How To Incorporate Keywords in Social Media
Social media trends vary on different platforms; some behave differently from others. What could be most searched on Facebook may be different from what’s most searched on Twitter, and so on. When using social media to promote your business or website, optimize your social media marketing strategies for better exposure on the internet.
If you have some knowledge of SEO, then you already have a grasp of keyword strategies. If not, SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is the process of optimizing the contents of your brand to rank you higher in search engine page results (SERPs). When search engine users look for something on Google or any other search engine, they barely go to the second-page results and focus mostly on what is displayed first.
The goal of your website content is to answer the search engine user’s questions to attract more traffic to your website. But how can you do that?
Optimizing Your Social Media Content
Identify the Keywords
Let’s say you are promoting a pool cleaning services website. For a search engine to know that you are under that category, you must use “pool cleaning services” or “pool cleaning business” within the content. If you sell pool cleaning products, then you must use “pool cleaning products” or “pool cleaning materials.” Keywords must be straight to the point and clear.
Remember, the goal is to create content on what a search engine user might ask for. Expanding too much or having too many words in the keywords might make your website go further down on search engine page results. Your keyword phrases must be short and precise.
Once the keywords are determined, you then incorporate them into your content. To optimize the keywords, they must be mentioned more than once within the content. Here are a few places where you can incorporate keywords into your social media content.
Use Keywords on Your Title, Headings, and Subheadings
Search engines can quickly determine which search queries your content belongs to if your keywords are in the title itself. It is the first thing that comes up in search engine page results, and it is how a search engine user judges if it fits their needs. Now, some content topics may be too broad or difficult, so you must analyze the scope of content to come up with a variation of the keyword that maintains its purpose.
Use Keywords on your Meta Description
The meta description is where you can describe what your content is all about. By putting your important keywords within the summarized description, Google can filter your content better to the most related search queries. Your content must not be wordy and easy to navigate for it to be user-friendly. If your introduction is good, then a user would continue reading the content.
Incorporating Keywords on Different Social Media Platforms
Platforms each have trend behaviors, and you must be knowledgeable on such trends so that you can optimize your content on search queries. You can never know which one is best among the others, but you can use more than one. Here are a few social media platforms and their behaviors on keyword searches.
With Facebook having over two billion regular users worldwide, it is the most popular social media platform in the world. With that many users with sophisticated augmentation, you should take advantage of the interests of different audiences and specifically alter your keywords to fit those.
With an average of 6,000 tweets per second, Twitter trends change fast. Utilize Twitter hashtags for your keywords to optimize search results exposure. Updating your feed often will help you stay relevant on Twitter
Like Twitter, Instagram relies heavily on hashtags to promote products. Instagram also relies on its visual presentations, so putting your keywords in hashtags on your posts will help in product discovery.
Google My Business
GMB requires location-based strategies, since it is where a lot of brands go for local exposure. The best way to optimize keywords is to incorporate them with specific cities, states, or regions.
The best way to incorporate keywords into your social media content is to analyze social media trends and use them to your advantage. You can also find and monitor your competitors on social media, allowing you to make your content better than theirs. What are they doing right? What do they lack? Using social media as leverage for itself will help lead your business into a success.
Are you ready to learn more about building an SEO-friendly social media strategy or optimizing your website? Contact our digital marketing agency in Philadelphia today!
7 Reasons Why You Need A Digital Marketing Strategy
A digital marketing strategy is a must-have in today’s day and age. Nearly 50% of all businesses don’t use a digital strategy, which means crucial marketing channels are severely underutilized. A clear understanding of your marketing plans and how you can reach more people is vital to getting more sales.
Whether it’s auditing your efforts with project trackers or you want to push towards your business goals, you need the right plan. Here are 7 reasons why you need a digital marketing strategy and how you can pin down the right move for you.
- A Digital Strategy Gives Direction
Whether your business is big or small, you’re likely without direction in your digital strategy. You want to have a clear goal for your marketing plans. Everything starts with knowing what you want to happen with your business. This is where you ask yourself what matters for your business.
- Are you looking to gain more sales?
- Do you want higher traffic to your business website?
- Are you looking to get more value and save more costs?
Your goal changes depending on the type of growth that you want. A digital strategy will help you allocate the right resources to reach the goals that you want to reach.
The right strategy can define what marketing activities will lead towards the goal you set. With a strategy in place, you can also use marketing metrics to measure your efforts.
- You Want To Discover More About Your Market
In any business, the first step should always start with identifying the strategies that are right for your business. The discovery stage itself will help your marketing team understand what moves will result in growth and sales. It’s crucial that you reach a good understanding of how to improve your marketing process.
Market discovery also gives you time to reevaluate your process. If you already do some level of marketing, a strategy will optimize it even further. It will maximize what you have, giving you a general idea of the improvements that will result in more conversions.
Completing your business discovery stage will unravel what’s right and wrong with your tactics. It will show if you’re targeting the right audience, and give you a clearer view of what you should expect ahead.
- You Need To Convince Stakeholders
Building your digital marketing strategy is no different than traditional strategies that you know. The biggest challenge for teams is convincing stakeholders, whether it’s themselves or others, that they need the strategy. Many don’t believe their business would ever need it, stuck in offline and traditional efforts like print ads and other media.
It’s hard to convince people who have very little understanding of how the digital landscape works. If you’re the owner, it’s hard to manage business expenses and allocate for digital efforts when you’re used to simpler marketing techniques. If you’re a marketer, it’s hard to convince your C-level suits that the digital environment is indispensable.
A digital marketing strategy will give you the right data showing the techniques that work. Whether you’re on the fence about digital marketing or need to convince someone higher up, data is convincing. Numbers will never lie to you.
- Strategies Give You Unique Value Proposition
Digital marketing strategies help you separate yourself from the crowd. In an online world where you’re not the only one offering the same service, gaining a unique value proposition (UVP) is powerful. If you can make this UVP the center of your online marketing, it will set you apart from the noise and encourage conversions.
Whether you have new or existing customers, winning a click, a comment or some type of engagement is more difficult than ever. By building a campaign that differentiates your brand, you can improve your business website’s traffic and even build on your click-through rate.
If your primary goal is more into sales than leads, a unique value proposition can help customer retention. It will keep your customers interested and prevent them from jumping to your competition simply because of pricing.
- You Need To Understand Your Target Audience
Much like any business, it’s important for the organization to understand their target audience. When you know who your audience is, you unlock several possibilities that can improve your business growth. Knowing who wants your product is the hardest aspect of marketing but it’s also among the most useful.
Knowing the sentiment of your audience gives you the biggest chance for success. With the right digital marketing strategy, you can perform several types of campaigns that learn the pulse of your audience. More than analytics, the right strategy uses feedback tools to work on the weaker areas of your online marketing.
In most situations, you can address these weaknesses through the use of sales funnels, heat maps, and other tools for your website. Digital marketing strategies will cover your weak points and allow you to know what people want from your business.
- You Need To Do Audience Outreach
Knowing your audience is half the battle. The other half finding where they are and bringing your marketing efforts to them. As digital marketing strategies revolve around reaching out to your audience, you need to know which platform they are more active. You would also want to reach out to them specifically through the device they use.
Most people connect through their desktops, smartphones, tablets, and even other smart devices. For those who spend a lot of their time online, it’s best to bring your marketing to where they are. A cohesive marketing strategy that targets your specific demographic and retargets them back to your website can be effective.
Reach out deeper and don’t limit yourself to one or two channels. Social media, email, SEO, paid search, and the list goes on and on.
- You Learn More About Your ROI
One of the strongest reasons why you need a digital marketing strategy is knowing the return on investment (ROI) for your efforts. Digital marketing is among the best sources of marketing data. It helps you learn where you spend your money and what’s the potential ROI of every move you do.
The ability to project your ROI gives you a good idea of the type of marketing you need to do. It helps you understand more of your analytics and gives you more cost-effective measures to reach your marketing goals. A good digital marketing strategy can help forecast your results, which in turn can affect your profits.
Should you have a digital marketing strategy? In today’s marketing, having zero digital strategies is suicide. You’re going into a cutthroat market blind, with nothing to show for. On the flip side, a powerful combination of digital marketing strategies allows you to gather more data for more ROI and engage your audience even deeper. Start your digital strategy today.
Monthly To-Dos For Maintaining Your Website
Having a website is essential for a business. You can provide valuable information to your potential and existing customers while building a positive brand in the online community. Your website can also help your business stand out from the competition.
To maximize your website, you need to maintain it consistently. This is important to ensure that your website is operating properly and running at full capacity. How can you gain traction online if your website has poor security features? Do you think you can beat the competition if your website has outdated content?
These tips should be a part of your monthly website maintenance checklist:
Following Google Updates
Google rolls out various updates every year. If you want to maintain your website long-term, you need to adjust your algorithm based on Google’s updates.
For example, in May 2020, Google announced a new core update to its search algorithm that will take effect in 2021. This update has something to do with website performance, specifically how a page loads in the browser once a user navigates through a website.
This update should prompt you to change the algorithm in your website to improve its page load speed. You can achieve this goal by using a content distribution network or optimizing images.
When you regularly keep track of Google updates and implement changes to your website based on those updates, your website’s SEO ranking will improve. This can also help your website gain more organic search traffic and get better conversions online.
Sharing Fresh Content
One of the reasons people visit your website is that they want to learn more about your business and what you offer. They likely heard your business from an ad or a friend and would want to gather more information before they decide to buy from you.
As part of your website maintenance checklist, share fresh content regularly. This can help you attract loyal customers and improve your site ranking. When you regularly post fresh content on your website, you can also increase your authority in the industry. The more frequently you share high-quality content through your website, the stronger you become as an authority figure.
Depending on the nature of your business, you can post blogs, articles, and how-to guides on your website. For example, if you want to improve your chiropractic website SEO for your clinic, or just educating your patients, you can also post videos and video stories about your work on your website!
Making Sure Contact Forms and Information Work
Contact forms in websites are important for businesses. When you have a contact form, you can easily keep track of inquiries, get more leads from online visitors, and build your email marketing list. Receiving and sending quotations to interested customers will also become a breeze if you have contact forms.
However, you can only experience these perks when your contact forms ask the right questions and work properly. Online visitors will not submit any of their information if they find your contact form too distracting or asks too many similar questions.
To check if your contact forms are working, test out its validation, notification, and conditional integrations by filling up the form yourself. All of the information you’ve placed in the contact form should be automatically sent to your selected email address. If you didn’t receive an email or if you received one with missing details, fix your contact form right away.
Checking if your contact forms are working is important because it can help come up with solutions as soon as possible. Instead of getting information, a malfunctioning contact form will only annoy your online visitors and encourage them to turn to your competitors.
Reviewing Traffic and Highly Visited Pages
Your website consists of different pages. You’ll often have a separate webpage about your company, products, services, and contact details. The more information you want to share with your target audience online, the more web pages you’ll have.
As part of your website maintenance routine, take the time to review traffic and highly visited pages. Website traffic refers to the online visitors who access your website. Web traffic is measured in visits or sessions and is used to measure how effective your website is at attracting an audience and keeping users engaged online.
You can easily review your website traffic by using online tools, such as SEMRUSH and Google Search Console. To identify which among your web pages is regularly visited by users, use Google Analytics. This tool enables you to see your most and least popular web pages, along with the number of new users, session duration, bounce rate, and other metrics.
Adding Recent Reviews to Your Website
One of the reasons why people don’t buy from a business is because they don’t know whether the brand is trustworthy or not. Customers don’t want to spend money to buy products from a business that they don’t know anything about.
To gain the trust of new customers, add recent reviews to your website. Reviews can increase your sales, validate your business, and help you gain loyalty through customer engagement.
When first-time visitors see how hundreds of people vouch for your business and offerings, it’ll be very easy for them to trust you.
Customers value online reviews as they would on personal recommendations. This means that posting positive reviews on your website can impact their decision-making and encourage them to utilize your brand.
Moreover, recent reviews can also improve your SEO rankings as these serve as fresh content for the search engine to digest. If you want to offer the best dental website SEO to your customers, then regularly updating reviews on your website is the best way to go.
Invest in Professional Help
Some businesses don’t have the experience or resources to maintain their website on their own.
If you fall into this category, consider hiring our SEO and digital marketing company to improve your website’s visibility today!
Pandemic Assistance: How Digital Marketing Has Saved Small Businesses in 2021
The pandemic has caused many small businesses to shutter. Some, however, took it as a sign to assess the situation and pivot. Instead of closing shop to avoid further risking their resources, businesses that are still in operation found a window of opportunity to stand out with fewer competitors in a dwindling marketplace.
Small businesses that established themselves online and creatively leveraged digital marketing were better able to cater to the sudden changes in market demands, especially with a drop in competition.
Read on to discover how digital marketing has aided small businesses despite the pandemic’s catastrophic effects.
Digital Marketing Assists With Growth
As many people have sheltered in place at home without the ability to interact outdoors, the reliance on the internet for both necessities and recreation rose exponentially. Many users shifted from in-person communication and services to online interactions and transactions.
By creating a steady online presence, businesses that changed their focus from traditional methods to digital marketing were able to retain or increase their engagement with consumers — and, in turn, also increased their conversion rates.
Digital marketing can help small businesses expand and reach a wider audience, too. By keeping up-to-date and utilizing social media trends, many small businesses found that the pandemic created new niches and demands to cater to.
By paying more attention to digital marketing, small businesses can also discover a means of potentially competing with larger companies. This is because, when done correctly, digital marketing can be just as effective at reaching the masses as traditional marketing without needing an exorbitant budget. It can help save more money for investing in other areas of your business that need it.
Digital Marketing Provides a Workaround for Many Industries
The food industry suffered greatly because of the pandemic due to social distancing, quarantine, and lockdowns. These have effectively barred food businesses from performing at their peak — even causing an alarming number to shut down entirely.
As such, food businesses had to make changes concerning their marketing strategies. With a heightened demand for food delivery services, food establishments that typically rely on in-person foot traffic have started to develop digital marketing strategies using social media and online advertisements to keep businesses afloat.
This also applies to other industries that rely on brick-and-mortar shops. Retail stores selling clothing, home goods, and other sundries have found a semblance of stability by establishing online stores, shipping services, and stronger social media presences to resume cash flow.
Some services, like therapy and other medical consultations, have started offering online assessments and sessions to continue servicing their communities without the risk of COVID-19 infections in hospitals and clinics.
Digital Marketing Helps Keep Customers Informed and Engaged
Thanks to constant advancements in technology, it is getting easier and easier to communicate and transact with almost any type of audience. Social media, in particular, has helped businesses form stronger connections with their audience by providing a convenient means to engage with customers using different forms of media.
Many brands have utilized their social media accounts to share stories that make emotional impacts on their audience. Strong examples include marketing campaigns revolving around pandemic relief efforts and showing support for movements that aid marginalized communities.
Some brands even create online-only products and services that evoke a sense of exclusivity and prestige, subconsciously promoting brand loyalty.
Small businesses have also utilized online platforms to keep customers informed about changes in operations, especially when moving from a physical location to a digital domain. This way, existing local customers know how to continue supporting small businesses.
Lastly, by establishing a well-rounded online presence, small businesses can give their audience multiple avenues for customer feedback and support. By showing an open interest in customers’ opinions, businesses can also encourage brand loyalty and increase positive brand reputation by building trust.
Action Tip
To best utilize digital marketing, make sure that your website and contact information are always kept updated. You must also maintain a strong and constant online presence on major social media platforms to stay relevant.
The Key Takeaway
The pandemic has challenged our way of handling our businesses. However, we must not give up in these trying times. We must learn how to be resilient and be resourceful.
With the many types of pandemic restrictions in place, it is important to continue using digital marketing as other surviving businesses have. It has contributed a lot in helping businesses flourish and grow despite the absence of physical stores and in-person interactions.
Regardless of which platform you use, you will see success in your digital marketing efforts by using it wisely and creatively. Keep your website and social media profiles up-to-date, stay connected and continue engaging with your customers and always look for new ways to meet your market’s needs by paying attention to online trends. By doing so, you will have a higher chance to keep your business afloat throughout and after the pandemic.
Ready to start your digital marketing plan? Contact out digital marketing agency in Philadelphia, PA to learn more!
When Are the Best Times to Post on Social Media
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were created to be enjoyable and convenient ways to connect users to their friends and family. But, with advancements in technology, constantly changing market trends, and the big shift from in-person interactions to online connections, social networking platforms eventually found themselves heavily utilized for business and marketing.
These days, social media is used by both small businesses and big corporations as a major means of reaching and engaging with clients all across the globe in real-time.
For small-scale entrepreneurs and those who are looking to start their businesses, social media is an incredibly handy tool for establishing connections with potential customers.
One thing most businesses fail to realize, though, is that while posting good content is key, the timing of your posts plays a very important part in casting a wider net.
Read to learn more about social media platforms and the best times to share content.
The Top Social Media Platforms for Businesses
Many social media platforms are utilizing many different forms of media available to consumers right now but, for businesses, the most important ones are:
Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the world. As it has the most active users of every demographic, this is the one platform business owners can’t be without.
Its interface allows businesses to create and share content in a wide range of media formats, including text, photos, videos, and stories. It also allows users to schedule posts for future publishing, which is perfect when doing bulk content creation.
Facebook’s design also allows customers to easily engage with businesses through comment threads and post reactions. On top of that, Facebook allows people to easily share content to their timelines or through private messaging for instant word-of-mouth marketing.
Many celebrities, politicians, and other people of note utilize Twitter for sharing announcements, opinions, and recommendations. Because of this, Twitter has a user base of all genders belonging to a wide range of ages, social classes, and beliefs.
Twitter allows its users to publish (or ‘tweet’) images, videos, and short text posts with a 280-character limit in real-time. As Twitter’s design puts a heavy emphasis on conciseness, this requires users to create straight-to-the-point and witty content to attract the eye of other users.
Business owners can take advantage of Twitter’s interface that allows for the easy sharing (or retweeting) and quoting of user posts. Besides sharing, users can also like posts. These liked posts are archived in the user’s profile, which can serve as a bookmark for future reference.
Another feature that makes Twitter ideal for businesses is the ease of communicating with other users. Many corporations use this platform to engage with users, as well as for customer support purposes.
One of the most downloaded apps in the United States, Instagram focuses more on the photo and video content and less on text.
Setting an Instagram account properly is just as important as knowing when to post. Businesses need to take advantage of linking their website and writing a good bio for their accounts as these are some of the first things a user sees when visiting an Instagram profile.
As a platform that prioritizes visuals, the key to making a good Instagram account is posting very aesthetically appealing photos and videos. It is important to make your Instagram grid appear cohesive, so crafting a strong visual identity for your brand is a must.
Instagram also recently added an update that enables businesses to directly sell and transact with consumers by hosting their online shops within the platform.
To be able to reach many people when starting on the platform, utilize popular hashtags to make your brand visible.
The Best Time to Post On Social Media For Optimal Engagement
Besides creating good content, it is also important to study the demographic you are trying to reach to identify the best time to post. Important factors to consider, besides age and gender, include habits and interests.
If you already have an existing social media account, you can also look into your top posts to determine your peak time for posting. You can sort through your analytics by certain metrics, such as engagement and number of likes and shares.
Keep in mind that each platform has its algorithm that may affect your post’s visibility. For Instagram and Facebook, it was found that their algorithms prioritize “recency” for ranking, so it only makes sense to post when your target market is online. These algorithms are revised occasionally, though, so business owners must adjust to that, too.
If you would prefer to leave the social media optimization and analytics to someone else, you can reach out to a social media management company in Philadelphia for help.
Around 73% of Facebook’s nearly 3 billion users were found to log onto the platform every day, with 57% of users from the United States primarily using it for sharing content.
Through user data, Wednesday around 11:00 AM CST was discovered to be the peak time for general engagement, although 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM on all other weekdays are not far behind.
As for marketing your products, Facebook users are most receptive to posts about consumer goods on Wednesdays and Fridays, from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with a distinct drop in interest before 8:00 AM. Meanwhile, media consumption sees a spike at 5:00 PM mid-week.
In general, individual consumers tend to check Facebook most right before work hours, during lunch break, and during downtime after work. Sundays typically see the least amount of active users.
Unlike Facebook and Instagram algorithms, Twitter’s algorithm ranks tweets by potential user interest instead of in chronological order. With over 500 million tweets per day, businesses need to know when to post so as not to be buried under other tweets.
Twitter sees a jump in activity around 8:00 AM every day — weekends included — as users tend to use the platform as a news source, checking for updates right before starting their day.
As mentioned earlier, many corporations turn to Twitter for addressing customer support issues. Unlike Facebook, Twitter’s best day for business engagement is on Sundays from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. General engagement, though, still does best on weekdays from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
While Instagram does somehow show posts based on recency, it is also notorious for being unpredictable and does not present content in chronological order. The best workaround is to know what your target demographic’s peak hours are.
Like Facebook, Wednesday around 11:00 AM tends to be the best for user engagement. General engagement also peaks on Fridays from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM but is consistently good on all weekdays from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
For marketing goods of any kind, Wednesday at 3:00 PM has seen the most movement, followed by Tuesdays to Fridays from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM.
Moreover, Facebook acquired Instagram and has now established a cross-posting feature between the two platforms, which business owners should take advantage of.
Conclusion
For businesses venturing into the world of social media marketing, it is important to partner in creating good content with an effective posting schedule.
Different platforms see different activity trends from their users, and it is imperative to take note of your preferred platform’s peak hours, as well as studying your target audience’s online habits, to make the most of your social media experience.
How Digital Marketing Is Changing the Real Estate Market in 2021
Most potential buyers prefer to see a property in person before making their final decision. But now they can go back and view a house at any time through virtual tours and images. We have adapted to research our interests online before making a time commitment. Real estate agents and homeowners have begun to step up their marketing game and build a strong online presence.
Check out the following article to see how digital marketing is transforming the real estate market. Having a plan and adjusting your marketing strategies can help real estate agents and homeowners alike remain safe during this pandemic.
Virtual Tours
Given the challenges brought by COVID-19, conducting home tours in person became risky and impractical. Instead of putting everyone’s life at risk, many realtors now carry out virtual home tours. Doing so allows prospective buyers to examine the properties in the comfort of their homes. This helps narrow down the search for homes without having to set our several hours for tours.
You can utilize different platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. Others opt to utilize augmented technology to make these virtual tours possible. These video marketing strategies boost the exposure while protecting ourselves and our clients from the virus. Virtual home tours are expected to be the trend for the rest of 2021 and probably the years to come. They offer potential buyers to view the home and have a general idea of the house before the initial contact.
Social Media Marketing
Since most of us stay home now more than ever, social media platforms have become more versatile — either for school, work, or entertainment. The same is true for real estate agents. People looking to buy or sell their properties would browse the internet to find reliable real estate agents and the available homes they are sharing.
Using different social media channels, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, can build your brand and boost exposure. Maximize the power of social media by producing catchy and viral content and leveraging social ad campaigns. This real estate trend will likely continue throughout 2021, so we need to quickly adapt to this fast-paced real estate market.
Drones
Most, if not all, property buyers want to look at the neighborhood outside so they can imagine what living in the neighborhood would be like. They need to consider different factors, like the amenities, proximity to hospitals, schools, markets, and other essential establishments.
While some people take their time to view the area on Google Maps, the images are not always up to date. This is where drones come in. You can use them to give potential clients a real-time experience of the community through the images and videos taken from the drones.
You can also feature these drone footage on your social media platforms as another selling point. Doing so can save time and reduce the amount of in-person meetings with clients.
Blockchain Technology
The benefits of blockchain technology are also now maximized in digital marketing. Through this technology, you can track ad placement and see if customers are clicking the ads. This feature makes it easier for us to reevaluate and improve your real estate marketing strategies.
Given the technology’s transparent nature, potential clients can see how marketers utilize their personal information. Once they trust us, they will likely share their details, helping us know them better.
Such transparency also helps us cut down real estate transaction costs, like registration fees, loan fees, and taxes. They can be reduced or even removed as platforms automate these processes.
Content Marketing
If you want to cut down on your expenses, especially since the pandemic has brought us inevitable economic challenges, you can focus on another digital marketing trend this 2021: content marketing.
As real estate agents and homeowners, it is important to keep seeking real estate marketing ideas that won’t burn a hole in your pocket but are still effective. That means exploring new marketing strategies like content marketing. Real estate internet marketing services can offer a window into an affordable way to share and view houses for sale.
With this type of marketing, you just need to focus on producing or repurposing content through blogs, Zoom webinars, YouTube videos, Facebook or Instagram stories, and several other platforms. Utilizing these channels helps us share valuable insights with potential clients and build your authority.
Community Service
The coronavirus pandemic has left so many people jobless and businesses closed. That is why every effort or outreach — no matter how big or small — would be appreciated by local communities.
Real estate agents who have the means can give back to the community by helping out the less fortunate through volunteering or donations. Potential clients would always pick competent real estate agents. However, it’s a great plus if they see agents actively involved in the community and going the extra mile to help other people.
With such a reputation, you can build credibility and trust, send a positive message, and expand your customer base. These charitable causes are expected to be the trend in the real estate market in 2021.
Keep Up With the Changing Real Estate Market
Virtual home tours, social media marketing, content marketing, and other digital marketing strategies are changing the real estate world in 2021. Knowing these trends help us plan and adjust your marketing strategies to keep up with the fast-moving real estate market. To find more real estate and digital marketing tips and trends, contact our digital marketing agency in Philadelphia today!
How Digital Marketing Can Help You Gain Momentum in 2021
As we reach the end of 2021’s first quarter, it’s essential to step back and analyze the various ways digital marketing can help us gain momentum for our businesses. It’s also important to look at the emerging trends and align these with your company to take advantage of the things happening around us. Because 2020 drastically changed our economy, this year will continue to challenge marketers looking to help businesses get started or continue what they have built. Here are a few ways how digital marketing can help you gain momentum.
The Ever-Growing Demand for Online Services and Shopping
According to a survey from PYMNTS, almost 36% of U.S. consumers bought their retail goods online in July, compared to 29% from April last year. The increase was due to the closure of many stores in the middle of the pandemic. The same can be said for customers who order from restaurants online, where 21% of consumers ordered during July, compared to 13% from April 2020.
As a result, companies rushed to meet these digital demands, with Target taking up the lead in expanding its curbside grocery business. Target was able to further its digital transformation, and sales increased by 141% in the first quarter alone in 2020. Because of this, more of their stores will have designated curbside pickup spots along with fresh and frozen space for online grocery orders. Target aims to provide a high-quality digital experience while delivering orders quicker and cutting costs simultaneously.
Share Your Stories
“Stories” began with Snapchat back in 2013, and while it took a while for other social platforms to implement it, almost every one of them uses it today. From Twitter Fleets, Instagram Stories, and YouTube Reels, each of these stories have their twist to it, but they all serve the same purpose. To get success from using stories, we’ll need to use every feature it has to offer.
This means we need to engage our followers through clickable media and polls, utilize the whole screen, and experiment with effects, motion overlays, stickers, and other kinds of creative things. For marketers and brands, this medium allows us to be candid and post as much as we want. It also offers an easy-to-use tool and an excellent opportunity to increase brand awareness, so it gives you the whole package.
Repurposing your Existing Videos for Social Media
Because of the pandemic, the number of clicks on videos has skyrocketed. As such, viewers will be expecting to get more video content on social media — whether it’s customers, stakeholders, or employees. It’s precisely because of this demand that you need to empower your team to create video content, all of which can be done with simple video makers online. If you’re stuck for ideas on what kind of videos you need to create, don’t worry about making anything new.
Instead, take existing webinars and blog posts and make teaser videos out of them. You can then repost them as new content for your other social media platforms such as LinkedIn. Product tutorials and customer case studies can also be transformed into beautiful Instagram stories. You never have to worry about the content because it’s always there, and the possibilities are endless; you just need to present them in a new perspective every time.
Showing the Public that Your Business Exists
In recent years, we’ve seen more and more businesses shift to a multi-channel marketing strategy rather than sticking to just one form of traffic and revenue generator. One key reason behind this is that companies want to reduce the risk of revenue by being too dependent on Youtube, Google, or Pinterest algorithms.
Another reason is that businesses look for target audience-specific marketing channels to optimize their marketing campaigns for their particular platform to out-spend the competition. The final reason is based just on common sense; because companies want to grow their revenues, it’s best to use all major marketing platforms to get as many customers as possible.
Digital Customer Strategy
The year 2020 launched a brand new way of conducting business through an offline-to-online transformation of many stores and shops, which have mostly flourished in the year that has passed. However, some companies couldn’t keep up with this trend and have stopped all their activities. We believe that marketing activities shouldn’t just focus on getting new customers, but also on assisting our existing and future customers.
Some experts have focused on more tactical aspects of digital marketing, but others focus on digital customer strategies. These hold critical importance from the limitations and lockdowns still in place in many places around the world. Such strategies range from customer education, customer retention, and concepts of “predefined personalization” to reach out to your digital customers.
Getting a new client shouldn’t be the end goal for any company, especially during these trying times. Simply acquiring a client for our services won’t help the business flourish if he/she will drop out after a few months. This is where support and education will help our clients endure difficult times and grow alongside us. Aside from creating lead magnets and well-functioning marketing funnels and developing sales processes and webinars, having a thorough digital customer strategy in place will ensure your business’s growth and the customers you serve.
By evaluating the current situation around us and the hurdles we’ve already jumped over in the past year, we can get a sense of the digital marketing trends and hiccups we need to look out for. By learning from what works and the mistakes made by others, we can adapt digital marketing strategies that we can use for the year ahead of us. While it can be so easy to lose our way or to chase after a brand new trend, it’s best to stick to practices that have been tested, so you can use them to build your momentum to keep your business running even after the pandemic is long gone.
For more information on digital marketing strategies and more, contact our digital marketing agency in Philadelphia today!
Are My Competitors Using SEO: How Can I Tell?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a critical part of your marketing effort that you need to incorporate if you hope to optimize your online visibility chances. With it, you can easily improve your visibility on search engines—both locally and internationally—so that when someone goes on search engines looking for what you provide, they can easily find your website and get in touch with you.
Sadly, the increase in the number of companies using the internet has also led to an upsurge in SEO applications. More companies have seen this component’s critical nature, and they’re using it to improve their market visibility significantly. So, while it is recommended that you also employ SEO in your efforts, you will be better served if you understand how competitors are working to know how best to capitalize on it.
Like everything else that has to do with your business, you must engage in thorough competitor analysis to launch your SEO efforts. Your competitors could eventually become your greatest allies when it comes to SEO if you allow them. By gaining insights into how they work, you can essentially reverse-engineer their success and capitalize on their weaknesses. Eventually, you can one-up their strategy to record better wins.
To do this, you will need some practical competitive intelligence. The objective here is to understand how others are employing SEO strategies. From there, you can adopt what works, improve on it, and gain the advantage you desire.
So, how do you get a look into your competitor’s SEO strategy?
Examine Your Competitor’s Keywords
Of course, this is a no-brainer. Keywords are the central element of SEO, and they form the building blocks of any company’s running strategy.
Besides organic searches, your rankings on search pages will be significantly affected by keywords. The better you can apply these keywords, the better you can optimize your strategy. To look into the keywords your competitors are using, you can take advantage of several tools.
Keyword Search Results
Perhaps one of the most prominent tools is checking the search results. Multiple tools work as a tracker. This lets you see your competitors’ keywords in organic search results, and it even shows you their keywords in Google Ads. Such tools, like Ubersuggest, will display top keywords and metrics like monthly pay-per-click hits and more. You will need to register to use its leading features, but Ubersuggest is among one of the many great ways to start.
Tracking Tools
You can also use tracking tools, another powerful resource that provides tons of features. Ahrefs, one of the available tools will show you top keywords, backlinks, most widely-used keywords, and even your competitor’s highest-ranking pages. The tool isn’t free, but you’ll find that it provides an excellent bang for your buck when you consider all its features. There are plenty of other options as well that may be a better fit for your industry or intent
The Importance of Keyword Research
It’s easy to see why this component is critical. By understanding the keywords that help your competitors rank, you’re seeing the secret to their SEO success and can draw ideas on possible keywords that will help you outrank them.
Look out for the term frequency-inverse document frequency tool to see your competitor’s approach to using keywords. If you’re looking to incorporate specific keywords into your content, this tool offers excellent help.
For further help on SEO research and success, you can reach out to a local SEO company in your area for professional SEO strategy advice and more.
Checking for Backlinks and Domain Data
As you probably know, keywords aren’t the only critical component of SEO. Several other elements will affect you and your competitors’ rankings, and one of them is domain authority. Essentially, this component assesses a website’s relevance in the company’s physical location.
Backlinking is another critical SEO component. It essentially examines the links that point to your website or other websites in the content available on the site. Having backlinks communicates that your site is of high quality and that it’s worth linking to. Eventually, you rank higher that way.
You can use tools to check domain data and backlinking information. Ensure you check how many backlinks your competitors have. Also, look into the websites that feature their links and the websites that these competitors also feature.
With all of this information, you have a better idea of how best to craft your content and the sites you should link to.
On-Page SEO Analysis
You will also need to look into your competitor’s on-page SEO. Essentially, this is the practice of optimizing your website using elements like image alt tags, meta descriptions, alt titles, and more.
To know more about your competitor’s on-page SEO, check out SEO inspection tools. Without a doubt, this is one of the most effective ways to check SEO. It will show you more details on your competitor’s website, including their metadata, page titles, and more. This way, you know what works and what doesn’t.
With page titles and metadata, SEO tools help you to know the correct format and length. Concerning image alt tags, the tool shows you the proper ways to apply meta descriptions so that Google’s algorithm and bots will be able to crawl through your site easily.
Social Media Checks
Beyond websites and search content, you should also look into your competitors’ social media pages for SEO ranking tips.
Brands are spending a significant amount of money on their social media presence these days. Whether you already have a page for yourself or are just looking into creating one, be sure to look into how your competitors handle theirs.
Look into how these companies interact and engage with their followers, including those that turn to customers and casual followers. Get to know what they post about, their post formats, and their activity levels.
Note that you don’t want to just copy their profiles. Understand their work and be inspired by it. Then incorporate some of their strategies into your social media campaign.
Does Social Media Matter to Your SEO?
Social media is critical to your SEO. By optimizing your profile and the content you post, you have a greater chance of getting people to go to your website. By extension, your chances of making higher sales are optimized as well.
It’s a delicate balance, but you’ll find that you need all the help you can get in today’s highly competitive SEO landscape. So, work on your social media as much as you can.
If you are ready to competitively market your company through SEO and other digital marketing tools, you can contact SEO Local for more information on digital marketing in Southampton, PA and the extended area today!
SEO: How to Level the Playing Field with Your Competitors
The business world is incredibly competitive. With a multitude of companies in your field, it’s a chore to keep an eye on the competition while managing your business. Some businesses try to cut corners to win because it seems easy and can get them the results they seek. However, the truth is that cheating tactics only work for a short time. At the end of the day, everyone gets found out, and you could get severely penalized for this.
When it comes to growing your business the right way, there’s no escaping the internet. Many people use it, so you can’t do without incorporating it into your growth strategy. With that in mind, it’s essential to also look into effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as part of your growth.
In this guide, we’ll look into how your small or medium business can capitalize on SEO for exponential growth as well as some tips you should consider when implementing it.
Leveling the Playing Field With SEO
Plugging Into Web Traffic the Right Way
When it comes to web performance, only a few things matter as much as organic search. It improves performance over time, can move customers down the purchasing funnel, and eventually gets a user to complete an action, be it a sale, a call, an engagement, etc.
However, it all begins with search, and when it comes to search, organic search is the purest form that can get you results. As many know, Google owns the largest share of the global search engine market. There are several other search engines and browsers out there, but Google’s share dwarfs theirs even when combined.
Of course, you could easily get higher visibility via other search engines. However, Google is the clear-cut leader in this category and is truly where you should focus your energy.
Being the most visited site in the world, Google is also the largest email service provider. Its subsidiary, YouTube, also owns the world’s most extensive catalog of video content and is one of the top search engines as well. At least once a day, a vast majority of people with internet access go on Google to get information.
By having high visibility on Google, you can easily capitalize on it to grow your business. The only way to achieve this, however, is through quality SEO and a standard website.
Good SEO Points to a Seamless User Experience
Many SEO professionals tend to focus more on keyword rankings and more while working. This goal is great, but it’s not the entire picture. When ranking sites, Google also considers things like website user experience and content quality.
In fact, user experience on its own is just as significant a factor in your SEO efforts as are things like keyword and content optimization. Positive user experience is a critical element of your success, and you need to ensure it as you go forward.
Customers know what they want, and they’ll go elsewhere if they can’t find it with you. Soon enough, your site and its performance will suffer. When your site has a high SEO ranking, it shows that the site’s content isn’t just good, but the site also provides enough features to draw users to stay on it.
Local SEO Grows Conversions
One of the most significant search engine trends available today is the rise of mobile traffic. More people are browsing and, by extension, searching for businesses on their phones. This trend has made local search more of a fundamental part of business success, especially for startups and medium businesses that are trying to grow.
Essentially, local SEO looks to optimize your website and online platform for a specific area. This way, people around you can easily find you. Considering that you’re closer to them, it becomes much easier to convert them. Local SEO focuses on towns, regions, cities, and even states to establish a channel for you to grow from the ground up.
A local SEO company can take advantage of this by optimizing your site and its content. This step includes adding local backlinks, citations, and local listings that are relevant to the area you’re looking to rank for, the target audience, and your business sector.
Local SEO can also incorporate services like Google My Business and reviews on sites like Yelp and more. All of these focus on optimizing for a specific vicinity, and they are incredibly effective at doing this.
Relative Cost-Effectiveness
Sure, SEO costs money. There’s no way you can rank high and grow your business without spending money. However, when you put it in the grand scheme of things, you’ll find that SEO is affordable. The payoff is also much more considerable over time. You can get an estimated cost for local or national SEO services from a national SEO agency.
When thinking of SEO, don’t consider it a marketing cost. Instead, think of it as a business investment. When implemented right, SEO will reap benefits for years to come. The more investment and attention it gets, the more it improves. So, you can get much more with less money.
Tips for Effective SEO Implementation
Take Out Anything That Slows Your Site
Remember that bit about site performance and user experience? Well, nothing contributes to a terrible user experience quite like slow responses on websites. Site speed remains a critical factor in SEO, and you want to ensure that you optimize your site as much as possible. A delay in load time can cost you conversions in real-time. Perform a thorough audit of your site, and if you find anything that delays traffic, take it out.
Build Links
SEO is not a one size fits all marketing technique. There are many important pieces that can benefit a business. Backlinks are one vital part to a strong SEO plan. Try to link to other sites with similar information in your content. It is recommended that you get sites with data to back up the information you’re trying to convey.
For this, make sure to only link to sites that bounce off yours. Essentially, when someone clicks on that link, they should see it open in a separate tab, not yours. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing that customer and having them go to a separate page entirely.
Optimize Your Content for Humans
Whatever you put on your site, make sure to optimize it for the people you’re trying to reach. Let your language flow naturally and make the content easy to read. Don’t let your focus on keywords cloud you from trying to form that all-important human connection with your readers.
The Latest Social Media Trends For 2021 And How You Can Use These For Your Business
In today’s world, social media is one the most effective marketing channel for any company. With billions of people handling at least one account each on a social media site, it’s critical for you as a business to be on these platforms as well if you hope to reach members of your target market.
However, building up your social media isn’t quite as easy as you might imagine. For one, you need to remember that there’s fierce competition out there. Companies in your field are also on social media, and there’s a significant chance that many of these firms have larger budgets than you. With that in mind, you need to play smart.
Thankfully, this one of the many benefits of digital marketing strategies. Social media is ruled by trends — things and concepts that are the most “in vogue” right now. Trends differ between social media platforms broadly, but some are generally encompassing. It’s important to consider these as you chart a course forward.
Live Streams and Sessions for Engagement
If there’s one thing that captured everyone’s attention in 2020, it was the COVID-19 pandemic. It forced life to halt to a standstill, and people were instructed to stay at home.
Nevertheless, life must go on, and social media played a significant part in this. To maintain social distancing but still connect with others, people hopped online. Meetings soon became a standard on Zoom, and companies turned to live streams on social media to optimize their operations.
Naturally, this led to a surge in the use of live streaming tools across all social media channels. For instance, Facebook saw a significant upsurge in its live streaming and messaging channels — especially in areas most hit by the virus, like Italy and the United States.
As a stat sheet from Facebook showed, the number of views on Facebook Live and Instagram Live doubled in just a week at a certain point.
In 2021, it’s pretty evident that we’re not entirely out of the woods just yet. Life is slowly beginning to return to normal, but the coronavirus situation continues to evolve. People and companies remain committed to communicating through their devices, and social media live streaming is still a prominent part of this.
If you’re looking to optimize your social media strategy, you can’t possibly do it without live streaming. While everyone remains at home, you could engage your followers with live streaming sessions and grow your audience base from there.
Stories as Instagram’s Top Content Source
Instagram launched Stories in 2016. While the feature had a pretty rough landing due to comparisons with Snapchat, it has since risen to become one of Instagram’s biggest hits. On average, 500 million people react with Stories daily on Instagram, and there’s no sign of them going away soon.
If you aren’t using your Stories, it’s recommended that you do so. Incorporate videos and pictures into the component — primarily videos, which seem to outperform other content formats on Instagram.
People tend to spend more time viewing videos on their Stories than images. You need to get on Stories now, and you need to do so with engaging videos.
Virtual Reality is Coming
Thanks to the stay-at-home orders and prolonged social distancing requirements, people have begun looking into alternative reality iterations. For now, virtual reality remains one of the most effective technology trends out there.
The allure of virtual reality is easy to see. It allows you to get the sense of actually being somewhere — or with someone else, even if they’re on the other side of the planet. In a period where people are forced to stay home, this is the type of development that we desperately need.
There are already signs that 2021 will see more integration between social media and virtual reality. Facebook is working on revamping its Oculus to allow people to connect with others, play games, explore, and more.
As a business, you could leverage virtual reality to enable consumers to view what you’re selling. Industries like art, real estate, e-commerce, and more — those which deal with tangible assets and products — will undoubtedly benefit from this.
Upwards Growth for Social Commerce
Over the years, we’ve witnessed a significant shift that brings social media together with improved user experience. This shift has led to the development of more tools to connect social media with seamless online shopping.
For instance, Instagram allows e-commerce companies to add product tags and embed checkout links for products on their pages. Facebook even allows you to set up an entire shop, encouraging people to browse what you’ve got and make purchases right from the platform.
If you’re a marketer, this is a significant trend that you should be working on. Data shows that around 54% of social media users use these platforms to research products before purchasing. With social media playing a more critical role in influencing purchase decisions, you could use it to optimize your sales.
With social commerce, you can significantly optimize your customers’ purchasing journey. Now, users will be able to see a product on social media and purchase it from the app directly. There’s no need to leave the platform, go back to the website, and then begin looking for the product again.
By allowing customers to purchase straight away, you’re improving their experience and also reducing the chances of abandoned carts and transactions. Putting a “buy now” link or button on your platform will improve your chances of making a sale on your own. If your business deals in selling, you’ll need an effective social media storefront that provides shoppable posts and easy-to-purchase links.
Purposeful Marketing Campaigns
Social media has always been an excellent tool for driving engagement with meaningful causes. With the pandemic still going on out there, “meaningful causes” have taken on a new form. People want to lend a helping hand, and brands are also expected to do something.
This year, it’s important to lend a helping hand as best as you can as a business. With social media, it’s much easier and more comfortable to do so. You can use purpose-driven engagement and relief campaigns that help the most vulnerable of people, and you can use social media to increase your following while doing it.
Collect leads from events or customers entering your store. A product like OnSpot Social has the software that will help you collect the leads so you can create some purposeful marketing campaigns on top of your current marketing.
At the end of the day, customers follow brands that they can relate to. When they see a more humane side of you, they’re bound to believe more in your message.
Interested in developing your own social media marketing plan? Contact our social media marketing agency in Philadelphia to learn more!