Tag: tips

Top Social Media Content Strategies for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMB) Success

Social media has become an essential part of the marketing mix for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It’s a cost-effective way to reach a large audience, engage with customers, and drive sales. However, with so many different social media platforms to choose from, it can be overwhelming to know where to start.

Here are the top social media content strategies for SMB success:

  1. Define your goals and target audience: Before creating any content, it’s important to define what you hope to achieve with your social media presence. Do you want to drive website traffic, generate leads, or increase brand awareness? Once you know your goals, you can tailor your content to appeal to your target audience.
  2. Create a content calendar: Planning out your content in advance will help you stay organized and ensure that you’re consistently posting valuable content. A content calendar will allow you to schedule posts, plan promotions, and track your progress.
  3. Use a mix of content types: To keep your audience engaged, mix up the types of content you post. This could include blog posts, infographics, videos, polls, and more.
  4. Utilize hashtags: Hashtags are a great way to reach a larger audience and increase the visibility of your content. Use relevant hashtags to make it easier for people to find your content and join the conversation.
  5. Engage with your followers: Social media is a two-way conversation, so make sure to respond to comments and messages in a timely manner. This will help you build a loyal following and create a positive brand reputation.
  6. Analyze your performance: Use social media analytics tools to track the performance of your content. This will help you understand what’s working and what’s not, so you can optimize your strategy and improve your results.

By following these tips, you can create a successful social media content strategy that drives results for your SMB. Remember to be consistent, engage with your audience, and constantly analyze your performance to see what’s working and what’s not.

Facebook Ad and Optimization Tips

Facebook. Create right column ads with your company logo and basic information (name, website, and location if appropriate). These ads should be boring: they should make your logo and business name very visible, but not entice the viewer to click on them. Next, place top bids on these ads; with high cost per click (CPC) bids, your ads will consistently show up on your target audience’s Facebook pages but few people will actually click on them (meaning they won’t cost you much money but will increase your visibility).

Make sure you Segment Your Ads by Channel. Don’t lump their ads and let them run on both desktop feed, desktop right, and mobile feed (and third party apps). Set a budget and then target your audience. You can also add Instagram in your placement platform. Pro Tip: Use the Facebook Pixel. The Facebook pixel is a small piece of code that can have a big impact on your Facebook ad campaigns. Once you place the code on your website, it allows you to track conversions, remarket to people who have viewed a product on your website.

Segment = They all have different click characteristics.

Write text on images (old school tip). In most verticals, this is almost guaranteed to increase your CTR. If you want to get the best results, it’s important to understand the different Facebook ad types and targeting options before you dive in. If you already have a Facebook business page (and you should), you can head straight to the Facebook Ads Manager or Business Manager to create your Facebook ad campaign. If you don’t yet have a business page, create one first.

Digital PR Tips for 2021

A short, brief list of digital PR tips & essentials. The target of Digital PR is to get high-quality backlinks from online publications and websites. You need to target the websites, podcasts, and social media accounts being browsed & loved by your target audience.

  1. PR blog posts and press releases views happen mostly on Mondays and Wednesdays. First thing in morning.
  2. Tuesdays are a bad day to issue a PR or a good story on your company’s blog…people tend to work and stay focus on Tuesdays.
  3. Fridays are bad. Fridays see very little traffic to content. Everyone is out to lunch on Fridays or gets in late to work.
  4. If you do send out a press release (wire), post it on your company blog as well = more traction.
  5. Ideal blog post length is between 1,000-2,000 words.
  6. Make your PR or story post link-worthy. Do not forget a great image (hi-res) or visual to your digital content like an Infographic. Add keyword themes associated with the brand, product or service.
  7. All Press Releases and PR campaign’s must contain complementary digital assets in order to get links. Links are symptomatic of good PR. Your SEO team should be helping your PR team optimize the links in all of their earned media coverage. SEO can help with PR keyword links that will rank high on a Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
  8. Twitter is a perfect PR distribution platform. Use Twitter for media relations. Busy reporters & reviewers do not answer their phones and receive countless e-mails, but they do pay attention to Twitter! Twitter is a great way to link a press release or a quality company blog post. It adds traction and traffic (value-add). Twitter can also be used to Pitch. Before any pitch has been made on Twitter to @journalist follow them for a few months. Get to know them. If you like what they are doing and reporting, retweet them or give them props! Share their stuff and links to their articles. If @journalist needs info or asks for help, reach out immediately and make it your priority. Help them out, and they will help you out. It goes both ways. Let the reporter know you’ve been driving traffic to their story. Keep the pitch respectful and short. Example: @journalist Do you accept story pitches? @journalist I just sent you an email, take a look when you get a chance. Its a good fit for your outlet.
  9. Facebook. Yes, @journalist use Facebook as well. @journalist will use Facebook on their own or through their publication page. Share their stories + interact with their readers. Interact with them and become visible by liking and commenting on their posts. Establish a professional relationship.
  10. Build a journalist / reporter list for your niche. Need to build a good list of Press for your particular product or service? Start with research. A good shortcut is to use JustReachOut. JustReachOut is a website dedicated to finding reporters who have written about your particular product or service. Just add your company’s product category in the search box, and the engine will bring up reporters interested and have written about your industry. Connect with them and reach out.

Lastly, monitor your news and social coverage by analyzing website referral traffic (Google Analytics). Figure out what works, and what doesn’t. Social proof for brands is now about data and metrics. Digital PR has become an inseparable part of the digital marketing strategy. Takeaways from this quick tips bog post will help improve your next Press Release (PR) strategy!

SEO Quick Traffic Driving Tips

A quick guide on how to drive traffic to your website.

  • Create a XML sitemap! This tactic should start when you create a site. A site map should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find give the search engines a clear path to your content. Make sure you Submit the sitemap to Google using the Search Console Sitemaps tool. “Submitting” a sitemap means telling Google where to find it on your site.
  • Build inbound, one way links to the page or pages, preferably from topical sites that have a high page rank. Do not overdo links though, Google only crawls so many links per page. If you do have a lot of links, place your important ones in the body of text. These carry more weight, and search engines may devalue links found in the header, sidebar and footer.
  • Find the “key phrases” that potential customers are using to find your products or services on your and competitors’ pages.
  • Build link popularity (backlinks) = which means that other sites contain links to your site.
  • Update the pages (blog posts) on your website often. Content is KING.
  • Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page.
  • Put a blog on your website and update it every day.
  • Make sure your website (company) is in Wikipedia.
  • Comment on Blogs (provide linkbacks).
  • Submit SEO optimized Press Releases.
  • Make sure your website or blog is FAST (load time). Optimize your site for speed. This helps PageRank now with Google.
  • Get on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. Build a following. Even though Google turned off the realtime search utilizing Twitter, you can still tweet out good information about your company and provide a link back to your website. Build up a solid “influencer” following and get your tweets “retweeted”. The more retweets a link receives, the better it seems to drive solid traffic.

Facebook Ad Tips and Optimization Hacks

Create right column ads with your company logo and basic information (name, website, and location if appropriate). These ads should be boring: they should make your logo and business name very visible, but not entice the viewer to click on them. Next, place top bids on these ads; with high cost per click (CPC) bids, your ads will consistently show up on your target audience’s Facebook pages but few people will actually click on them (meaning they won’t cost you much money but will increase your visibility).

Make sure you Segment Your Ads by Channel. Don’t lump their ads and let them run on both desktop feed, desktop right, and mobile feed (and third party apps). Segment = They all have different click characteristics.

Write text on images (old school tip). In most verticals, this is almost guaranteed to increase your CTR.

10 Tips for Landing Page Optimization

  1. Make sure the landing page loads FAST, otherwise your Google quality score goes in the tank. Desktop Page should take no more than 6 seconds to load. I would avoid Flash as it adds to load time. Your mobile landing page should load in under 5 seconds. Speed matters for conversions. You can test your website load times at pingdom.
  2. Make it obvious which button to click to complete an action.
  3. Make sure there is white space. This improves the user experience and makes your call to action stand out. Your call to action button (link) should be 20% larger than your logo. Place button at top of page (left). Web readers tend to track through content in a rough F-shaped pattern. So format important images flush left. Display the secondary action below the primary action.
  4. Catchy headline (create a powerful hook) and few exit navigation options. Keep it simple.
  5. Make sure your images are catchy, contextual, and load FAST. Optimize your images! Descriptive image file names, ALT tags, file size, Anchor text.
  6. Privacy policy and sitemap at the bottom.
  7. Check keyword usage. DO NOT spam keywords.
  8. Remove all possible distractions. Your design layout should be very clean, crisp, and clear. Get creative. No stupid redirects. Use a single dominate image or photo.
  9. If you use WordPress and have no experience in optimization, just add a WordPress optimization plug-in.
  10. Concentrate on the upper 300 pixels of the page. Half of your visitors will not scroll “below the fold.”