What do people look at most on social media profiles?

Mashable Social Media just carried out a survey using Eyetrackshop to see where the eye goes when people view social media pages.  The results were pretty interesting from site to site and it gives you an indication of what you should pay attention to on some social media sites.

Here is an overview of their findings on Social Media habit

The profile pictures does matter. The site feature that attracted the most attention on Klout, Facebook and StumbleUpon was the profile photo.

Job title was the biggest attention grabber on Linkedin

It got more attention than anything else on the page, even the profile picture.

Who you know gets noticed on Social Media

Even if it’s down to where they are on the page, people do look at the thumbnail pictures of your friends that appear on social profiles. This is particularly interesting to viewers of Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Klout profiles.

The content at the top of the page wins

The further down the page, the fewer people look at it.  This was true on content focused profiles like Pinterest and Digg as well as socially focused profiles such as Facebook.  The effect was less obvious on YouTube and Twitter profiles.

If you would like further information on Social Media Marketing campaigns please call Sue on 01206 530010 or email sue@thecolchesterseocompany.co.uk

If you’re not using social media marketing to get more value from your marketing, you’re missing out

 

Should you get involved with social media marketing? The answer is emphatically YES!

There are now more than 2.8 billion Facebook users worldwise, 2.29 billion YouTube users, nearly 1.4Social media marketing, SEO and Social Media at Colchester SEO Company billion people using instagrm and 1.6 billion people on WhatsApp.  I remember back in the 2000s when people thought that social media was something only young people would do and therefore probably wasn’t much use to modern business. Times have changed and advertising on social media is huge as the audience is enormous.  Most companies know they have to have some kind of social media presence these days.

Are you still relying on old marketing techniques like mail shots and cold calling?

Are you still relying on 80’s style sales techniques to give your business the edge on sales?  Still employing telesales people/agencies to find you leads.  In this day and age, people are fed-up and jaded with the old sales approaches.  Whether you’re selling to individuals or businesses when it comes to the “heavy sell,” we’ve all seen and heard it all and we don’t want to be sold to in that way and more to the point, we now know how to to say no!   I often hear from sales people how difficult it is to close a deal the way they used to and I think it’s because most of us are just resistant to that sort of approach.  There’s a new breed of customers out there and these days most of them are researching what they want on the internet via blogs, comparison sites, engaging with friends and other businesses on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube and they know what they are looking for and they can find it themselves.  So if you are not involved in Social Media you could be missing out on the customers because that’s where many of them are today.

Knowing which social media platform would suit your company is often difficult to know

The big snag is you may not know anything about it and perhaps if you do know a bit about it, do you have the time to put it into practice in a sustained and effective way.  It’s no good opening a twitter account, setting up your Facebook page half heartedly and then not having the time or the inclination to post anything, tweet anything or engage with anyone.

It takes effort and a bit of know-how to build a social media following

It takes time to build a following on social media platforms.  A lot of people set it up and then find it’s just too much hassle to continue because let’s face it, you have a business to run.  This is probably a worse approach than doing nothing at all.  Some businesses find they don’t have the technical knowledge to set up branded pages/accounts wither.

Get a joined up approach to social media marketing and your website

Finally you need a joined up approach to social media marketing i.e. have a goal, target customers in mind and a strategy.  You can link up your social media with various platforms like Hoote Suite (now quite expensive) and Meta and minimise the time you spend on it to grow your following via getting your blog out through social media and sharing interesting content.  Remember social media has a number of benefits, including brand awareness but also marketing your website and bringing customers to it.  Platforms like Instagram are particularly effective for ecommerce sites.

The downside is it does take time, some knowledge of how it all works and a strategy to get you up and running, which is where I come in.   If you really want to get a handle on this yourself then I can help you set things up and train you how to use it.  If you just want somebody else to set it up and run it all, I can do that to.  What you will get in either case is a strategy, a joined up approach to your social media marketing and regular reports on what’s happening, so that it’s working for you.   If you still find it confusing then I am happy to explain further but this is something you really should be getting involved with or you will start to feel that you’ve missed the boat.

If you require further information on social media please contact sue@thecolchesterseocompany.co.uk

Image courtesy of Alex Pace.

How important is a website for a new business?

When you start-up a business you tend to have quite a few initial costs at a time when your income might be quite limited.  You want to get your name and your business out there but most small businesses would struggle to finance a marketing/advertising campaign when they first get going.   Also if you’ve started up in business and you have only a small amount of capital you don’t want to blow it all at once.

What’s the best website route to go down if any?

Nowadays there are dozens and dozens of options for creating websites and it doesn’t have to cost a SEO, Colchester, website design, Google ranking, website design and marketing for new small businesses, Essexfortune.  A lot of companies start out operating with just social media pages but I would advise getting your website set up as early as possible as it takes time to build ranking and traffic. When I started in business back in 2011, website’s were expensive. You generally had to invest a fair bit with a designer or have a lot of know how yourself.  Saying that, I set up my first website on WordPress myself and that’s a very viable option for most people today.  They have pay monthly options and will help you through most of it or you can do it yourself and keep costs to a minimum, usually just the cost of a theme.

It takes time for a website to get ranked on Google and start getting traffic

Your website doesn’t just get “out there” the minute it goes live sadly, that used to be the case in the early days of website, because there were fewer websites.  These days in most industry areas the competition is massive so you actually have to market it.  That’s really what SEO is, marketing your website.  Once of the most important criteria for a website to rank well with Google is longevity.  A long established website will do better than a new one generally, unless everything is thrown at a new website in terms of SEO etc, but even then it will have a period where Google will rank it poorly because it’s new.  So, the earlier you get your website going the better.

Monthly payment versus upfront payment for a website

It may seem the cheapest option to go for the monthly payments though a company who will design your site and create it for you.  Remember that this often includes only the most basic SEO if any, and they may not even create a site map, set up analytics and some other essentials.  But if you add up the monthly costs, which often include add-ons for emails, SEO and security, you could find yourself paying a massive amount more over five years, than you would have done getting a designer/developer to do it for you with everything you need.  So make sure you research costs well and don’t just think of it as a monthly payment but what it will cost you over two or three years and what you’d pay for a properly designed website on WordPress or a similar platform.  Often the latter works out much much cheaper and gives you more flexibility.  As you’ll have a website for a long time £25 a month over 10 years could work out quite expensive!

A website doesn’t have to be expensive

It doesn’t have to be expensive to set up a website and remember a website is always a work in progress.  Google works on the premise that a site should be constantly updated to stay up there in the rankings so you can start with something really quite basic and then keep improving it until it’s perfect.  This way you improve your ranking and keep Google looking your way at the same time.

Think SEO WHEN you build your website not AFTER!

Before you consider a website you should think very carefully about how you are going to set it up in terms of copy and keywords, title , meta and alt tags and of course who you are going to promote your products to.  This is what SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is all about.  It’s simply making your site visible to the search engines so customers can find you.  Most people create the website and think about this after, which is really missing a massive trick as nobody is going to find the website until the SEO is at least half decent.

Website designers rarely do the SEO for you, it’s not their field

Some designers when commissioned to create a website will take this into consideration and have a reasonable amount of knowledge about it, but don’t assume they all do when you commission someone to design a website for you. The amount of times I ask a client if they have had their site optimised and they say “Oh I’m sure the guy that designed it would have done that”.  A web designer is more often than not a web designer and only does the basics of SEO.   Some offer SEO as a subsidiary service or as part of the package but you do need to check whether you are getting this and not just assume that you are.    If it’s not included in the service then you need to consult an SEO expert preferably before you get your website designed and they can work in conjunction with your designer.

Would you print leaflets and expect them to deliver themselves

Setting up a website without a thought for SEO is a bit like printing a pile of leaflets and leaving them on your sideboard.  Nobody is really going to see your website any more than they will see your leaflets.

SEO and Internet Marketing at the Colchester SEO Company, Essex

You do have to market a website and SEO is the most effective way of marketing your website.

Even if you can’t afford an all singing and dancing beautifully designed website, you could create something yourself on a platform like WordPress (very SEO friendly and easy to use) and do a crash course on Yoast and learn the essentials for optimisation.  Then later when you’ve got a bit of money, you can get advice from a developer on improving the look/function and and SEO provider on how to make the most of the SEO. of course it’s a bit different if you’re looking at an Ecommerce site but that’s another story.

We work with a lot of small businesses who have done this and are very happy to polish up a website for small businesses and even to do it over a period of time so as to stagger the costs.

If you require further information on web design or SEO for new or existing business then please contact sue@theolchesterseocompany.co.uk.