What does your web marketing strategy include? Email newsletters? Social networking? Search engine optimisation? Writing blogs? Ideally it ought to include all of these, but the most essential part is that you have a plan to begin with. If you haven't yet, then stop everything and write one now.
All of the activities above can loosely be described as 'Social Media', but each must be looked at individually. It's very important to treat each channel as it's own entity, and not to simply duplicate posts across them. There will always be content that is spread across all channels, but it's important to consider the way you use these channels for the maximum effect.
First up, set some targets and goals. You may find it helpful to use the SMART criteria like this:
Specific
Drill down to the details. Instead of just saying "increase website unique visitors" try "increase website unique visitors by 10% in the following three months via a targeted email marketing campaign."
Measurable
You need to be certain that you can measure whether or not your targets and goals have been met, and if not then how short they fell and why. This is where Google Analytics comes in later in this post.
Achievable
Ensure your goals are achievable. Goals that include 'double our email subscribers in three days" more than likely isn't going to be possible. Make it tough by all means, but make it doable!
Realistic
Ensure you have enough time and resources to meet your objectives.
Timed
Set a realistic time frame to your objectives, and stick to it.
Once you've set your goals you can move on to planning your web marketing activities. Here's our quick guide to using each of them within a grand web marketing plan.
Social Networking
The golden rule in social networking is to not overtly sell. Social networks are a perfect place to begin a sales process but a terrible place to seal the deal. You should concentrate on building relationships with prospects, and leave the selling to your site or blog and email newsletters. Don't use it purely to broadcast, use it to engage - you can learn a lot about your customers and what they want by simply listening to them. Let's examine each in turn.
Fast moving, the typical life of a tweet nowadays is around 25 minutes. Twitter especially suits news and media companies, but it's also a great place to talk about things that are relevant right now. You may have a restaurant running a lunch time special, so a tweet at 10am and then another at 11am letting people know about it would be a good start, perhaps providing traffic to your menus on your website. Not so useful would be a tweet referring to the special offer you have in five days time. With Twitter you should be posting between four and six times per day, and at least an hour between each tweet.
Facebook is different to Twitter in that posts have a longer life. They're visible in news feeds for hours, even days after they've been posted. Facebook is a good platform to build relationships with customers on, whereas Twitter keeps people updated on the 'here and now'. As a result, for content that is less focussed on timing, Facebook is where you should go. You should post on Facebook a maximum of once per day - any more than that and you'll start to annoy people.
Google Plus
A lot of businesses never really consider Google much, and they're missing a trick because of it. When you search on Google you'll find Google references everywhere, and it's thought that Google 1âEURs (the Google equivalent of a Facebook 'like') have a major role in search engine rankings. Creating a good Google page, and doing something as simple as regularly linking to your blog posts and replying to comments is a great, easy way to become involved.
Email Newsletters
Generally speaking, you should keep your content engaging and interesting and on a specific, consistent subject. 90% of the content should be educational, having the remaining 10% promotional. This isn't difficult, simply spend a little time explaining what you do (or sell) and what the benefits of your products or service (or services) are. Provide a clear, primary call to action, and links to the right places on your web site. Don't send emails that merely sell, sell, sell - your subscribers will simply subconsciously ignore what they don't want to see.
A Blog
Using a blog for business is a great way to strengthen your brand. You should make sure you write for your customers, not for you, and aim to provide interesting information rather than sell products. Your posts could be answers to questions that you've been asked in the past, or perhaps information regarding new products that solves a customers problems. The blog post should be easily shared through social networks, and you can reference posts in all of your marketing streams. When managing a blog remember to be aware of your blog goals and objectives as it can be easy to drift off topic, and the usual social rules apply - no sales pitches! That's not what blogs are for, and not what they're good at.
Your Website and SEO
A huge subject in itself, this is where the real business happens. Your social media streams and email marketing activities ultimately direct you here. It's the final hurdle, and you really need to be sure that it will convert. Is there great content? Is it easy to navigate? Is it clear what you want the viewer to do on each page? Do you have relevant search engine friendly titles and descriptions and keyword rich content for each page? Is the information you're providing enticing and interesting? Is the site completely accessible on mobile and tablet? Remember, sell the sizzle, not the sausage!
Inbound Links
Quality inbound links are search engine gold and will help increase your organic rankings. Google loves it if you have other reputable websites providing a link to yours. It assumes that your site must contain good content if others want to link to it, so the more you have the better. The key here is quality - lots of links from irrelevant, low ranking websites will probably do you more damage than good, so be selective. Google also likes it if you link out to other websites as it shows you're being social and engaging with the web community.
Google Analytics
We say this part time and time again. All of the above is hugely devalued if you have no idea what impact it's having on your website traffic. The main things you need to know are who's visiting, where they've come from, what time they visited, which pages they view, where they landed and where they left. You can find out which blog posts they found the most interesting, and the way they were directed to them in the first place. You should be tracking the response from all the activities mentioned in this post, and evaluating which have worked well, and which not so. Without it you are blind.
In Conclusion
To briefly summarise, if you only take three things away from this article, then it ought to be this:
- Treat each stream as a different entity, and don't simply duplicate content.
- Never attempt to overtly sell.
- Track your performance in Google Analytics.
John Picton is founder of elmnet,
a company specialising in website design in Newcastle, UK. He
specialises in social media marketing, email marketing and developing
Wordpress websites.
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Picton
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