Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google, recently wrote a LinkedIn Influencers article stating social media is still well behind organic search and email for customer acquisition. He uses U.S. data, but his findings are worth noting for other countries. Organic search outperformed the combined results of Facebook and Twitter by over 15%. Also impressive, email marketing outperformed the social networking duo by 6%.
In Avinash’s own words, “Email Still Rocks! Social, Surprisingly, Stinks!” Does this mean your company should abandon posting and tweeting altogether?
Social media may not be the best at customer acquisition, but it is useful in other ways. Social media is an inbound marketing channel that allows you to connect with people interested in your company, and in the process, brand your company image and voice. Social media also helps retain existing customers by allowing conversations to continue well beyond the point of sale.
It is, and will be, an important part of your internet marketing. What I’m going to argue in this blog is that you should not invest your hard earned cash in social media (pay a marketing agency to do it) BEFORE your company has these 3 things mastered.
1. An Awesome Website
Before you invest money into social media, your website needs to have a GREAT user experience. Based on your website, people are going to make snap decisions before they know anything about your company. The difference between an awesome website and a dud is obvious to anyone who is scouting different competitors.
Let’s use two Vancouver carpet cleaning companies as an example. Both were listed on the front page of Google for my search query, but which one would you hire?
Website 1
The first websites understands what the user is looking for. Everything you want to know is there in plain site. If you want to schedule an estimate you can do it from the homepage. If you want to give the company a call, the phone numbers right there. Along with the easy navigation, the sites visuals are bright, colorful, and engaging. Let’s say you still have your doubt, would the 79 customer reviews with an average rating of 5 stars help sway your thinking?
Looking at the 2nd website is like day and night, or in this case, awesome and average. There is a list of company information and not much else. Without reading Granville Carpet Cleaning Co. in the top left corner, is there anything that distinguishes this as carpet cleaning company?
In many cases, the objective of your marketing will be to direct users to your website so that they can learn more about your company. Not having a good website is like asking friends over for dinner and then serving them Kraft Dinner.
Inspect your website for these 5 things to ensure a great user experience:
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Quick load times – Load times should be nearly non existent. If they're not, don’t be surprised when your bounce rates increase.
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Easy to use site architecture – Site offers should be within 3 clicks your sites homepage. Make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for;.
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Unique content on each page - When someone increases the time spent on your site they should be continuously fed new and useful information - not more of what they already know.
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Zero errors - Site errors can be your achilles heel if you don’t spot them quick enough. Fortunately, there are many free web tools to help you with this
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Responsive web design - It shouldn’t matter if someone is visiting your site on their phone, tablet, or PC, the user experience should be equally great on all of them.
The last bullet point is very important. A responsive website will automatically adjust to fit the devices screen size. Creating a responsive website is beyond the scope of this article, but what I can recommend is using responsive WordPress templates as an easy to do solution.
Providing a great user experience is not only great for pleasing visitors, but as you probably already know, user experience is a big ranking factor for Google and other search engines.
Leading to the next point...
2. Targeted SEO
SEO can be a massive topic, so let’s start with some questions.
Do you know how search engines operate with crawlers and page indexes? Are you drawing attention to your site with the right long tail keywords, meta-descriptions, and image alt tags? Are high quality sites linking to yours?
If you know the answers to these questions, thats great, you’re ahead of the game. If this sounds like a foreign language, don’t panic. Like everything, you can get better at SEO with practice.
I highly recommend reading the Moz Beginners Guide to SEO for those readers who are just getting started with SEO. Even if you already have a basic understanding, the Moz Beginners Guide will serve as a great refresher.
Once you are familiar with the basics, you will begin recognizing the necessary changes you need to make to your website on your own, You will also be aware how important great content is for visibility of your site on search engines.
Some of you may believe that social media is the best way to create content, but this is only partly true. The best way to create great content is not with social media, it’s with a company blog.
3. Blogging
Behind all great SEO, and great social media, is great CONTENT. Content is King, Content Rocks, Content is Everything!... You’ve heard it all before, and yes its true. Your company blog should be a primary source for that content.
Don’t let a typical response from many small business owners, “My business isn’t interesting enough to blog about,” hold you back from blogging. It may be typical, but it’s in no way true.
One of the most successful company bloggers out there is Marcus Sheridan. He built a marketing empire by writing informative and entertaining blogs about fiberglass swimming pools. Not exactly the most thrilling of topics, but he made it work with great results.
If you need more incentive, don’t take it from me, here is a list of the Benefits of Blogging by HubSpot:
Benefits of Blogging
1. It helps drive business to your site
2. It helps convert traffic to leads
3. It helps establish authority
4. It drives long term results - (Fun Fact: About 70% of HubSpot traffic each month comes from post that weren't published that month. Whoa.)
If you want a high return on your Digital Marketing investment, you owe it to yourself to give blogging a shot.
Here’s a Beginners Guide to Blogging to get you started.
Ready To Take On Social Media
I read a number of articles that have said, “The social media strategy you choose isn’t nearly as important as your ability to stick with it.”
I couldn’t agree more.
But before you do start making a social media strategy, remember what the foundation of your internet marketing should be built on.
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An awesome website
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Targeted SEO
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Outstanding content
Master these three and watch new customers flock to your business
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