Five Web Design Elements E-Commerce Entrepreneurs Can’t Afford to Ignore
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on February 14, 2013
If you’re in the business of e-commerce then your website is your biggest advantage. Whether you choose to work with Seattle web design companies like Rory Martin, or to attempt to do everything yourself, you have to know what works in an e-commerce site, and what sends people running. E-commerce is all about conversion which means your site has to load quickly, use converting text, and have plenty of easy to view and load images. You can also choose to use an e-commerce platform like ZenCart or a big e-commerce manager like Big Commerce, but your web design elements matter as well. Here are five elements that your Seattle web designer should be including in your website, and why.
Social and Email Integration
Today is a world of social and if yours is not integrated into your site, you might be missing out on one of your biggest marketing opportunities. Try integrating an email signup box offering a small 5-15% discount on either a single product or a purchase over a certain amount of money. You do not want to choose anything that would make you lose money, but you do want it to be enough to act as an incentive for signing up or liking you on your social. Include a Facebook ‘likes’ box, and allow people to easily follow you on Twitter. You can then utilize email, and social account to share special deals and sales, as well as to drive attention towards new products which is essentially free advertisement.
Efficient Search Options
Some ecommerce websites convert as much as 16% of their traffic into sales. Others only convert 1 to 4%. While there are a lot of variables involved in the difference, one of the biggest is an efficient search bar. If your customers cannot find what they are looking for, they cannot make a purchase. Including a sophisticated search bar in your website and then properly tagging all of your products can make a huge difference to your sales conversion.
Reviews
While it is true that reviews can be a bit double edged at times, most experts agree that you are better off including them. Try including the option to review an item, and then send a reminding email after the item has been confirmed as delivered. Many people are more likely to purchase an item if it has reviews, even if those reviews aren’t always five-star. In fact, having 3, 4, and 5 star reviews is more likely to sell a product than having only 5 star reviews because it looks more real.
Include Chat
If you don’t have the time to run and manage, or to pay someone, to manage a chat service, then you might want to do without. However, a study in 2012 showed that 76% of customers feel better about purchasing a high value item if they could chat about the product first. If you have your Seattle web designers integrate chat make sure that it is not offensive and does not pop up automatically, and make sure that someone who knows about your products is running it.
One Page Checkout
While it is true that many websites do require you to go through five or more pages before reaching checkout, you can convert as much as 20% more sales if you offer one page checkout. In fact, by simply not requiring your users to sign up, (no registration before sales) you can increase conversion by 23%! Make sure your checkout options are as fast and easy as possible in order to convert the most sales! What does your Seattle web design include? If it doesn’t include any of these important elements, you might want to consider hiring someone to add them in for you! The right website can increase your sales and conversion up from that low 1-4% and into the top of the charts at 16% or higher!
Seattle Social Media Tips: Five Ways to Get More Facebook Interaction & Conversion
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on February 11, 2013
Facebook is the largest social network on the planet and despite the lure of many other social sites including Twitter and Pinterest, Facebook consistently shows the highest social media conversion in recent years. With more interest generated per post, more follow back and interaction with links, and generally just more driven traffic, businesses cannot afford to ignore Facebook as an important marketing tool. But with recent Facebook changes, it can be difficult to get the interaction that you need. These Seattle social media tips are designed to help you optimize your posts to get the most interaction.
1. Be Human
‘Being Human’ might be the name of a popular television show, but it is also something that many Facebook business users forget to do. In the rush to convert traffic and sales, many businesses only post about themselves, expect without giving anything back, and in general simply share everything from their website in the hopes of driving traffic. Statistics have proven time and time again that this strategy (if it can be called a strategy) simply does not work. Facebook users respond the best to interactive, communicative, and personal posts. While you shouldn’t necessarily post about what you had for breakfast or what your child’s favorite color is, you should post about your opinions, talk about why you’re posting something, and give people a personal reason to look at or do something.
2. Ask Questions
It is a truth that people respond to questions, so make sure you ask them. Whether you are asking about someone’s day or asking about what features or products your fans would like to see on your site you will still increase interest and conversion. Questions lead to answers which lead to more people seeing your page, possibly liking your page, and maybe clicking on your website.
3. Post as Few Links as Possible
As counterproductive as it might sound, you shouldn’t post a lot of links to your Facebook page. In fact, Facebook is limiting how many people see links on your page unless you pay to promote them. If you do not have a large budget to promote your links, you should consider simply posting links rarely. Having a great deal of content on your page that has only been seen by 11% of your following can be bad for your social media ranking because it shows poor conversion rates. Posting more solid content including photos which many people will see is more beneficial to your page and your site. Conversely, you can post about something on your site and then link to it later in comment discussions without suffering viewing penalties.
4. Your Facebook Page Uses SEO Too
Most people do not realize that Facebook pages utilize SEO as well as their website. While individual posts do not use SEO and do not normally come up in search, Facebook pages and page notes do come up in search on Facebook’s new Graph search as well as Bing, Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. Utilizing basic SEO rules including optimizing names and descriptions can help increase page conversion directly from search. You can check SEOMoz for professional tips on the subject.
5. Post Frequently
Posting frequently and regularly is important for any sort of interest and conversion, so ensure that you post on a regular schedule. For the best results, utilize a free social media helper such as HootSuite to send out posts at specific times. Statistics show that weekdays after 4 PM tend to get the most hits, so ensure that you try to post something right around then.
While there are a lot of rules to optimizing your posts for Facebook, these quick Seattle social media tips should get you started in the right direction. Remember that a genuine post is more important than not posting at all, and if you don’t have anything else to post, you can always share relevant content from another page to help build a relationship with another Facebook user.
What Your Web Design Really Says About Your Business
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on January 29, 2013
There are more than 664 million active websites in the world and that number is rapidly growing each minute. In 2011 alone, website statistics nearly doubled, flooding the web with millions of new sites, all competing for the same thing, traffic. That growth continued into 2012, and is expected to grow even more throughout 2013. Local Seattle web development has been growing too; with more than 97,000 active businesses in Seattle alone, the number of local websites is literally enormous. If you don’t stand out from the crowd, or your website sends the wrong message, you could be losing out on that fight for traffic and customers.
Your website is like the cover to a book and like that book, people will judge you by its cover. From the colors to the design, your website gives your traffic an initial impression of what to think about you. A sloppy design will obviously send them running, while a thoughtful or spacious one might intrigue them.
Color
Did you know that color is often used to represent an emotion, feeling or thought? For example, blue is used for honesty, courage, ocean, and calm. Bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, travel sites, and even doctors often use this color. Red on the other hand is linked with passion and fire, warmth, emotion, and creativity, but also with danger. Pink is linked with romance, love, cute, girls, motherhood and more. Yellow is linked to cheer, sunshine and children. If you haven’t considered what the colors on your site mean, you should definitely think again. Having an experienced web developer choose colors for your site based on brand image, and style might improve your public perception more than you think.
Design
A sloppy design is obviously bad but did you know that a busy or overly cluttered one can send a band impression as well? Studies show that overly cluttered websites are often considered to be spam as this is a tactic spam sites often use. Go for simplicity and allow a smaller amount of content to have greater impact. If you have a lot of content, create multiple pages, don’t put your bio, an order form, and your company history right there on your home page.
Do you feature your products or information on the home page? If not, do first time visitors know what it is you sell? Unless you have a store or e-commerce site your home-page shouldn’t look like an order form, but it should let people know what it is you do, and why they want to click another page to make an order or to contact you.
Content
Your content includes everything from your written content to photos on the site. As you might have guessed, these have a great deal of impact on what your visitors think about you. If you have grammar errors, overly stuffed keywords, or haven’t updated your content in years, you might have problem.
With photos, you should choose images that reflect your business and what you do. If stock photos are appropriate than you can by all means choose to go with these, but you might also want to consider hiring a photographer and having them capture images that are unique to you and your business. Seattle web development is on the rise and companies around the city are creating, updating, and managing their websites. If you want to compete, your website has to send the right message to your customers or clients.
Build Your Web Presence in 2013 with Social, Website, and Blog
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on January 25, 2013
Your web presence is important for marketing and selling your business or content, but many Seattle web developers don’t give enough thought to how they appear, and how they interact on the web. Studies and algorithms now show that your web presence and social interaction could be one of the most important ways to come up in search, gain traffic, and attract new customers or clients. Here are a few tips from the experts at Rory Martin to help you build your web presence in 2013.
Social Helps with SEO and SMM
Your social media, no matter where it is, is part of your SEO and your social media marketing. While shared links on your social don’t exactly count towards your website page rank or your actual SEO, new results from Google show that shares, likes, comments, and discussions on your social all help to build your authority, which in turn enhances your search optimization. For example, a tweet that has been favorited and retweeted, and has the title and keyword in it, will actually show up in search when you look for your content. Sometimes social content will even appear above the original blog or webpage.
The more social interaction you have, the more attention you attract, not only from search engines but from the people who know the ones interacting with your content. If you want to build your social presence, you have to add targeted followers, interact with those followers, and make your posts interesting.
Is Your Website Optimized?
While search engine optimization isn’t quite as important as it used to be, you still need keywords and context that lets Google know what it is you are about, and what you want to come up in search for. If your website doesn’t explain who you are, what you are selling, and why they should be interested, you’re doing something wrong. Google now ranks websites by how helpful they are, how accurate the page is, and even takes grammatical errors into consideration.
But that’s not all. Web optimization in 2013 doesn’t stop at using keywords, you also have to optimize for maximum visitor interaction. If you can get a visitor on your home page to visit your blog and leave a comment, you’ve just dramatically increased your traffic interaction, and therefore your web presence. Integrating social with your website can help to improve conversion and grow fans, and that usually means making it easy to like, follow, or +1 your pages from your site.
Blogging for Traffic, Content & Interaction
Blogging has been a time honored tradition for increasing traffic volume, but it can also be used to enhance your web presence. Whatever you blog about, your blog will draw visitors, increase the SEO on your site, and of course, give you valuable content to share with your followers via social. A few tips to increasing blog interaction include asking opinions, talking about controversial or new subjects and ideas, covering two sides of a topic to make it more interesting, or approaching your content in a new and interesting way. There are plenty of ways that you can increase your online presence. Even with new Google algorithms and search rules, your Seattle web development and optimization can still help you to get traffic, followers, and interaction. Focus on being interesting, helpful, factual, and most of all, engaging if you want to build your web presence.
Seattle Web Design: Incorporating Your Brand into Your Web Concept
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on January 15, 2013
Building a brand for your company is important for customer recognition and marketing, but many Seattle web design companies don’t consider ‘you’, when they go to build your website. Your brand can be a deciding selling point for your customers no matter what it is you’re selling or doing, so we believe that it is an important factor in building any website. According to Forbes, no matter what you are selling, no matter what products you have, and how much your products change, your brand will remain the same and can remain ‘alive’ to your customers. Whenever multi-million or even billion dollar sales go down, the companies making the purchase are most often purchasing the brand rather than the products, as products can easily be duplicated and re-sold under another name.
So how do you incorporate your brand into your website? By using your brand in the colors, words, phrasing, images, and products, you can tell your customers and clients who you are, and why they should do business with you. Incorporating your brand is about incorporating yourself, and using that
What is a Brand?
Your brand is the recognizable image of your company. Whether through a certain logo or color scheme that you tend to use, the way you phrase things, or the way that you do business, you can build your brand into something that people recognize, and something that people want to buy. By using a logo, you enhance recognition, by using the same colors; you can associate colors and the emotions that go with them, with your business. By associating your brand with a well-known charity, you tell people that you care what happens to them. And by being associated with something bad, such as an oil-spill, you devalue your brand. Your brand could be called your public image in a way because it extends across all factors of your products, website, advertising and even social media. To build a good brand, you must remain consistent and helpful across all venues of your business. For example, if you are helpful via social, you have a great website, but poor customer service, your customers will likely first associate your customer service with your brand.
Incorporating Your Brand into Your Seattle Web Design
So how do you incorporate your brand into your website? Whether you’re building your first site, and a new brand, or redesigning an old one, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, a recognizable and likeable icon or logo is important. A logo allows your customers to recognize you from anywhere, no matter where they are, or how your logo is being used.
Second, your web copy is important. Talk about your products, but remember to also talk about you. Why did you found your company, what are your goals, what are some of the causes that you like to help? Do you have a history of high quality service? What about a huge number of customers? Mentioning that you have upwards of 50,000 satisfied customers is sure to go a long way towards increasing the value of your brand.
Did you know that colors will affect your brand as well? Blue is often used to evoke feelings of honor and loyalty, red of passion, interest, love, action, courage, and vitality; brown symbolizes stability, earth, ‘eco-friendly’, and so on. If you aren’t good with colors, make sure that the Seattle Web Design company that you hire will consider, research, and learn about your brand and your business before building your site.
Seattle Social Media: Utilizing Your Social to Find Customers or Clients
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Networking on January 14, 2013
Most people think of social media as ‘advertising’ ‘a waste of time’, or even, ‘an unfortunate necessity’, but did you know that you can use your local Seattle social media to find customers and clients who are actually interested in what you have to sell? While traditional advertising such as paying Google to post ads, or even paying a website to post ads can be effective, the new SEO, and the new advertising can be best used through social. But how do you use social to find your customers and clients?
Build a Targeted Following
Whether you’re looking for local Seattle followers, or international followers from around the world, you have to make sure they are targeted. Anyone can go around and add hundreds of followers in the hopes that they add them back, but those followers aren’t likely to be interested or active on your page. Instead, you should engage in a variety of techniques designed to help build your followers with people who are actually interested in your business. Whether you’re on Twitter, Facebook, or any of a number of other social sites, you should first focus on having a number of followers. This makes you attractive to potential followers.
From there, you should search followers via keywords and then keep checking back to see if they have followed you back. As a rule, the more followers you have the more that will follow you without doing anything. There are a variety of tools including Tweepi for Twitter, Buddy Media for Facebook, and a range of other websites can all be used to manage and follow or un-follow people.
Interact With Your Followers
Once you’ve got a following, you should concentrate on targeting and communicating with interested people. If you are planning on advertising and finding customers and clients via Facebook, it is more important that you decide how and when to add followers. Building a genuinely targeted following there is most important because you have no way to contact them other than via your feed and messaging system.
On Twitter, you can use hashtags to contact people looking for your services. For example, using #SeattleSocial in your hashtag on Twitter or Google + could target anyone looking for information or services on Social media in Seattle.
Make Sales or Find Clients
Making sales and clients via your social network is not always easy, and it’s not always a guaranteed method of sales. What you can do with your social is build interest by sharing your products and information in a way that appeals to your followers. Instead of just sharing your products, talk about them, ask questions; ask what people would like to see, show samples of your work, and interact with interested clients.
Retweeting and sharing similar products, or talking about how these products work together with your own can gain you a base of followers who like similar things, and being polite, informative, and helpful to people who contact you can help you as well.
While you might not get hundreds of customers from your Seattle social media strategy, you can certainly expect to find a few. A couple of things to keep in mind are that you should use semantic keywords in your posts, hashtags where applicable, and always make sure that your posts are public so that they can be found in search. Importantly, you will need a good social marketing plan, a good website or landing page, and products and services worth sharing. If your followers like what you share, they might just become your clients.
Seattle Social Media: 5 Reasons Google Authorship is a Must-Have for Any Blogging Website
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on January 12, 2013
Google Authorship is one of Google’s newer tools for authors, and one of the newest ‘SEO kittens’ available for site owners. With recent and forthcoming updates to Google’s search engine algorithm, Google Authorship is expected to be very important to blogging websites, and an integral part of Seattle social media optimization sometime in the very near future. So what are the benefits of Google Authorship, and how can you utilize it for your site?
Attract More Attention to Your Post in Search
The first and most obvious result of using Google Authorship is that you will eventually see a photo, a small bio, and a link to your Google + directly in search. While this might not seem like much more than a vanity point, consider two things. The first is that the post is bigger than any posts that do not have authorship, this immediately attracts more attention. Second, and most importantly, anyone looking for a quality article can see who wrote that article and that you are confident enough of its quality to put your name and your face on it. Google Authorship has sometimes seen as much as a 30% increase in click through rate based on impressions, meaning that you could be getting a lot more traffic just by adding your name and your face to your results in search.
Increase Author and Site Credibility
Not only are you putting your name on your post, you’re allowing Google to see what you are claiming. Based on your user reaction, the helpfulness and SEO quality of the blog, and of course, the amount of social media sharing you get, Google will ‘remember’ that you post good content, and start placing you higher in search. Readers can also see how many followers you have on Google +, a great indicator as to whether or not you deserve to be read.
Easily Access Statistics and Click-Through Rates
If you’re attempting to track your content to see click through rate, traffic, or even average position in Google search, there is literally no better tool than the Google Authorship statistics. Currently the tool is only accessible via labs (meaning that it may break, vanish, or disappear at any time), but it is well worth your time and effort to check out. Want to see for yourself? Log into your Google Webmaster Tools, click ‘Labs’ and then choose ‘Author Stats’.
Does Google Have a ‘Favorite’ Child?
It has been rumored in the past that Google has a tendency to ‘play favorites’ with its own content, so you might want to consider using Google + and utilizing Google Authorship with it for that reason. Google currently owns about 65-75% of internet search, meaning that of the estimated nearly 300 million internet users in 2012 at least 195 million used a Google search engine.
Benefit Your Local Seattle Social Media Optimization
Last year, Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam, talked about how a well ranked Google Authorship website might continue to place well in search, even if the site changes hands to someone who doesn’t worry quite as much about quality. But this doesn’t mean you should start being lax with grammar and content, instead, it means that once you have a reputation, you will keep it for some time. Google authorship allows you to build your SEO over time by simply posting great content and engaging with your readers, customers, or clients. Social activity involving your posts, sharing, number of clicks, and of course, your number of followers will all contribute to your ‘credibility’. With the many new changes to Google search engine algorithms, including the introduction of Penguin, Panda, and Google Authorship; you can’t afford to exclude this great tool from your Seattle Social Media optimization. If you have not set your Google Authorship up yet, you can find out how here.
Seattle Social Media: Four Easy Ways to Get the Most out of Your Google Authorship
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on January 11, 2013
Google Authorship is a relatively simple tool that uses rel-links to create a link back to your Google + profile, adding your photo and bio to the description of the post. The result is that you get a link back to your profile which will mostly help to increase your social sharing, and that readers can see who wrote the post, and how many people are following you. Seattle social media experts, including us, have begun using Google Authorship to integrate social and SEO. If you’ve already set up your Google Authorship, here are a few easy ways to optimize it for the best results.
Use a Clear Head Shot
A photo certainly does not sound like it might be important to a search engine, but in this case, it’s not Google you’re trying to please, it is your readers. While implementing Google Authorship has been shown to increase click through rate on a site by as much as 30% or more, you won’t see good results if you have a bad picture. For example, let’s say you created your Google + one night when it first came out, uploaded the first image you found on your computer and then left it at that. You don’t use Google + so it was never that important. Now that you’ve implemented Google Authorship, you can see a rise or fall in your traffic based on your image. Is it clear, professional, reflective of your business? Chances are that unless you are a professional comedian, you probably shouldn’t be making a face. Instead, try using a passport photo, smile, look professional, and make sure there is enough light.
Interact on Google +
Whether or not you like Google + or just have it out of necessity, you can increase your Google authorship optimization by interacting and engaging with users on Google +. Invite your friends to the social site, chat and interact with them, and always remember to share your content to your Google +. Leaving a personal message instead of a simple share also helps to increase conversion rates.
Check for Links
Did you know that a study last year of each website that had implemented Google Authorship showed that only 9% had actually linked back to their Google + profile? If you link to your content by confirming your domain email, ensure that you also add the site in the ‘Contributor’ section of your Google + profile. You should also use a Google + link using the rel-me and rel-author tags on your site. An author page should contain ‘rel-me’ and each post should contain he ‘rel-author’ in the biographical section of the post.
Set Yourself Up As a Professional in Your Field
Does your bio say absolutely nothing about what you do? If you spent the first few sentences in your Google + profile talking about your dogs, you might want to go back in and rewrite it. Try drawing attention to your area of expertise from the start rather than talking about it later. Google Authorship does not show the full bio in search, so you will be relying on those first few sentences to convince potential readers that you are indeed an expert in your field. Start off with what you know, and talk about your life later. For example, if you were an expert in Seattle social media, you would mention that in the first or second line of the post.
Seattle Social Media: What is Google Authorship (And How to Set It Up)
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on January 7, 2013
What is Google Authorship? And how does it affect your Seattle social media? Google authorship is a markup that you can insert into a blog or website to claim ownership, get extra stats, and use for a few interesting features. There have been many changes in recent Google search algorithms, and one of the biggest will soon be the implementation of authorship into search results. But first, let’s learn a little bit about Google Authorship itself.
Google Authorship uses a rel tag, which is part of HTML5. This tag can be utilized in author boxes, most web pages, blogs, and pretty much anywhere you can place content. Before you get started, make sure you have a Google + profile (it doesn’t matter if it’s active) and then proceed. If you don’t have the profile, you can sign up for free by creating or using your Gmail account.
Setting up Google Authorship
There are two ways to set up Google Authorship with a few special considerations if you have multiple people posting on your site. You should also use a clear headshot on your Google + profile (Google does not like their authors to be ‘companies’ so no logos if possible).
Method One: Use or set up an email account with the domain server that you have (For example info@RoryMartin.com) , then check to make sure each page of work that you intend to claim contains a clear byline (for example ‘Written by Rory Martin’) Check to make sure your byline name and your Google + profile are the same (I.E. you can’t use Rory Martyn and Rory Martin). Finally, visit the ‘Authorship’ page of Google and submit your email address, confirm it, and from then on, anything you publish on that page will automatically show up with your Google + photo in search.
Method Two: If you do not have an email with the domain you want to claim, you can use the Google authorship markup to claim the content as well. For this method you will need the link to your Google + profile to an individual page using the Google markup.
<a href=https://plus.google.com/109325933900468965289? rel=author>Rory Martin</a>
Edit the markup to include your Google + profile, and if you like, edit the tag, for example,
<a href=https://plus.google.com/109325933900468965289? rel=author>Rory Martin</a>
Minus the space, it would appear as
<a href=https://plus.google.com/109325933900468965289?rel=author>Rory Martin</a> <a href=” https://plus.google.com/109325933900468965289?rel=author”>Rory Martin</a>
Next, visit your Google + profile, click ‘Edit’ and scroll down to the ‘Contributor’ section. Add a link with a title to the site you’ve added your markup to, and you are all done. Websites who post work from multiple authors and who use an author bio box can actually include the markup in any author bio plugin that supports HTML5. This can save time because you won’t have to post the markup each time that person posts a blog.
Joomla: For Joomla sites you can choose to use an HTML5 reader, install a rich snippet reader, install author link, or edit your CSS ‘Written by’ to include the authorship markup. You could also directly modify the author link to any pages of individual authors to include the ‘rel=author’ markup. Not sure your rich snippets are right? Check them here with Google before posting them on your site.
What does Google Authorship Do for Your Seattle Social Media?
Social media helps drive traffic to and from your content, and as Google’s baby, Google + and therefore Google authorship are tools that you cannot afford to ignore. In the first eight months of authorship alone, more than 17% of Google search results for articles and websites consisted of pages with Google Authorship markups. Considering that during that time, Google Authorship was only being used by about 3% of web publishers, which shows a definite lean towards favoritism. If you want your content to come up in search, Google authorship is a great addition.
What else does Google authorship do? Each time your post shows up in search, it will have a link to your Google + profile, the headshot that you provided Google, and the number of Google + followers you have. You’ll also be able to view statistics for your work no matter where it is on the web. Logging into Google Webmaster Tools, going to ‘Labs’ and clicking on ‘Author Stats’ will take you to a dashboard where you can view everything from average views, to click through rate per article, per day! Essentially, Google Authorship helps your Seattle Social Media by allowing you to claim your content, increase traffic by giving it visibility and an author, and of course, great free stats that you can use to see how your content is doing.
Build your Network to Build your Business
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Networking on January 2, 2013
An article from Richard Branson on Entrepreneur.com suggests that when you’re starting a business, you should network early and often – saying that the first step on the road to business success is building a network. With LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ it’s easy to find avenues to launch, connect, and grow your business.
Not sold on the benefits of social for your business? Neither is Patty Azzarello, who says social media still can’t compete with face-to-face interactions as a way to build your business. Tell that to the thousands of small and online businesses who’ve seen their customer base grow as a result of solid social media campaigns.
So for the skeptics out there, and those who’ve embraced social media, here are a few tips to get the most out of your social networking efforts.
Find Your Target Audience’s Preferred Network.
Do you provide business-to-business product or services? Chances are that if you’re marketing a b2b solution, you’re not going to captivate your potential audience through Facebook. Look for groups, industry magazines, forums and trade shows, or relevant associations that will give you an avenue with clients, referrals, and prospects. LinkedIn is a great place to find groups of like-minded business people who are looking for product like yours.
If your clients are average internet users and not businesses, you may have a better chance marketing on Facebook, through a series of organic and paid posts that up your EdgeRank and build brand community.
The Elevator Pitch is Dead – Work on Your “Twit”Pitch.
Brevity has been built right into Twitter – and because of that, attention spans may be shorter. Consider this when thinking up your pitch strategy, and don’t be afraid to get a little creative. You need something that will grab your client’s attention, but you only have a few seconds to do it. This is why we say the “Elevator Pitch is Dead”.
Some great examples of Twitpitches are:
@hackycatapp: “Hackycat. It’s like hackysack but with cats.” – The pitch is for an iOS game, and the pitch is dead on.
@42goals: “A simple tool for tracking personal goals and daily activities”
@garmz: “Enable fashion talent. You design fashion, we provide the rest.”
Create a Connection.
One of the biggest complaints in social is a lack of engagement. Engagement should be handled in one of two ways. Ideally, you’ll create compelling content that motivates users to respond because your content triggered some visceral feeling. More often than not, this is not the case – especially if you’re in the habit of creating content for content’s sake, or if all your messages are a sales pitch. Put your best message out there – and focus on thoughtful, but not continual/needy contact. Remember, your agenda isn’t the point of networking through social media channels. The point is to create connections, to engage those connections, and to gain collaboration, not just another sale. This is especially important in business-to-business networking where your point of contact probably has 20 pitches flooding their email each day.
You’ll need to be crafty with your content if you’re a new business on the web – your authority is based on your content and connections.
Overall, be yourself, and find a way to humanize your business.
Got any tips for networking through social?
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