Top 13 Pros & Cons of Social Media For Your Business
Social media has evolved from direct electronic information exchange to a virtual gathering place, retail platform, and a vital 21st-century marketing tool. It has been around since the 1980s and more and more population of the world are going into the social media space. Social media had since gone from desktop and laptop computers to mobile phones. This had made it more accessible to a lot of people. According to smartinsights, more than half of the world now uses social media. 4.55 billion people around the world now use social media, 400 million new users have come online within the last 12 months. 5.29 billion unique mobile users mean more than two-thirds of the world have access to a mobile phone. Because of the evolution of Social Media, businesses have taken advantage of this new consumer mobility by serving their customers new, simpler methods of interacting and new ways of buying goods and services. A brand needs to have a social media presence. This is because it is where you interact with your customers, get their feedback, and communicate with them on a more personal level. Is Social Media perfect? With Social Media, you reach a larger audience and build your brand. There’s always a bad side to everything good. Social media is good for your business because it has so many advantages. It can also have a negative effect on your business when used wrongly. In the course of this advantages and disadvantages of social media to your business article, we’re going to explore the advantages and disadvantages of social media to your business. Advantages of social media for your business Disadvantages of social media for your business The remedy for this problem is to be patient. Nothing good comes easy. The remedy for this is to provide quality products and top-notch customer services. The best way to avoid this is to ensure security. Turn on two-factor authentication on all your pages. Announcing the punishment for anybody that hacks your page can help. To solve this problem, your brand should always have a budget allocated to your social media activities, and you should also check reviews online before starting This will help you stay organized and avoid the risk of running into debt. Always seek to bring the best people to your team. You can solve this problem by being innovative. Always be the first to think out new ways of doing things. Always be the first to launch. This will give you a first-mover advantage and make you stand out. You can manage this problem by being extra careful with the way you manage your brand’s information. You shouldn’t give people the chance to know the things they’re not supposed to know about your brand. In conclusion of the advantages and disadvantages of social media, irrespective of the disadvantages social media offers your business, you need to invest your time and money in social media marketing strategies. You cannot know what to expect from social media because it involves humans, and human beings evolve with time. But that should not stop you from expanding your business online. Research on how to do business better online and find help from professionals to avoid landing on the wrong side. Do you have any challenges with your social media marketing strategies? Our team of experts can help you get on the right track, book a free strategy session with us by clicking on I want a free consultation.
5 Ways to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google
Ranking high on Google is the basis of all your web marketing goals. Most of the traffic that comes to your website comes from search engines. Your website showing up on the first page of a search engine gives it the opportunity to be seen by searchers and once they see it, they can be able to click on it. Traffic to your website will lead to more brand awareness and conversion. According to Backlinko, the first result on Google gets 31.7 percent of all clicks while results on the second page receive just .78 percent of clicks. The best page is written for both the user and SEO in mind, not either of them but both of them. Always have it in mind to satisfy both the reader and the search engine in your web writing activities. Ways to improve your search engine ranking on Google Doing these 5 things will help you rank high on Google: Publish relevant contents Publishing relevant content means answering everything the user has in mind in a search query. You do this by understanding your customers and their behaviors. This will help you write the kind of content they would love to read. This involves using their language and the kind of tone that appeals to them. This requires an in-depth study of your buyer persona. Another aspect of this is using the right keywords in your content. When you use the right keyword and your content is written the way your audience likes it, your website will have a chance to rank higher on a search engine. Speed If your site is slow, you have a little chance of a high rank in a search position. It will affect your ability to convert and sell to new customers, too. Walmart experienced a sharp decline in conversions when its page load times increased from one to four seconds. If this happens, it doesn’t matter what your on-page SEO, meta description, or title tags are. The search algorithm will punish you, even if you’re a giant like Walmart. You can use the following and other tools to check for your site’s speed: Optimize for mobile More than half of all website traffic comes from a mobile device. That means if you want to rank well, your site needs to perform well on mobile. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test offers a quick way to determine if your site is mobile-friendly or not. In 2020, Google moved to “mobile-first indexing” which means Google looks at websites as a mobile device. If your site is hard to navigate, your ranking will be impacted. Information from this will help you take steps in making your website mobile-friendly. Update your website regularly This indicates how relevant your website is. Relevancy is one of the key factors to rank high on a search engine. Keep adding new content to your website at least every week. This could be adding information about a new product or service you’re selling, a customer story, or a product video. It’s also important to update your web content pages at least every 6 months and remove content that is no longer relevant. Regular updates on your website encourage search engines to visit your website more often. The more frequently they visit, the faster they can discover new content on your websites and this will give your website a good ranking benefit. Gain external links on your site This is a major factor for your off-page ranking factors. Links from external websites are considered a vote of confidence in the accuracy, relevance, and usefulness of your content especially links from high-ranking websites. Your goal should be to have the kind of content other websites will like to link to. How do you achieve this? Quality contents! Quality content means different things to different people, but in all, your content should be meaningful and well detailed to earn backlinks from reputable websites. A bonus, This is a way of letting Google know what your website contains. With this, Google will rank your website based on what it contains. And if your website contains what a user is searching for, it would be a high ranking for you! Title metadata is one of the most important metadata on your website. It is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser and as a headline within the search engine’s results. Description metadata is what tells what is on your page. It is an appealing description of what is contained within a particular page. Also, always use alt tags to describe your image and video media. This tells Google what is contained in the image or video. In summary, relevant content, a good website speed, a website optimized for mobile, link-worthy content, content with metadata and alt texts, and a website that is refreshed and up to date will always win for a high ranking on Google. Once you have these things in mind, you are good to go for a good ranking on Google. Do you want to talk to a professional about your website ranking issue? Book a free consultation session and talk to a team member by clicking on I want a free consultation.
What Does SEO Mean?
There is so much information out there, but not so much information can be seen with one click. The goal of SEO is to make your content visible once anything related to your content is searched for. SEO means Search Engine Optimization. It’s not such a big word. In a simpler term, SEO is making your content visible on the web. With SEO, you can make your brand’s content appear on a search engine’s SERP. SERP means search engine result page. Your company’s SERP ranking is where it ranks in the search engine. You won’t have so much competition online, once you prioritize SEO. SEO is a long-term strategy, it’s not what you do today and expects results tomorrow. According to Semrush, SEO should show results within a 6- to 12-month period. It takes time and patience to get the required result. Aim for daily activities with the goal of long-term success. Does SEO involve only blog content? SEO deals with everything on the internet including social media, email, etc. It then means that once your business is online, SEO should be your priority. In both blog content and social media, human interactions and algorithms are the major keys for SEO. The goal of this post is to make you understand the importance of SEO and how you should go about it in your business. What does SEO involve? SEO focuses on making your content seen by both the search engine’s algorithm and humans. Is your content relevant for humans? Can the algorithm notice your content? These two questions would guide your SEO process The three main components of SEO are Content, popularity, and speed. Content: Focus on writing well-informed quality content. The content should be relevant. SEO starts with content because it is the one you can work on without external help. Also, consider your goals before writing any content. Is it to generate more traffic? get more sales? or get more visibility? SEO-optimized content involves structuring your content the way search engines will see it. Prioritize your keyword, make sure to use the keyword in these 5 places: title, header, image alt text, link text to that page body. Example: Target word: SEO Title: What does SEO mean? Headers: <h2>What does SEO involve? Links to the page: Good: What does SEO mean? Bad: How to rank higher on Google Aim for 2% keyword usage of the word count (explain) Your site HTML matters. Without proper tags, headers, and descriptions, google would not find your content. Another thing is the design of your headers. Headings are the titles of each section on a web page. They organize the text and make it scannable. On any website, headers are set by tags. The largest is <h1> and normally goes at the top of a page. The next largest is <h2> and so to <h6>. Note that you shouldn’t overuse the keyword in your content. This would result in keyword stuffing and it is bad for SEO. Also, freshness counts for SEO. Posting new content signals to google and brings its attention to your site. Always go through your content to check for accuracy, fix any broken link, refresh old data, bringing in new statistics are good ways to tell google that your content is relevant. For social media, updating your content and repurposing the old one does the trick. The structure of the content is important. Make sure the texts are broken up and the sentences are not long. Make use of short sentences and paragraphs for easy readability. There’s a thing called bounce rate. How much time people spend on your content matters. This shows the search engine that your content is of good quality and relevant. People coming to your site and leaving immediately would result in a high bounce rate and it’s not good for your search engine optimization. Popularity: How popular is the keyword you want to rank for?. The main idea of SEO is to have content that people are searching for. Tools like Google trend and Google keyword planner can help you target the right keyword. Another way to gain popularity is by writing guest posts. Guest posts bring traffic to your site. Aim to write guest posts for websites in your niche. The idea is to offer free and quality content and get exposure to their audience and an SEO boost from linking back to your website. Also, content promotion is key. Promote your content on your social media platforms and other media outlets. Run good ads on google and make sure to drive enough traffic to your website. The goal is to get more people to see your content. Once there is much traffic coming into your site, the search engine will classify the content as important and will make it rank higher. This will boost your search ranking. Popularity also involves how many backlinks your website has. This goes both ways, a lot of websites linking to your page will bring more traffic to your site. This will get the attention of the search engine and it will rank your website high. The basic trick for getting traffic is creating content people would want to share. This works for social media too. Speed: This is mainly for web content. Optimizing your website for search engines requires you to make your web page easy to access and this involves working on the speed. You can use tools like google speed insights or webpage tests to check your web speed. In conclusion, make sure your content is relevant and optimized, prioritize link building, and ensure your website has the best user experience in terms of speed and navigation. Pro tip: Optimize your website for voice search. Voice search is becoming more popular. It is what the future holds. Optimizing Your website for voice search will do a lot for your SEO. In addition, pay attention to your metrics, use tools like Google Analytics, Google search console to keep track of your page
What Is SEO And How Does It Work?
Have you ever wondered how contents make it to the first page of a Google search? If no or non-vehement yes, then you need to know more about SEO and how it works These contents are displayed on the first page of a search result because they have been optimized. Optimization simply means making something fit a particular system by following a set of rules. SEO means Search engine optimization. They are those steps you take to make your content seen on a search engine, especially on the first page. One of the goals you should have is directing traffic to your website. And the best way to do this is to make people see your website’s content online. These website contents could be your business blog, landing page, and even your home page. SEO is like coming out and standing in front of the people interested in your products so that whenever they search for a keyword related to your products, your brand shows up. The end goal of SEO is first, to build your brand’s awareness and then to generate leads that could convert. There are different steps you should take to make your SEO a success and you would learn them in the course of this article. The two sides of SEO Every activity that contributes to SEO are classified into two types On-page SEO refers to changes you make on your site that impact SEO. These include writing quality content that readers will like, using keywords that people are searching for, adding meta tags and alt tags, using HTML headers, structuring your website well, etc. Off-page SEO is all those activities that take place outside your website to raise your site’s rankings. Those activities include earning backlinks, getting traffic from social media and other sources. How does SEO work? Your SEO success is determined by how search engines work and how well you’re able to keep your site up to its standard for ranking. You can say your website content is search engine optimized when it appears on the first page of a search engine like Google, bing, yahoo, etc. Different processes take place before your content get’s to a search engine’s first page. For a search engine like Google, the first thing that will qualify your website for ranking is when Google robots can crawl your site. If a search engine can’t crawl your site, it could be for the following reasons: Making Your site crawlable is all about making Google see your site. A search engine scours the Internet for content, looking over the code/content for each URL they find after which they store everything they found in a database, this is known as indexing. After indexing, it now has the chance to be displayed as a result of relevant queries. Once your page has been crawled and is placed in a search engine’s index, it is your SEO efforts that will place you in the SERPs(Search Engine’s Result Page) Google will rank your content on the first page if it provides the pieces of content that will best answer a searcher’s query, which means that results are ordered according to relevance. How would you make your content relevant? Keyword research provides you with specific search data that can help you answer questions like: After that, the next thing is to help the search engine understand what your page contains by adding the necessary title and meta descriptions, adding alt tags to your images, choosing the right format and arrangement for your content, and, making sure your pictures, videos and other files are compressed enough to enhance the speed of your website. You can now go on with other off-page activities like directing traffic from your social media and earning backlinks from other websites. This improves the popularity of your website and popularity is a major factor for SEO. In summary, once your website can be crawled by a search engine, relevant optimized content will always win. SEO is a long-term thing. It requires patience and time for it to be effective. Always have a consistent budget for SEO for your brand and keep testing and trying new things. Don’t forget to measure and keep track of your progress. If you have questions about SEO, you can book a free consultation session to talk to a team member by clicking on I want a free consultation.
Professional Email Subject Lines That’d Lead To Higher Open Rate
Part of your web marketing activities is writing good email subject lines. Emails are a way to build relationships with your customers. Good email subject lines create a good first impression on your subscribers. Your main concern as a company is getting your emails read by your customers. It is only when people read and engage with your emails that you would achieve your goals for writing that email in the first place. Your email subject line is the most important part because it is what will determine if the email will be opened or not. For customers to know what the business has to say, a good email subject line comes into play. In one study, 47% of people said the subject line is the main reason they open an email. What does this say? that you should take your email subject lines very seriously. Why is writing professional email subject lines important for your business? Writing good subject lines is important because it tells what the email is about at a glance. People are faced with tons of emails every day in their inbox and so there is a high possibility of your emails being left unopened. If people can tell what an email is about once they set their eyes on them, then they would decide if they would read it or not. While writing a good email subject line first make sure it is straight to the point and then catchy enough to draw people in. These are the two major things you consider while writing an email subject line. Do you write an email subject line first? It depends on your style and the way you flow. You can write a suitable email subject line after you have written the body of the mail or before you start. Is keyword research necessary for email subject lines? The email subject line is similar to a blog post title. The only difference is that they are sent straight to a subscriber’s inbox and do not need to be searched for on a search engine. Using keywords that people want to engage with is important. It is always good to write for humans in your web marketing activities. Write something that people want to engage with, write something that people want to hear. This will lead to a higher open rate and possible conversion. So yes, keyword research is important for writing email subject lines. When your email subject line contains what people are searching for, they will open it and possibly read through and take action. Best email subject line styles The best email subject line styles include: 1. Action subject lines: A subject line that requires action will draw people’s attention. Passive and dull subject lines would bore people. People like energy, people like something that will be worth their time. You should leverage that while writing your email subject lines. Examples: If your shoe company is running a discount and you write something like “Shoe sales discount!” as your subject line, it will not give much open rate as an active sentence like “Get a 15% discount on any shoe you buy!” Although, it is not advisable to use too much action on your subject lines in order not to give the wrong message. You don’t want to sound like you’re forcing your subscribers to do something for you. 2. Exclusive information subject lines: Always use subject lines that make your subscribers feel special. Let them feel they are not treated as others. Be sure to be authentic, nobody wants to be lied to. Examples of these subject lines include; “For our esteemed customers”, ” Discount only for you!”, “Exclusive information”, ” private invitation”, etc. People have the innate desire to be treated specially, leverage on that while remaining honest. 3. Urgency/Scarcity subject lines: Nobody wants to be left out on anything. Appeal to the subscriber’s sense of urgency while writing your email subject lines. Make them feel that if they don’t take action, they will miss out. Be cautious while using this type of subject line. Too much zeal would sound too salesy and could be misconstrued as spam. People don’t like spammy messages in their inboxes. Examples of these subject lines include: “Free product offer for the next 10 days!”, “Free coupons for you if you buy now!” etc. Always be careful with how you infuse urgency in your subject lines. Subject lines in form of questions that a subscriber would want the answer to: This works like magic. It is normal for human beings to be curious about things. When you ask a question that subscribers are curious about in your email subject line, they will tend to open your email more. Make sure to answer the question in the body of your email so they won’t tag you as fake. Examples: While asking these questions, avoid being obscure and go straight to the point. Email Subject lines that are Controversial and Shocking: The good thing about controversial email subject lines is that it is unique, intriguing, and catches a recipient by surprise. People like to engage with something different and you should use that as an advantage. Controversial subject lines can also go wrong. People can misunderstand what you mean. This will backfire and give off the wrong result. You have to be extra careful while writing controversial email subject lines. Examples of these kinds of subject lines are: “The evils of Mark Zuckerberg” “How Jeff Bezos is a goal digger” Tips for writing better subject lines for your emails. For example, instead of saying “Our company is organizing something that will help you save more money” You can say: “Exclusive promo deals just for you!” 55% of emails are opened with a mobile device, a short, clear, and concise email subject line will do a lot to optimize your emails for mobile. An example of such subject lines could be ‘The full story behind the rape saga: Always use emojis
What is Web Marketing?
Web marketing is also known as Internet marketing or online marketing. It is simply all the marketing activities that you do online. It can range from web content, social media, search engine advertising, blogging, videos, email, etc Web Marketing vs. Digital Marketing Internet Marketing is focused solely on the internet while digital marketing goes beyond mobile to subway platforms, games apps, smartphone apps, Sms messaging, etc. Why is web marketing important? Buyer decisions are now influenced by the Internet. People spend a lot of time on the internet and it has affected their lives in so many ways, including how they make purchases. And so, taking your business online is the best way to reach more people. People will not need to come to your office or your shop whenever they want to buy your product. The Internet has provided an avenue to interact with people without meeting them in person. Benefits of web marketing What does web marketing do for your brand? Marketing on the internet is so important to your overall marketing. The following are the benefits of web marketing to your business: Comparison of Web marketing vs. Offline Marketing Website marketing is cheaper, more focused (targeting a set of people), and easy to measure and edit than offline marketing. What is a web marketing strategy? A web marketing strategy is a method you use for your web marketing activities. They include: The different forms of web marketing methods Content Marketing: Content Marketing involves creating and sharing materials online in form of videos, blogs, social media posts, ebooks, whitepapers, infographics, etc. The main aim of content marketing is to establish expertise, promote brand awareness, and place your business in the minds of the people. You do this by sharing valuable content to educate them about your products. You can even infuse some fun and humor in form of content to humanize your brand. For content marketing, always have it in mind to stimulate the interest of the people in your products and services. Google ads: This is Google’s online advertising platform. The good thing about Google ads is that people would see your ads once they are interested in your products and services. Your ads come up once anybody searches for whatever is related to your brand. You get to choose where your ad appears, set your budget, and measure the impact of your ad. Google ads use the pay-per-click model. This is when advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Social media ads and promotions: Your brand can now advertise on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, snap chat, Twitter, etc. These social media platforms have a database system where you can target your specific audience and measure your results. Social media ads are the newest trend in web marketing. This is because more and more people are going into social media and there is a potential for higher returns for your investments Display advertising: Ever seen an advert design or video while reading a blog?. Those are called display ads. Display ads can also be regarded as banner ads. This type of advertising combines text, images, and a URL that links to a website where a customer can learn about the product. Your banner ad is shown to people while they are on another site and it seeks to capture their attention to your landing page. This method is more effective when your ads show on websites that are related to your products. Affiliate marketing: Affiliate marketing is an advertising model your brand can adopt. It involves paying a third party to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services. The third party could be a person, a website, an affiliate marketing brand, etc. These third parties are called affiliates, and the commission fee incentivizes them to find ways to promote your products. Retargetting: This is a strategy for bringing people who have visited your site before back to your site either to complete an action or view something new. Their data is captured by the cookies on your website once they visit your page the first time. These cookies give the information of the people that have visited your website and what they are interested in. You can use this information to bring those people back to your website. This is a good way of targeting people that already have an interest in your product. Online PR: This can be in form of your brand featuring on a newspaper or digital publication, engaging with the comments on your website and social media page, etc. Online PR covers all the actions you take to give a good image of your brand online. Video marketing: You can leverage on platforms like YouTube to promote your brand using video content. Video marketing is the use of video to raise awareness, create engagement, and drive sales. Email Marketing: This can be in the form of blog subscription newsletters, follow-up emails to website visitors, customer welcome emails, sending promotions and tips, etc. These emails should have a professional subject line that is catchy enough so it won’t get lost among the tonnes of emails your subscribers receive daily. Classification on web marketing It is classified into organic and inorganic methods. Organic methods are the type that doesn’t involve cost. Effective organic marketing involves your effort and time. These methods include content marketing, SEO, email marketing, social media content marketing, etc. Inorganic methods will cost you money. They include; pay per click, search engine marketing(SEM) affiliate marketing, social media ads(Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), social media promotions, display ads, etc. Tips for a better web marketing results Setting goals will help you remain focused on what you should do to achieve what you want to achieve. Challenges of Web Marketing The two major challenges involved with web marketing include: The solution to these problems is staying innovative and being ahead of your competitors. Always research and use the best tools to analyze and measure