop and laptop traffic. There are plenty of ways to speed up and make your mobile website more search friendly, and your Seattle web design company can help you with all of them.
Improving Load Time
Unfortunately, there are a number of very complex issues that affect load time and unless you are a web developer you may need help. The basics to increasing website speed include the following:
- Reduce HTTP Requests
- Use a Simple Layout
- Combine Scripts & Style Sheets
- Minimize or Don’t Use Flash or Video Content
- Use Caching & Content Delivery Networks
- Minimize the use of Rich Media & Plugins
Your website hosting, servers, location, and bandwidth all affect your website speed as well, so you do want to make sure that your hosting is up to the task. If all of your visitors are coming from Seattle, you also want to make sure that you are hosted locally to improve load times.
Want to know more about how your web speed affects traffic, SEO, and sales? Contact us at RoryMartin.com to find out what we can do for you.
Seattle SEO Tips – Calculating Your SEO Budget Using Anticipated ROI
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing, Social Networking on February 11, 2014
If you’re planning on starting an SEO campaign, or hiring a Seattle SEO company to do it for you, then you need to know how much you can afford to spend on it. Your anticipated ROI (return on investment) is the easiest way to make that decision because it shows you how much you can expect to make in return. Unfortunately, you cannot estimate exactly how much you can earn, but you can find your anticipated ROI, which is how much you should make.
Finding your Average ROI
To find your anticipated ROI, you have to know a few things about your website.
- How Much Traffic Do You Get Each Month?
- How Many Sales Do You Make Each Month
- How Much Does Each Sale Generate in Profit Revenue
These questions are a little more complex than they seem at first, especially because sales and value do vary depending on the item. For example, if you have 200 items varying between $1 and $200 each, then your value per sale can fluctuate a great deal. However, if you make 500 sales per month and earn $17,500 then your average value per sale is a median of $35. While this might vary per month, you can also do it per year. If you made $210,000 in sales in 2013, and roughly 6,000 sales, then your average sale value is still $35. For traffic, try using Google Analytics, or your analytics program of choice.
Profit Revenue is important because it suggests how much you actually make rather than perceived profit. If you’re only raising the price of your items 40% up from what you’re spending to make them then your profit off of $210,000 in sales is only $84,000.
Finally, you have to calculate your average conversion rate. If you have an average of 7,000 visitors per month and make 500 sales per month, then you have a 7.14 percent conversion rate.
How to Use Your Anticipated ROI
If you use the numbers listed above:
7,000 visitors = 500 sales = $17,500 = $35 per sale with a $14 profit off of each sale
Then you could estimate that if you drive 100,000 visitors to your website with a 7.14 percent conversion rate, then you could theoretically drive 7,139 sales. At the same profit margin rates listed above, that would make for $249,865 in generated sales or $9946 in actual profit. So, your SEO budget would have to be $9,900 or less in order to break even.
Because you want ‘ROI’, return on investment, rather than breaking even, your SEO budget should be around $5,000, which is where most good SEO campaign managers start their prices. Of course, you can scale up or down depending on your budget, your goals, and your ROI. Plus, if your sales generate around $100 in profit, you have to push far fewer sales in order to get a positive ROI.
Variables
One important thing to remember about SEO is that it can drive a great deal more traffic than estimated. You don’t always ‘get what you pay for’, because while 100,000 people might click on your website, the same could be said of 500,000 people. In addition, sometimes SEO depends on other factors, such as Google updates, competitors, and current ranking. If you want a real estimate of what your Seattle SEO manager can do with your budget, make sure that you talk to them first.
Integrating Global Search Into Your Seattle SEO Campaign
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization on February 4, 2014
International SEO is one of the most effective ways to reach a global market, even if you are already successful with your local SEO. While international SEO is not right for everyone, it does provide search-marketing results on a global scale, meaning that your products and services are exposed to people from around the world. While international SEO is an extremely complex process and can take years to set up effectively, the following includes a few quick tips to get you started with integrating an international campaign into your localized Seattle SEO tactics.
Domain
There are two basic routes for setting up a domain for international SEO. These include using a basic URL (typically a .com) or choosing a top-level domain (TLD) for the country (such as a .de for Germany). These are Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) and Country Specific Top Level Domains (ccTLDs). You probably already have a gTLD, because that is typically a .com. This type of domain can and will come up around the globe and is therefore ‘generic’. gTLDs have a number of pros including that they make SEO campaigns easier. One domain means one campaign, and ranking for a .com in France increases the ranking in Germany, meaning that your current sucessful campaign will boost your international results. The only catch is that you have to create subdomain language folders, but we’ll get to that later. It’s also considerably easier and more affordable for lower budget companies to take this route.
ccTLDs
Utilizing ccTLDs in an international SEO campaign means purchasing individual TLD domains per country. Unfortunately, that usually requires that you live there or have a registered address or office there. Therefore, for example, Rorymartin.com might become RoryMartin.ge, or RoryMartin.ca. This is advantageous for a number of reasons including that each individual site is more likely to rank in its country and that local searchers are more likely to see the site as a local and trustworthy website. ccTLDs also allow marketers to utilize local hosting and servers, which sometimes benefits SEO, and sometimes benefits website loading speed. However, using ccTLDs is resource consuming in that it literally requires the owner to manage and keep up individual websites for each ccTLD. Essentially, you’ll need separate SEO campaigns, and very little cross-link value between sites. For this reason, ccTLDs are mostly only recommend for very high-budget campaigns.
Subdomains
Some marketers choose to use their ccTDL domains as subdomains. Essentially, someone from Germany could type in Rorymartin.ge and show up at Rorymartin.com. This has no real SEO benefit, but is beneficial for anyone who wants to advertise with a local domain.
Language Sub-Folders
Anyone using gTLDs rather than ccTLDs should take the time to create language subfolders. This can be done in a variety of ways including creating an individual folder for each language or creating a folder for each country. It is recommended to utilize the ISO language and country codes in the URL for the source files. For example:
Rorymartin.com/en
Others choose to include a country code, which can be represented in either a single file for country and language, or a dual file:
RoryMartin.com/ca-fr
RoryMartin.com/ca/fr
In this case, it is almost always best to create a single folder for country and language, rather than for both. In this case, the ‘correct’ subdomain would be ‘RoryMartin.com/ca-fr’ rather than dividing information between multiple folders. However, countries where you want to optimize for two languages would still require two folders.
/ca-fr
/ca-en
For the most part, it is better to choose one main language for the country and rank for that.
Focus on the Right Markets
Digital marketers know that choosing a market can be the most important part of any strategy, and that rule holds true with international SEO. While you could invest in creating an international campaign for every potential market, chances are that this sort of campaign is going to be far too expensive and difficult to upkeep. Instead, focus on creating a smaller campaign that you can easily manage and invest in. Quality is one of the more important ranking factors of SEO, and focusing on one or two prime markets allows you to focus on quality translation, markups, and URLs, rather than using a lower budget for more content. Lower budget marketers with global goals can consider creating international campaigns for specific high-potential markets first, and then moving on to new markets one the first sites are set up. For example, if you want to expand to Toronto, Berlin, and Paris from Seattle, then you would want to do so one city at a time, rather than all at once.
URLS
As with any other form of SEO, international SEO requires optimized URLS. In this case there are a number of different strategies you can utilize for language, localized, and internal SEO. As a rule, you should include the following considerations in any URL.
• URL should be in the same language as the page.
• Use hreflangs
• Avoid redirects, as they confuse the reader and Google
Hreflangs
Hreflangs are a confusing point to anyone not quite familiar with HTML or the more technical aspects of SEO, but they are an extremely important factor in international SEO. The HREF markup, as you may know, stands for ‘hypertext reference’ while the ‘lang’ stands for language. So a Hreflang is quite simply a hypertext markup that tells Google you are using another language and would like to rank this page for that language. Hreflangs are also useful for telling search bots that while the content is duplicated somewhere else, it’s because it is now in another language and intended to rank in another country.
<rel=”alternate” hreflang =”Fr” >
You should include a specific hreflang in the URL header for each alternate language page that you have. You do not have to use canonicals with hreflangs, and the hreflang already tells Google that the page is duplicate but in another language. Hreflangs are also important for pages with dialect changes, such as US to UK word changes.
Translation
Translation is an often-overlooked factor of international SEO but most search engines rank quality content over keyword optimization. For this reason, it is important to invest in quality translations no matter what the language. If you’re simply translating to other forms of English, such as British and Australian English, you can use a simple program like Microsoft Word to help. Otherwise, you most likely need a professional translator. Any translating software will have grammar or other errors that will affect search and reader satisfaction. For the most part, it is a mistake to use any sort of auto-translate or flash program on the page. You want an individual URL and individual pre-translated page for each country.
Keyword Research
Very few countries have the same keywords for the same topics, so it is important to research keywords for the country in question. Google’s Keyword Planner is an excellent free tool for anyone who wants to do keyword research by country. However, any keyword research software or tools that you currently use may also be appropriate. In most cases, international SEO requires the use of both language appropriate and English keywords. For example, someone in Germany may search using both English and German.
Linking
International SEO, like other forms of SEO, also requires a link building campaign. In this case it is important to create links from domains and websites that reflect the language and country location of the new domain. For example, anyone setting up a British version of their site would want inbound links from sites using British English, and hopefully with a .UK instead of a com.
How are you implementing your international SEO strategy?
Quick Tips for Improving Your Seattle Social Media Campaigns for 2014
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking on January 28, 2014
With an estimated 90% of small businesses on social media, it is becoming more important than ever to get yours going. Unfortunately, while more than three quarters of businesses do have social accounts, most have no idea how to utilize them to make sales and create customers. In fact, some 58% of social users claim to have difficulty driving engagement, let alone sales. So what are you doing wrong?
Localized Targeting
If you live and work in Seattle, then you would want to find local businesses that can offer local services. For example, there is probably a coffee shop near you. Chances are that if you go to their Facebook, they aren’t doing anything to target their specific audience, and if they are, they’re probably targeting Seattle, rather than their neighborhood. For example, a bakery located on Pike Place might advertise themselves as a ‘Seattle Bakery’ on their website. Unfortunately, this isn’t going to drive too much traffic because while ‘local’, Seattle is really big. Instead, that same bakery should focus on ‘Pike Place’ as their local domain, and use targeted keywords, hashtags, and interact with neighborhood pages and groups.
Don’t Over Promote
Promoting on any social is a fine balance of offering value alongside company promotions because no one wants to see post after post of “You’ll love our stuff – go buy it!”. Most Facebook and Twitter managers already have a pretty good handle on this sort of management, but most of the non-pros still have to catch on. Try interspersing your coupons and sales, and direct links with useful information like customer reviews, questions and answers, funny photos, and even contests. You’ll get a lot more interaction, and as a result, more business.
Demographics
Another increasingly common problem is that many businesses just want fans and don’t care where or how they get them. Unfortunately, if your likes and +1s aren’t in your demographic, you won’t be making any sales. Why not? Because if you’re primarily selling ballet shoes for toddlers then you won’t be making very many sales to single men aged 18-25. The point is that almost every type of business has a demographic, and that demographic is what you should focus on for your social. Finding and targeting your demographic is a huge part of a professional social media campaign because it increases sales, interaction, and ROI.
Non-Goal Oriented Posts
One of the biggest mistakes that you see in any social media campaign is that the majority aren’t goal oriented. While most of us realize that being on social is a good thing, and that it can make sales, we don’t understand the process quite enough. That’s where an established Seattle social media company like Rory Martin can help you, we can create and realize goals based on the capabilities of your business. Goal oriented posts are those that strive to get to a certain amount of sales, likes, or shares, so that you get a certain amount of ROI in return.
Do you want to know more about starting a localized Seattle social media campaign? Contact the experts at Rory Martin today to find out more, or to talk to one of our professional social media managers.
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