Lately, i’ve been getting more used to listening phrases like, building a website is expensive, difficult and time consuming. Most people spend quite a bit of time on social media networks, and many of the professionals in the marketing area discuss and comment on what’s going on.
This post documents an easy way to set up your web presence, and use the content generated on social media to make sure you still have a life…at least some of it 🙂
First decision for a non-coding geek like me: Technology
You can start with a blog – blogger.com or wordpress.com will do the trick – they’re user friendly and SEO efficient, removing the burden of the most technical aspects of maintaining a website – coding and optimisation. You will still have to do optimisation, but it’s mostly copy and keywords.
On another note, any of these platforms offer a scalable solution – start with a blog, add sections, and you end up with a website! The other plus – they’re usually optimised for mobile browsing – so you have a mobile optimised webpage.
Of course you might want to enhance your mobile presence – check Conduit mobile out.
Content
The first decision is what are you going to blog about? Pick a topic, pick a way to address your users and who you want them to be, and test! The analytics will speak for themselves. After this is defined, it’s time to start outlining content.
If you’re a service provider for B2B market, try to write about what your clients would be asking you about. Examples and benchmark case studies that help your clients understand how you (or your company’s solutions) can add value to their business – pick your titles wisely, they will be your hook.
If you’re speaking to consumers and you’re selling stuff, think about what are the key elements of decision making for your audience and what tools do they use? Talk about them, talk about what’s trending or what in the outside world is affecting their shopping behaviour? Valentine’s day? Snowed in? Tube Strike (a real example in a previous post)?
If you want to move faster and add more content to your blog and turn it into a website, think about what people would be searching for associated to what you’re selling: what gives you more credibility, context to the use of your services/products, customer reviews, other stuff you can cross-sell? As long as it’s in the context and it’s interesting, anything goes!
Now you’re thinking: I’m gonna spend my whole day writing content – WRONG! Why? The answer is: Social Media!
Social Media
1 Select the social media where you want to be active in – twitter, facebook, pinterest, instagram, linkedin, tumblr, youtube.
Get a social media management tool like hootsuite – it’s free and help you automate/program posts, so it doesn’t become too time consuming, and you can use social media as the acquisition channel for your website.
Hootsuite’s scheduling tool
Test, measure and optimise! Get google analytics on your website (wordpress / blogger) and understand the performance of content and channels, and what type of audiences are being driven by which channel? You can probably get a lot of users via twitter, but in average they only read 1.2 pages, as with Linkedin you get half the users that spend 4x more time. You need both types of users, but try to keep the bounce rate as low as possible.
4 Create social media feeds that feed the sections of your website: youtube playlist for videos, instagram for photo gallery, linkedin for recommendations, etc. Be creative – if you have a twitter feed going into your homepage your content will always look fresh, without much effort.
Editorial management and other tips
WOW – I don’t want this! Well, if you’re gonna have a digital presence as a business/persona, you’d better do something and keep active, otherwise you’re destined to failure.
Make sure you keep a regular activity – write about interesting things in your day-to-day, focus on relevant news topics and write regularly. Smart tactics involve guest blogging – get your professional contacts, partners and clients to write about relevant topics, and even smarter tactics include securing some social media and website promotion from their own digital properties.
Use google plus and integrate a +1 button (It’s included by default on blogger and easily integrated on WordPress). It is a basic to position your website so do it! Also important is to make sure social media sharing is one click away.
More importantly, get them to help you promote it – the more active in social the better. As a teacher of mine used to say: Spend 50% of your time working and 50% of your time talking about what you did! If people don’t know/find it, it doesn’t exist to them.
In Social Media, keep your messages snappy, relevant and media rich! URL is a basic, pic a bonus, and video a boost! Check out these tips, and do your own research: What is the competition doing? What are the clients asking for? What are the experts talking about?
Did I mention measuring results? Do it again, and again.
Hongkiat explains some basic knowledge about understanding web analytics: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/google-analytics-data-tips/
You’re now ready to face the digital world. I’ll soon write about my experience about different bought media options, with special focus on Facebook and twitter.
Twitter Ads dashboard page
PS: If you’re lost in translation you can try this glossary for the digital marketing jargon.
Anything else you’d like to add/mention about building and maintaining a web presence?
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