When small business looks for ways to attract new customers by joining the ever-expanding internet marketplace, it is important that special attention is paid to creating an internet presence that becomes a real resource for your customers. So far, the focus seems to be on creating a place on Social Media to realize the largest audience.
Sites like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and others will give you a platform for greater exposure to possible new customers but at the same time will give you a chance to make a meaningful connection. When your customer comes to depend on your site for valuable information, they will share that information with those they care about and you will have created a brand champion.
Let’s discuss some basic (but vital) ways in which we can best optimize your internet presence:
- Social Media Is King
Today the single best place to find a new audience is on the social media sites. At the same time, the search engines are taking notice and fine-tuning their algorithms to bring their ranking inline with the small business operations on the internet. Your website management team needs to be aware of the changes and updates so that they can better position you to achieve those sought-after high rankings.
- Make Connections
An area which seems to be forgotten as we focus on SEO, is the way in which you can connect your social media sites to increase your potential web traffic. Many will create accounts on a number of different platforms but never connect these various sites together. If a customer finds a post on Twitter, they will then be able to follow it to your Facebook page and on to your businesses website. By linking your accounts, your outreach is magnified.
- Analytics Are Very Important
While some find the tracking of incoming clicks to be tedious or unexciting, these statistics will be a very valuable tool for the website owner by pinpointing how your customers are finding you. This will enable you to better focus on the more productive areas. Make sure your website managers are utilizing any analytical tool that they can find.
- Keywords
Finding that special niche in your marketplace by the proper use of keywords, that have been determined to be the most effective, is like opening the door and letting the customers come streaming in, hungry to buy. Using the online keyword tools can sometimes result in too broad an arena. Find an expert that will go that extra mile to find all the variants and is continually fine-tuning your keyword strategy.
The final tip we want to pass on is one you may be very familiar with already. Content is still the best area in which to focus. A florist business is uniquely positioned to be able to offer fresh content almost continually. Images of your products and helpful and relevant blog content will practically guarantee that your online marketing efforts will result in success.
When you are ready to bring your website dreams to fruition, contact us and we will get started today!
You shall see plenty of businesses already in plenty of social networks in the web. They have already made an appearance with their presence. You shall plenty of them starting new accounts, as soon as a new social network is out.
Though it shall be good to engage with the community, having plenty of social media accounts, may actually bring down their level of activity. Most of them are starting accounts just for the sake of having an account at these social networks.
I totally agree as well with the both of you. This is especially true on Facebook where there are thousands of users just creating accounts and adding friends with no real objective.
I agree. Social media connection should be linked with all of our online marketing platforms and initiatives.
I have to disagree with this on a certain level. My neighbors own a plumbing business and they’ve hired all sorts of social media experts to handle this aspect of marketing for them. Unfortunately, it really hasn’t helped them at all. Practically all of their customers come from local newspaper ads, local tv ads, Craigslist, door-to-door flyers and word-of-mouth.
Social Media marketing is very time intensive, and can get very expensive if you hire someone else to tackle it for you. Before you make too much of an investment, you may want to find out where your customers are really coming from and expand upon that first.
I think it also depends on the nature of the business. You have to understand your market and analyze its internet habits and purchasing habits. Do they really look at internet as a buying platform?
It does depend on what kind of business you’re doing. Nevertheless, a good website where people can also find links to your social media pages is already a good start. If my customers would come from local newspaper ads and so on, I would focus on that. If you normally spread flyers, you could maybe add your social media page and launch a special promo, for example “Liking” your Facebook page or writing a review in return of a reduction … That way, your clients could bring in new clients if they are satisfied about your service.
Social media can be seen as a way to get traffic from sources other than Google. Additionally, social media has the ability to spread content in a viral way. I don’t think that search engine optimization has this particularity.
I agree with you on the fact that it is possible to connect with people on social media. It is also possible to do so with Google’s traffic. However, I think that social media makes it easier.
Finally I would add that analytics could help a business know what has worked and what hasn’t. Based on the stats, the website managers may decide to focus on things that have produced the highest number of leads.
It’s also nice to get away from Google a little. I mean we should diversify everything so why just depend on Google’s whims?
He may decide to release an update that hurts our business so shouldn’t we think like a business and take precautionary measures against such unplanned events?
I really like the connection between making a connection with your visitors on the social media platform along with making a connection amongst the actual platform. Most people visit one platform more than they do the others and will be relaxed to know you are involved with other networks as well that they may connect better with.
Well, we should be flexible in our marketing approaches. It should not be one approach only. We should make sure the approach we choose fits our target market.
I agree on tracking analytics. That is a very good point. A business needs to know where the traffic is coming from. That is especially true of social media. It takes time and energy to set up the social media; the business might even be outsourcing this. That is all the more reason to monitor the Web stats as frequently as possible especially since social media allows for instantaneous changes and shifts in strategy.
It seems to me that Pinterest might lend itself well to the floral business. But who knows really until a specific business tracks a specific link and/or image. Instagram might work better. Facebook might trump them all. If we don’t check the analytics we have no way of knowing.