Posts Tagged Social media
Seattle Social Media Marketing – Google Plus
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on April 11, 2014
If you’re like the majority of business owners then you have a Facebook and probably a Twitter, and if you’re on top of things, then you might even have an Instagram. Despite that, only around 5 million businesses worldwide use Google Plus. That may sound like a lot but statistics show that there are over 23 million small businesses in the U.S. alone. That means that less than 1/4 of the United States small businesses are using Google Plus, without even considering big businesses and corporations. Unfortunately, that could be a mistake on their part. Google Plus can be a huge part of your Seattle social media marketing, and you don’t want to miss out.
Google Local
Google Local is a powerful tool that Google offers to Google Plus businesses with a Page. Google Local essentially puts your business on the map in Google Search when you verify your address, sign up for Google Places, and make your page public. So, if you had a coffee shop in downtown Seattle, you would show up as a dot on the map whenever someone searched for coffee shops in the area.
Reviews
Google Pages allow users to review the pages, and these reviews show up in search. If you’re running a quality establishment and you encourage happy customers to go and leave you a review, you could build your potential new customers by increasing user based trust. Reviews show up in the form of stars next to search pages with Google Plus Pages, and you can be sure that this does increase click-through rates.
Hangouts
If you have any sort of product reviews, interviews, chats with customers, or similar that you would like to share on the web, the Google Hangouts give you the opportunity to do so. Hangouts on Air are live video chats that can include up to ten people with a single host, and then afterwards, they are saved onto the host’s page. They also show up in search, so you can continue to benefit long after the Hangout is over. Google Plus also integrates YouTube videos uploaded with the same account onto the same page.
Local Communities
On Google Plus, you can join and build local Communities by joining Communities, Groups, and Events. You can also create any of these that you choose and allow local people to join. Creating events allows you to promote specific items and have them show up on Google Calendar. Creating a community allows you to follow and track discussions, start conversations, and build hype around your business. Creating or joining groups gives you a place to share and promote your content with like minded people
There are dozens of reasons to join Google Plus and best of all, most of your competitors wont’ be on it. However, you can’t expect to join and get hundreds of followers. You’ll have to interact with your fan base, use hashtags, and promote it to your in-store customers if you want it to take off and truly benefit your business. If that sounds like too much work, consider hiring a professional Seattle social media manager to get the job done for you.
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.
Five Myths About Your Social Media Marketing That You Can Ignore
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on July 18, 2013
If you’ve been listening to what everyone has to say about your SMM, then think again. There are plenty of social media marketing myths out there, and some of them could actually hurt your strategy if you pay attention. If you’ve hired a social media marketer, this probably isn’t an issue, but if not, you can at least see what you’re doing wrong.
#1 Older Customers Don’t Use Social Media – This myth is incredibly wrong. In fact, the fastest growing demographic on Twitter is 55-66, while the fastest growing on Facebook is 45-55. If you haven’t been using your social because you have an older clientele base, then you have to think again. Older people are moving to social media and mostly to Facebook and Twitter. Remember to balance out your content and posts and try to aim them towards your chosen demographic.
#2 More Posts Means A Better Campaign – While this myth can be true if you are on Twitter, and more posts equates to ‘more interactive posts’, the myth is almost 90% false. For the most part, your fans would rather see quality over quantity. Focus your efforts to a handful of posts per day on your Facebook and Google +. You can post more frequently on Twitter, but remember that no one wants to see you retweeting the same things. Instead, try to get more interaction with your posts so that more people see each individual post.
#3 You Should Join Every Social Network – While this might be beneficial if you have a huge team of social guys and a wide customer demographic, it’s mostly a waste of time. You should most likely restrict most of your efforts to three to five social networks. Your core networks should be Facebook, Twitter, and Google +, with Instagram and Pinterest being additional options if you sell items, blog, or have a lot of cool photos. Other than that, you don’t really need any other networks. For example, LinkedIn has a very low percentage of active users and unless you are hiring, might not be hugely beneficial.
#4 Every Post Should Be About Your Company – Most people get bored if you only talk about you. If all they ever see are your products, your services, and your information they might leave your page. Part of your social media marketing strategy should be to engage and entertain your customers. If this means sharing the occasional funny photo (related to your page), and posting helpful information and tips, then so be it. What is a great idea for engagement? Offer to answer questions live on your Twitter, Facebook, or Google + once per week if you have the time.
#5 Social Media Marketing Doesn’t Have a Good ROI – A lot of people are under the mistaken idea that social media marketing offers no return on investment. While there have been some historic cases of companies dumping money into advertising programs to grow their fan base, you can usually see direct results of social efforts. Statistics show that companies who use Twitter average twice the leads than those who do not, every 1,000 Twitter followers usually equates 6% more website traffic, and more than 50% of companies using Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn for marketing have acquired customers from it. Considering that the cost of advertising per lead is lower for SMM than for any other form of marketing, you have a winner!
Sometimes the only way to succeed with a social media marketing campaign is to bring in the pros. Check out our social media marketing services to find out what we can do for you!
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.
Put a Public Face on Your Social Media Strategy
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Networking on November 27, 2012
Here at RoryMartin.com, we talk a lot about branding as part of a good social media strategy. At a very basic level, branding is about how we want a potential customer to feel, and what we want them to think, when they see our company out and about – in advertising, on Twitter, being interviewed…
Being interviewed? How can a ‘company’ get interviewed?
When it comes to branding there is one school of thought which believes that people are more likely to connect with a person, than with a faceless corporation. You will most likely agree with this theory, but it’s probable that you will also have ‘good’ feelings when you see a Coca-Cola advert. Of course, Coke have millions of dollars to spend on advertising and marketing, and their branding is all pervasive.
Small to medium companies with rather smaller budgets for getting their brand in front of people may benefit from having a spokesperson or public face of the company. This way, a company can go the usual branding route with online networking and information dissemination but also send their public face out to meetings, networking events, and conferences to relate to potential customers on a personal level. Having a spokesperson, who is represented as an expert in their field, also provides the opportunity for guest-posting, and being interviewed!, on other industry blogs and websites, which then creates link-backs to the company website, as well as positive feeling towards the spokesperson, and therefore the company.
There can be a downside to have a public face on a company, however. Firstly, what if they were to leave the company! Some fashion companies have avoided this by having anonymous public faces, such as @OscarPRGirl who ‘reports’ from inside Oscar De La Renta, and which could be authored by anyone. Secondly, the public face on a company should live according to the company’s ethos at all times when they are in public. As a representative of the brand, it would be hugely detrimental for them to be found acting in such a way as did not represent the brand. This is ultimately quite a responsibility.
What do you think? Do you have a public face for your company? How has it worked for you? Have you ever had any problems with this marketing route?
Make Your Keywords Pack a Punch
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization on June 28, 2011
Keywords play a large role in search engine optimization, and are a key factor in social media marketing. Having the right combination of keywords will generate hits, increase traffic and drive sales; however, it’s not always easy to determine which keywords are right for you, and where your keywords aren’t packing a punch. At Rory Martin, we specialize in helping business come up with relevant keywords that drive traffic to their site. We do the research so businesses don’t have to.
– Ask yourself: What would my customers search for?
This seems relatively easy enough. If a customer would find your services by searching “freelance writer Los Angeles”, put that on your list. Your keywords might be words your competitors use or words that are industry specific. Think up simple terms and phrases that specifically target your site or business, but know that using one word is going to decrease the likelihood that your site will stand out in a crowd.
You will get higher search engine ranking by choosing a mix of specific longer phrases, and general targeted keywords. Look at the breakdown of search terms as they show up on Google:
|
Number of Google Matches |
Term |
|
11,600,000 |
writer |
|
1,200,000 |
real estate writer |
|
48,000 |
freelance real estate writer |
|
9,000 |
freelance real estate writer los angeles |
Source: WebsiteHelpers.com
You’re going to have an easier time getting click throughs if you narrow it down a little – by adding your location, but be cautious about being too specific. For example using “Neon Helmet Tacoma WA” won’t drive people to your site. Phrases that are just too specific may offer you the #1 slot on Google, but still won’t deliver the clicks you’re looking for, because they’re not keywords that people would search for. Ranking #1 on terms that nobody is searching for is just as bad as ranking #300 for terms that everybody is searching for. You can’t get the traffic if people aren’t using your search terms, no matter how well you’re ranked.
When you have a list of possible keywords, check out tools like Google’s Keyword Tool, that will help you determine whether or not people are actually searching for those keywords, by populating a list of terms related to the keyword you entered. Look for targeted keywords, and specific phrases that are relevant to your business and your industry.
Search Engine Optimization through keyword analysis is one of the most effective ways to increase targeted traffic to your web site. At RoryMartin.com, we put our Seattle Search Engine Optimization experts to work to research your target audience, determine what keywords they are searching on, and then make sure, through proven search engine optimization tactics, that your web site is the one they find.
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, RoryMartin.com can help you build a Social Media Strategy that reflects your unique brand and meets your business goals. From a one-time site analysis to full search engine optimization strategy and execution, RoryMartin.com can help match your keywords to your SEO needs.
Create the Best Copy for Your Website
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing on June 17, 2011
There are a lot of tips out there on how to create effective copy for your website – especially for businesses who maintain a blog, regarding their services. Of course, these guides may be incomplete and often overly general. Fortunately, we’ve written down our favorite tips for generating effective copy that will drive traffic to your site, showing your business’s authority in your industry.
– Make sure your content is easy to read.
Keyword stuffing, technical jargon, and long-winded posts are often indicators of poor copy. These problems will make your website’s copy hard to read, especially since most web users scan web pages rather than read them word for word. To make your content easy to read, try using fewer words, simple terms, highlighted keywords, and bulleted lists. Another tip – try writing in inverted pyramid style, like you’d find in a newspaper. Try writing your conclusion first, then back it up with the details.
– Your copy should reflect your audience.
Be familiar with your audience – is there a common tone or style of writing that your audience expects to see? Think about how you’d tell someone about your product in a conversational way – you’re giving your reader tips (tips from Me to YOU). Highlight the benefits (not the features) of using your product. Include answers about what the product does. Write for how people will search for your page, using words your target audience would use to look for your services. Offer solutions, be entertaining and informative, grab your readers’ attention, use bold (but not cheesy) headings and brief explanations. And don’t just rely on keywords – use words that elicit emotion and action from potential customers.
– Avoid dense copy with no breaks.
Smaller chunks surrounded by white space are visually easier to digest. The use of effective headings is one great way to break content into chunks, using boldface type for emphasis. When using headings remember a few things: keep them to eight words or less; include important keywords; avoid the use of adjectives and prepositions (and, a, the, of); be clear and concise, avoiding wordy, wishy-washy phrases. Headings are great because you can place them on your homepage as a link to content, or use them in title tags around your links.
– Don’t let your website become a dead end.
Offer links to other information in your industry, and build relationships so that other sites link to you. Often, search engines like Google are based on their ability to find you from links on other sites. The web is all about being inter-linked.
– If you’re stuck, hire a professional.
RoryMartin.com has a team of Seattle Search Engine Optimization and keyword experts who can help you draft engaging copy that reaches out to your audience. We help clients educate their markets and build brand awareness while winning and retaining customers with engaging and impactful websites and web marketing.
RoryMartin.com, a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, can help you build a strategy that speaks to your audience and puts your business on the map.
Make an Impact on Facebook
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing, Social Networking on June 15, 2011
One of our focuses at Rorymartin.com is helping customers create and execute their social media campaigns. An effective social media campaign should be married with your marketing campaign, and should use a wide variety of social media tools – including Facebook. Facebook is one of the most useful social media marketing tools out today; yet many businesses don’t quite know how to implement Facebook into their social media strategy. One key point to Facebook as a social media tool for business is building interactions.
Initially, Facebook didn’t offer pages, and so businesses created profiles as a way to reach out to users, especially since messaging users has continued to remain a feature reserved for profiles. Yet, one of the most common mistakes businesses make on Facebook is creating a profile instead of a Facebook fan page. What these businesses may not know, is that profiles have not been as visible and don’t necessarily get the visits that pages do. While Facebook updates may seem like a way to alert fans to events and news – showing up like messages in users’ inboxes – a very small percentage of updates are actually visible to fans, because of an algorithm called EdgeRank.
EdgeRank gives every post a quality score – measuring the number of comments, likes, and shares per post against the number of fans a page has. Businesses who want to be seen need to build up their EdgeRank, by making their posts interaction friendly – which means businesses need to spend more time building community with their fans. Fans don’t interact with self-promotion nearly as much as they interact with conversation. Your page needs to have a conversational, community feel – a give and take that makes your brand appealing to your fans and their friends. To really optimize your Facebook experience, mix up the types of posts to include blogs, videos and engaging questions.
Building the interactions your Facebook page is just one part of a good social media strategy. Seattle Social Media Marketing company, Rorymartin.com focuses on helping our customers build their EdgeRank. This helps our clients educate their markets and build brand awareness while winning and retaining customers with engaging and impactful websites and web marketing. We offer a comprehensive set of services from website design and web development to search engine optimization and search engine marketing and social media marketing.
The Periodic Table of SEO
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization on June 10, 2011
We found something cool today – from the folks over at SearchEngineLand, who say:
Search engine optimization — SEO — may seem like alchemy to the uninitiated. But there is a science to it. Search engines reward pages with the right combination of ranking factors, or “signals.” SEO is about ensuring your content generates the right type of signals.
They put together the Periodic Table of SEO to help readers get a visual idea of what goes into producing the right ranking factors that make your website shine. At Rory Martin, we take all the factors into consideration when we’re building a strategy for SEO, online marketing and social media management. Since we often talk about how important SEO and Keywords are to your website’s value, we figured you (our readers) would be interested in this graphic too! (Click the image for a larger view)
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, RoryMartin.com is dedicated to helping you find the right tools to optimize your website, and bring you the most exposure to help your business succeed.
Trend Forecast: Social Media’s Immediate Future
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on June 7, 2011
There are big trends happening in Social Media right now, from the use of scanned location check-in points, to social commerce. It can be hard to navigate the trends but we’ve compiled a few of the most common themes into 3 predictions on where social media is headed in second half of 2011.
Social, Mobile Entertainment –
Games have moved onto mobile devices, now that smartphones are relatively inexpensive, prevalent and readily available. Social media is giving users a way to take their entertainment on the go. Now instead of filling out a crossword while commuting, you may use Words With Friends. Or you might make a game out of being in the right place at the right time through Foursquare – ousting your friends, and letting people know where to find you. It’s a way to stay connected with other users while managing a busy lifestyle, from Facebook gaming to sharing last night’s football or Mad Men highlights over Twitter, even watching YouTube videos via an Android application. It’s entertainment to go, and integrating more social technology into your business and website will make it much more appealing to social media users.
Scanning, Scanning, Scanning –
When you’re using check-in services like FourSquare and the Facebook places application, you may be able to scan a barcode or QR code, checking you into your location on relevant social sites. With the emergence of social scanning, it’ll only be a matter of time until you can scan a barcode, which adds a “Like” to the business’s Facebook Page, or pulls up the latest Yelp Reviews and Groupon coupons for the location you’re at. It’s a business strategy – integrating social media and marketing in an easy-to-use way.
Mobile Workplace –
As smartphones become better and faster, we’re seeing users move from laptop to mobile (as desktops have been pushed out of the way for smaller, lighter ways to work-on-the-go). This means websites need to plan for mobile content that will load quickly on a mobile network. Businesses should start looking for ways to accept mobile payment, and will have to consider dynamic pricing to keep up with supply and demand. And since smartphones often double as media storage devices, it won’t be hard to keep your PowerPoint presentations handy for your next business meeting.
These are a few of our predictions for the coming year – companies will want to work these trends into their social media marketing strategy. At RoryMartin.com we do the research on tips, tricks and tools of the trade when it comes to SEO, online marketing and social media management. As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, RoryMartin.com can help you build a Social Media Strategy that reflects your unique brand and meets your business goals.
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