Over the last 2 weeks Sarah, Scarlett and Emma have been busy hosting the second round of Digital Marketing Workshops in Bedale. These workshops are always popular and receive lots of positive feedback as the digital marketing world is just so complicated it sometimes leaves business owners feeling baffled about where on earth to start. We thought we’d put together a few of our most frequently asked questions that have emerged from the workshops so far to give you a few tips of where to start on your digital marketing journey.
1. There’re so many Social Media platforms to choose from-which ones should I use and how should I spread my time?
Well, this very much depends on the industry you are in and how much time you have to invest in growing your social media following.
Recently we’ve been working with a number of B2B clients and have found that Twitter and LinkedIn are the places to be-at least to start with.
However, don’t completely discount the likes of Facebook (check out this blog for some of our top tips to avoid Facebook fails) and Instagram as they’re great places to get creative and show the personality of your business. If your products or services are visual, then we’d recommend starting out on Facebook and Instagram so you can showcase what you can offer through lots of images and videos.
Just think about your business, is it creative or corporate? This will help you begin to make some decisions but don’t be scared to try the different platforms available, and if you find some work better than others, then you know where to invest your time!
2. I have a small advertising budget, where am I best off spending my money?
Without a doubt, we feel Facebook offers the best return on your ad spend.
The platform allows you to be extremely specific in who you are targeting so if your budget is small it will be put to good use and not spent on people uninterested in your products or services. You can target people by gender, age, location, interests…the list goes on! It’s extremely easy to set up an ad on the platform and set your budget. The only thing we would say to be wary of is that Facebook will often try to prompt you to spend more to reach a larger audience but stick to your budget and you’ll still see noticeable results.
3. How do I drive traffic back to my website?
Add as many links to your website to your social media profiles and posts.
Don’t give too much away in your posts if there’s more information over on your website, you need to give viewers a teaser that will encourage them to click through to your website. Hopefully from there they will explore your website further and take a step closer to becoming a new customer or client.
Also, make use of all the buttons and description boxes on your social profiles-be sure to add a direct link to your website.
Blogging can be a great way of enticing people over to your website, write about industry news or something you’ve been working on to keep things interesting and current.
If you are looking for more creative ways to improve your backlinks, this blog has some top tips for link building strategies.
4. What’s the point in hashtags and where should I use them?
Hashtags, not to be confused with Hashflags, are those words that appear in a different colour proceeded by the ‘#’ sign on Twitter and Instagram.
By adding the # sign it turns the word connected to it into a link, but rather than linking to a web page it will take you to all the other posts which contain that particular word or phrase. You’ll often see them in the opening credits of a TV show such as The Great British Bake Off, theirs being #GBBO, so all users posting about the show can use the hashtag to join the conversation.
They’re a great method of boosting your reach-choose the right time to post and include the right hashtag and your impressions will go through the roof!
The only thing to be careful of is where you’re using them. Hashtags are used on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, never Facebook, despite them having a good go at introducing them a couple of years ago. Using them on Facebook will make you look as if you don’t know what you’re doing or are cutting corners by using software which automatically posts to all networks at once-it really is worth the extra 30 seconds taking them out of your Facebook post.
5. How can I reduce my bounce rate?
Firstly, what is a bounce rate? This is when a user lands on your website but does not engage with any content by clicking to another page, instead they exit your site (find out more in this blog all about website bounces). If this happens a lot, it can have a negative impact on your ranking in Google searches so you need to not only draw people into clicking your link but ensure they stick around and explore your site further.
So how can you do this? There are countless ways but start off simple. Think about how your content reads and looks on the page, break it up with headings, bullet points and correctly spaced paragraphs. And don’t forget to include interesting imagery, we’re always attracted to pages which are visually pleasing so make sure yours are!
A simple way to ensure some engagement is to add call to actions which include internal links to other pages on the website. Avoid using ‘Click Here’ but create buttons which explain exactly where they’ll take you such as ‘Get in Touch’ or ‘Send us a message’. Adding these make it easy for users to navigate your site so they will be more likely to stick around.
Finally, spend time on your content. Our clients always say the hardest part of getting their new website up is writing the content but the effort it takes in writing interesting, accurate content really does pay off. If you can draw users in with being knowledgeable in your industry, they’ll be more inclined to find out more about your offering-pepper in the other tips and you should see improvements in that dreaded bounce rate!
6. What should I be looking at on Google Analytics?
Log into Google Analytics and you’ll be faced with what can sometimes feel like a confusing mess of numbers and charts. However, if you’re ploughing time into trying to boost your website traffic through improving your SEO and social media strategies you need to monitor what is and isn’t working for you and Google Analytics is a great place to start.
Google Analytics has so much data that can help inform any business marketing strategy. If you have set yourself goals like increasing traffic to your website, you will want to keep an eye on your sessions and any new visitors to your site. If you are focused on keeping your users on your website for longer, looking at the average session durations will help you to see if your strategy is working.
We hope we’ve managed to solve some of your burning questions with some helpful tips to get you started but if you feel you’d benefit from some further help whether it’s social media, SEO or analytics related get in touch! We still have a few spaces available on our next digital marketing workshops as well as being able to offer 1-to-1 support sessions and support packages tailored to your needs.