The transition from traditional marketing to digital is a tough one for businesses who are new to it. Many businesses compartmentalize the definition of digital marketing to the point where they miss out on the full advantage and benefits to their organization. When you are starting to craft where your business should be on digital, remember these important essential platforms.
Website
Every business should have a website and most definitely do. The problem is the websites are often outdated. What a customer expects to see is the latest design the responds to all their needs. It is a good idea to keep up with evolving website design trends, or speak with an agency that can continue to upgrade and design your website.
If you aren’t ready to invest in a website redesign, the first thing you can do to update your website to customer’s needs is design the flow of the text in such a way that it keeps people on your site longer. Cover exactly what your business does on the homepage in a way that grabs attention. Then list out prompts for visitors to explore other sections of your website. On each page, prompt the visitor to learn more or contact you to improve the chance your website will convert them to a lead.
Blog
A great way to keep your website current is to offer a blog. A blog can be updated every day, multiple times per week, weekly, every two weeks, or monthly to stay current. Not only does a regularly updated blog show you are vested in your digital marketing presence, but it also serves the needs of customer by offering advice or insight into the industry. Additionally, blog content can be repurposed for other digital marketing efforts without much extra work.
SEO
SEO is one of the most important things your business should do online. SEO stands for search engine optimization and regards a set of tactics and strategy your business performs to increase the way your business ranks on search engines. The higher you rank on search engines under a certain set of keyword, the higher chance your content will be seen by new customers.
The key to SEO is researching to find what keywords relevant to your business are being searched by customers. Then you put these keywords into your website, blog, and social media posts. All of these platforms are ranked as part of your SEO.
Social Media
When it comes to social media, your business should absolutely be there, but it depend on the nature of your business which specific platforms you should be present on. Let’s go over the main social giants and the common businesses that see success on them.
- Google+: Google+ is regarded by many as a ghost town. You have to be a huge G+ enthusiast and spend many hours there per day to see traction. However, every business needs to have a Google+ with SEO-ed content. This is for ranking on Google, the largest search engine. Google ranks businesses who have and use Google+ much higher than businesses who don’t. If you couple this use with keywords in your posts, you will see great SEO improvement.
- Facebook: Facebook is the perfect place for small to mid-size businesses with a heavy focus on local relevance. So if your business is restricted to a few locations in one central area, Facebook is the perfect place for you. Businesses who are B2C also do better on Facebook. The trick is the algorithm – Facebook will only show your content in the news feed if people have engaged with it in the past. If you are just starting out, you will need to run like our page ads and boost social posts to serve content to a larger audience that will interact with your page.
- Twitter: Twitter does better for businesses who are B2B and who are mid-sized or larger. Since Twitter is all about hashtags and the influencers who use them, you need to serve content that both your target audience and influencers in your industry will love using relevant hashtags and Buzzfeed-style language. This will increase your chances of content being seen.
- LinkedIn: LinkedIn does best for B2B businesses and certain B2C companies, such as car dealerships. This is for the business that wants a professional, suit-and-tie type presence online. Create a company page combined with a personal page strategy to connect with targets and spread your company message.