Online Marketing Tips for Businesses

We regularly update our social media channels with online marketing tips and advice for small business owners, so I thought it would be worthwhile putting those snippets into a blog post.

Firstly, you can’t beat a personal touch in business – write a thank you note, make an appointment with clients face to face and don’t forget to have your photo on your ‘about us’ page on your website to show the face behind the business.

Speaking of your website, it’s incredibly important to make sure all your business information is up to date and relevant. This includes all the information on social media accounts and your business listings.

You should be Blogging “One of the best marketing strategies for a small business is blogging,” says Maren Hogan, chief marketing brain at Red Branch Media. “By providing your prospects and clients with informative, non-salesy content that you can house on your blog, promote socially and offer to other networks to supplement their strategy, you and your team can quickly establish yourselves as experts in a desired field,” Hogan says. This idea of posting relevant, informative and non-salsey work also applies to the content you post on your social media channels.

Social media is a great way to build your brand, market your business completely for free and interact with potential /current customers. You should be posting engaging content frequently to generate shares and connect with consumers, which can positively impact the number of those who see your content. It’s also a good idea to share the same content more than once, especially on different platforms. This all helps because Social Media Channels are search engines too. Nowadays, people don’t just go to Google to find what they want, they use social media channels to find what they’re looking for.

Now, let’s move onto the imagery and photography you’re using when advertising your business – simply put, phone snaps and point & shoot camera shots will not cut it. Professional Imagery for business is important in showing your business as professional and showing the quality of the product you deliver. “Photography is critical to marketers & current storytelling strategies”. Having personal bespoke imagery for your business also makes you stand out from the crowd.

Content posted to social media with relevant images gets 94%  more views than those without images. By simply sharing images on Twitter, your retweet rate will increase by 150%! But, it’s not just on social media where images are important for marketing & connecting with your customers, aticles with an image once every 75-100 words get double the number of social shares than articles with fewer images. People following directions with text and illustrations do 323% better than people following directions without illustrations. Images are vital in marketing your business properly.

On Twitter, a great marketing tip is to keep your Tweets to under 100 characters makes them easier to quote and comment on, encouraging engagement with your followers.

You should research hashtags for your industry; hashtags are great for marketing on Twitter, they help you gain added reach for your business beyond your followers, increasing exposure and helping people to find you easily. But, you want to be targeting the right audience – research into which hastags are right for your business is important as part of your marketing strategy otherwise the effort you’re spending could be targetting audiences that just aren’t your customer. One last point on hashtags, make sure you don’t use too many hashtags in One Post! No one likes a ‪#‎HashtagAbuser‬

So, what’s the key to SEO success? New and regular content!
Regular amounts of SEO work (even small) is the best long term solution for good Google Rankings. Adding new content to your website and social media channels can improve your Google rankings. You should be adding content regularly that demonstrates knowledge & expertise to your website with targetted key words relevant to the Google Searches you’re wanting to target.

Last but not least, always always carry business cards with you. Whether you’re going to a business meeting, going out networking or out for drinks with friends, whatever – you never know who you’re going to meet. Have them on you.

I hope these tips will help you in your business, if you want to talk to us about what online marketing strategies you should adopt, come talk to us! We offer SEO services, photography or social media management