Sometimes when I decide on a class topic I never know how its going to go. I know every one has an opinion on how to do social. The Millennials think they are experts on it. And if posting pictures of Dilbert complaining about his job in a cubicle, a lost or abused dog or crazy hastags about being in chains is the idea of social campaigns well then by gosh they have it licked.
But if your plan is to put up good content that people may want to share, then this is the blogpost for you. I am a big believer that many companies large and small are doing social wrong. When social media first started gaining its footing, it became painfully obvious that the fortune 500 did not know how to utilize it or what it was there for.
Social media is a beautiful thing. For years marketers were trying to find a way to be invited in to people’s lives. Of course if you sell beer you advertise on a sporting event and if your Tide you advertise on Rachel Ray. But social is the perfect way to be invited into someones life, but marketers don’t know what to do with that power and therefore abuse it by sending sales messages daily, they do cute hokey stuff that does nothing to further the brand. Then there was one lone sane voice in the wilderness, Williams-Sonoma.
Every day Williams-Sonoma sends recipes and gadgets to make life easy. They never overtly ask for the sale with their daily incursion into our lives. They provide us great things we can use. They treat their followers with respect, where as they don’t insult their intelligence and they don’t barrage them with coupons and sale messages. Most of all they have build a large solid channel that supports their website and sales team.
As I teach social techniques. One sure fire method of building followers and building engagement is providing people with something to engage with. Take this actual post your reading. It will get read on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. I will gain followers, and most of all, what i really care about is viscosity. I continue to cement the value of my site in the mind of Google.
After all as people interact with my pages and read and retweet them, Google then understands that the page is safe for its rankings. This is not a spam page and furthermore we are not a spam site. Moreover we provide information to our online communities that we have built up thought providing quality content. By putting proper hashtags and headline on my post, I get my audience.
Conversely the idea that you can gain a follower by putting up some off the wall Hashtag to help build and audience seems to be misapplied and this is a common tactic for the Millennials or so I’m told. So as the person explained that they presently they are teaching social media specialists to find a hashtag, use it and someone might come along and like your site. Sorta like putting a hook in an empty ocean hoping one lost fish swims buy and lands himself on your hook. But sure enough I see it all over the social world.
So I continue to advocate a strong piece of content with the right hashtag, built with the end user in mind will travel farther and faster than gimmicky, corny, hokey hashtag.
To that resolve I had one of my students write me about her experience with all this and this is what she sent me:
I took your advice and instead of blogging just about “new arrivals” etc I created a page called Jewelry FAQ and am answering things my customers ask:
How to care for designer jewelry
How to determine the right necklace length etc etc
what jewelry to wear in the south of France (yes they ask me this)
Also in our blog I have now shifted the from strictly posting about jewelry to more of what you suggested “answering my customers”
Also my customers love to know about the designers we feature so I am now interviewing the designers and doing a Q & A with them and blogging it
The results have been great! Rarely are my post of a pic “reposted” shared etc BUT in this case people are retweeting sharing facebooking ect
Sincerely
Nicola
www.HAUTEheadquarters.com
This past week I tackled a very uncomfortable topic in class. In this day and age of putting personal information and self-agrandizement on social media, it seems that people are still unable to tell people how great they are or why their service or product is the best.
Small business owners are a funny breed. They have the moxie to create the business. And, they have the moxie to do everything from being the CEO to the Janitor. There is no task to big or too small. But when it comes to running a website this seems to be overlooked. In a room of 30 people I had 3 willing to put themselves out there. But here is why you need to.
In this age of being holistic in our approach to getting a web site to rank, one thing you have to have is credibility. And the next question is how do you build creditably? Each of us are experts on our business but what do we do on our websites that demonstrates that. More often than not I have people that are going to explain to me how they just want a 5 page website. It’s not until I start asking them questions about their business that the start to understand that for the website to work right, they have to have more than 5 pages. And it’s not just a reason of ranking on Google. Customers do not have confidence in the product or service with a sparsely populated site.
Often searchers assess a business or product on the information they can find or the reviews about that product. If you don’t provide that information, more often than not they will move to the next site that does provide the information. I have found the more I have blogged the higher our sales are. Why, because I have an awesome staff that answers questions, but when you come to our website you understand we are a wealth of knowledge and that there are very few things we can’t do when it comes to building, running programming promoting or hosting a website. In a nutshell our personalized approach instills confidence in our customers and in turn Google.
Do you approach your business or site in that way. If not its probably time to start considering building a much more personal version of your website or your brand.
I probably should of paid more attention in my psychology classes in college. In today’s marketing climate, it is more important than ever to understand the psychology of our potential buyers. Regardless of whether we sell a product or a service, user intent is becoming increasingly important.
For many years we found a keyword and wrote a page. We were somewhat tone-deaf when it came to how that page was utilized after the search was completed because the end user found us. But those days are long gone. There are a few reasons for this. First, the end user is more sophisticated now. Second, Millennials are changing how you have to market to them. They research products, look for reviews and find ways to compare and contrast before making a purchase. There also seems to be no price consideration in the level of research they do. Additionally, they seem to make no differentiation between blogs and traditional news outlets or consumer advocate sites.
So where does that leave the web marketer? I believe that leaves us in a far better place than we have been in a long time. We now have the opportunity to build credibility through our content and actions.
#1. When you build your keyword list, consider this: Why would someone use this word and what information are they hoping to get?
I see a lot of nuances in the use of words. When we do not understand the user, it is not clear if the copy properly addresses the end user’s need. For example: a searcher looking for a web design company may search for web design Houston because he is looking for a local design firm. That same searcher may type in responsive web design. Does this mean but they are looking for a web designer or information regarding how to decide the value of responsive web design? And responsive web design Houston potentially has an entirely different intent.
These ambiguities leave marketers with the task of sorting it all out. As you build your keyword list, you have to be mindful of what You believe the intent of your end user may be. The closer you are in meeting the intent, the better the page will be.
#2. Use your customer service group as a resource
One of the most overlooked areas for killer content is within your own customer service group. They help define the user for us simply because they are on the front lines. They know what outside opinions are and can help refine our content in a way that makes it more usable to prospective clients. When you identify topics that make your information more relevant, it reinforces the fact that you are an expert in your subject matter.
#3. Use Google and/or Competitors to identify opportunities
Not only do you need to understand the user intent, but you have to know how Google looks at the keyword and how your competitors act in that space. Utilizing keywords to create great content that will rank matches Google’s intent or is more closely aligned with their algorithm.
For example, an artist may consider ranking on the word painter. However, Google views that word as a local term that relates to house painters. So by writing an article about a Painter, your chances of ranking on any art terms become slim.
Another example would be looking at the SERP in Google, seeing who is there and on the type of page. Let’s say I wanted to rank on “Dish Network Deals.” When you review listings you will see that most are in the form of consumer tips. Creating a page that adopts that approach would greatly enhance your ability to rank on that term.
These are just a few tips that marketers can use to create provocative content that mets the end users needs. It’s an easy path to winning in both the SERPs as well as with the potential client.
