Social Media Marketing Tactics for 2013

2013 is rapidly approaching and hopefully by now you and your company have already determined exactly what is going into your 2013 social media marketing plans.  Perhaps you are behind or you are looking to really boost your marketing plans for 2013, then consider a few of our social media marketing tactics for your 2013 plans:

1- Bump up your use of photos:  Consumers love great photographs.  These days we all may be too busy to stop and read a story, but what's great about a good photo is that it can easily grab people's attention.  For 2013, we suggest creating an entire integrated content strategy around photographs using social media sites like Instagram, Pinterest, or even Facebook.  

2- Focus on building consumer trust:  Since trust is such a big part of what makes or breaks a brand, work your hardest on building consumer trust.  Consumers today are savvy and know when they are just being pushed into purchasing a product.  What do you do?  Rather than just plastering ads everywhere, consider sticking relevant and useful content in a multitude of places.  Nowadays, consumers are apt to trust content that comes from a multitude of places in multiple formats.

3- Use your connections: We're all pretty aware that these days consumers are much more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend than social media ads.  Make 2013 a year full of great customer referrals.  Encourage customers to share your company's information via social media.

4- Get personal:  If you are hoping to built trust with customers through social media marketing, get personal.  No one wants to speak to the robot behind the company.  Consumers want to see who your brand really is, so make sure that in the 2013 months you are making an effort to get more personal with your customers.  Social media marketing is a great way to do just that.

5- Build on relationships formed via social media:  One of the best parts of engaging your business in social media is the relationships you are able to form just by using it.  For 2013 make it your personal mission to take social media relationships further.  Take relationships formed on social media to the next level and try out an email campaign to continually reach your audience.

Looking for more tips on improving your social media marketing for 2013?  Leave a comment below or contact us.

Creating a Content Strategy

We've said it before and we're saying it again... Content most certainly is king, especially in the world of search engine optimization.  Search engines reward those websites that successfully provide fresh, plentiful and relevant content, which is why creating a content strategy is so vital to your business's growth.   As a Chicago SEO Company, we know the power of good content and truly believe that good content not only attracts your target audience, but it also educates and builds trust with them.  Think of content as the foundation for your internet marketing efforts.  Consider the following tips when creating a content strategy:

Step 1- Assess and identify your goals:  Assessing and identifying your goals are definitely step one.  In order to figure out where you want to be, you have to first assess where you currently are.  Ask yourself questions such as: What are you currently happy with?  What would you like to see change?  Who are you trying to reach?  Are you looking to increase brand awareness?  Make a list of your goals first so you can begin to form specific content strategies around your goals.

Step 2- The message:  The crux of a content strategy is determining what your target audience needs to know.  To figure out what your target audience or customer needs to know you have to "swim in the same pool they swim in."  If your target audience is predominately on Facebook, join Facebook and interact with them.  Get a feel for who they are and what they want to know and begin to structure your content around them and their needs.

Step 3- Taking action:  Whenever you put out content for your customers you must identify what action your want readers to take upon reading your content.  Do you want them to buy your product immediately?  Do you want them to read more about your services?  Do you want them to simply contact you for more information?  Structure your content around the action you would like to see your customer take.  When it's done correctly, you'll begin to see the kind of participation you are looking for.

Step 4- Content distribution: There are a variety of ways that you can disseminate your content with options such as emails, blogs, social networking posts, press releases, articles, case studies, reviews, testimonials, etc.  It's not recommended to choose one and just see what happens.  Try a mix and determine which works best for your company and target audience.

Step 5- The results: Now what good would all of your hard work developing a content strategy be if you didn't track your results?  Probably not much good at all since you would have no way of determining what the new strategy has achieved without measuring.  Web analytics are a great way to measure your traffic, visitor activity, and whole lot more.  Measuring results lets you know what you are doing right and what you need to be doing in the future, especially when you compare your results against your initial goals.  

If you're looking for more tips on creating a content strategy, feel free to comment below or contact us.

Finding New Content

As a Chicago SEO firm, we find ourselves constantly explaining the importance of producing quality content.  The more relevant the content you produce, the more popular and relevant you are to consumers and the all important search engines.  We've said it before and we'll say it again, search engine optimization relies heavily on content.  Sometimes creating new, exciting, relevant content can become difficult.  Similar to writer's block, you may experience challenges regarding putting out new content.  So what do you do when the well of inspiration runs dry?  Tap into the following tactics to help save yourself from running out of content ideas:

1- Join groups on LinkedIn:  Looking for more blog fodder?  Consider rummaging through posts from various working professionals on LinkedIn.  A LinkedIn group hosts a plethora of different opinions that may spark an idea for fresh content.  Seek out active groups related to your field.  The best way to figure out whether a group is active or not is by the number of members and discussions there are.  Being apart of groups related to your profession will also keep your knowledge of your field fresh.

2- Tag clouds: Perhaps you want to build fresh content around current and new keywords.  Utilize social media and see what people are talking about.  Search for conversations on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn that discuss your product, industry or brand.  Drop the conversation into a tag cloud.  Tag clouds pull up all the words most frequently used in the text you dropped in.  This could give you new keywords to utilize and may help spawn new topic ideas.

3- Forums: Check out forums related to your industry.  Open forums are a great way to discover what people are talking about in relation to your industry.  Try it out!  Go to Google and type in your industry and forum and see what pops up.  Odds are you'll see millions of results appear.  Take advantage of it.

4- Ask around: Post a status on your social media sites or blog asking for content topics or suggestions.  This is a great way to figure out what others are looking for and usually, people want their voices to be heard.  You could even go as far as to post a poll or survey directly on your page asking for feedback.

5- Events:  Attending industry events is another great way to help generate topics for fresh content.  Whether it's a webinar or conference, attending events is a great way to connect with other people in your industry to exchange ideas and knowledge.  Look for events and topics related to your industry and start attending.

Looking for more tips on generating new content?  Comment below or contact us.

Facebook SEO Strategies Everyone Should Know

Facebook pages for businesses have become increasingly popular over time and more and more business owners are learning how to become Facebook marketers.  Facebook has tried to make it even easier for people to spread the word about their businesses by creating more optimization opportunities for pages to get more traffic through SEO.  As a Chicago SEO firm, we cannot stress the importance of search engine optimization enough!  It can do wonders to help you appear at the top of a Google search.  Outside of optimizing your Facebook page, you should also optimize your social media pages, like Facebook.  What can you do to optimize your Facebook page?  Focus your optimization on the following parts of your Facebook:

(1) The URL: We rank the Facebook URL as the most important factor in optimizing a Facebook page.  In the past, Facebook has been known to punish generically titled pages, so we suggest avoiding that in case Facebook cracks down on that again.   Choose a username that very closely represents your brand or business.  That's the best and safest option.  Also keep in mind that once you've chosen your URL you cannot change it, so if you're not sure, sleep on it.  Choose when you're certain.

(2) The page name: Choose the best name for your Facebook page and keep it.  Choosing the right name is vital, so choose carefully.  Your title should not be stuffed with keywords to avoid looking like spam.  Fans will be less likely to share the page with friends and more likely to hide your updates from their newsfeed.  Your name should authentically represent your business.  Recently, Facebook has been disabling updates for generically named Facebook pages, which will negatively affect their ability to reach fans.  Changing your Facebook page's name could hurt your rankings, so once you pick it, keep it.

(3) Info tab: Your info tab should feature metadata about your page.  This tab gives you the opportunity to provide more information about the page.  Filling out the info field gives you the ability to include keywords and links, which could help increase the content score for Google searches.

(4) About box: Similar to the info tab, the about box on your page should again feature plenty of content filled with keywords to help with search rankings.  The about box is one of the most frequently read sections of a person's Facebook profile.  Why is that?  Because of it's location on the profile page.  It is located at the top of the page right below the main picture.  Most people notice that section first, so make sure you provide good, keyword heavy information.

(5) Page stream:  Status updates are a great place to provide links to wherever you would like your Facebook friends to go and are a powerful way to help you place links right near the top of your page.  And get this-- Google boosts pages that link to relevant sites.  It really is as simple as that.  Provide links to external pages that coordinate with the rest of your page's content and Google will take notice, providing you with a rankings boost.

Looking for more tips on optimizing your Facebook page?  Feel free to leave us a comment or contact us.

Why Your Business Needs a Blog

Here at Integraphix we love to spread the word about how vital SEO can be to your website and in turn, how vital it can be to your business.  SEO can turn your website into a usable sales tool, working for you around the clock.  Aside from optimizing your website, consider writing a blog based around the industry your business is in for further optimization.  Why you ask?  Here are 5 reasons why your business needs a blog today:

Blogs will boost your web presence:  Looking to get your brand or business more recognition?  Blogs help boost your business's presence on the web.  Social media sites make it easier than ever to "tweet a link" to your posts or add the link to Facebook, which helps expose your blog posts to a wide audience, a majority of which you may not have had access to without the help of social media sites.    

Blogs can create brand advocates: Do you find yourself visiting a blogger's blog site frequently just to see the latest postings?  Do you feel compelled by someone else's blog content and enough so that you are purchasing their products?  Yes, that is the power of a blog.  If your content is constantly new, fresh, and appealing, it can create brand advocates.

Linking abilities to products/services: A blog is a wonderful place to link to products or services that you may find yourself mentioning in a post.  Internal links to outside content are a great way to help blog and product popularity as well.  If your business has a product or two that you'd like to sell, try writing something compelling about it and internally linking your blog post to it.  

Makes information available to everyone: Blogs help keep people updated on what's going on with you and your company.  Maybe people aren't reading your company newsletter, but perhaps they are indeed reading your blog, then use your blog to keep them in the loop.  Even if they don't read the newsletter, they can still get a rundown of what's happening with your company through your blog posts.  

SEO capabilities and blogs: One of the top reasons we love blogs here at Integraphix is the capabilities it gives for SEO.  Google, Yahoo!, and Bing love, love, love fresh content!  Blogs are a continuous stream of new content, which will easily catch the content-scanning eyes of the search engines.  The more you write and provide updates, the better your search engine rankings will be.  Utilizing powerful keywords and internal linking back to relevant pages (like your website) can help boost your rankings.

Want to talk to us about blogging?  Feel free to leave a comment below or contact us.  

Optimize Your Pinterest

The power of search engine optimization doesn’t need to just be confined to your website and blog.  All of your social media pages, whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or even Pinterest, should be optimized.  When we optimize, we prefer to optimize all the way, so this way you are maximizing your potential to be ranked higher by search engines.  While algorithms probably have not been accounting for likes, pins and comments quite yet, we certainly are starting to see more and more Pinterest results appearing in Google.  Here are some tips on optimizing your Pinterest page:

Don’t just repin, upload some of your own images:  Don’t get us wrong, repining is a big part of Pinterest’s purpose, but try to have an equal balance of pins that are repined from others and your own uploads.  Uploading your own images will have more weight when it comes to optimization.  Repining other peoples’ pins can help increase your page’s popularity.  After all, this is social media!

Pin from a variety of sources: Don’t pull all of your pins from one source.  Try uploading from multiple sources.  Having a variety of images from all different sources will help make your Pinterest page more interesting as opposed to other people or companies' pages repining from the same sources all the time.  Variety is the spice of life!

Name images you upload with keywords: The file name you have saved your images as can become important when it comes to optimizing your Pinterest page.  Instead of uploading a picture with a file name like 5832058209.jpg try something like chocolate-cake-recipe.jpg.  Make the file name relevant to what your picture and board are about.  If your entire board is about chocolate cake and the picture you’re uploading is a picture of chocolate cake with a recipe attached, then name it accordingly.  You want your chocolate cake board to utilize the keywords chocolate cake as much as possible. 

Leave lengthy descriptions: Pinterest always allows users to leave a description of up to 500 words.  Here’s the challenge: 500 words can be a little lengthy and perhaps be deemed as annoying or overkill, but we say use those words up.  Make your descriptions lengthy with plenty of keywords. 

Name your board appropriately: Pay close attention to what you name your boards since the titles of your boards will be apart of the search engine optimization process.  Say you own an Italian Restaurant and you want your page to come up in Italian Cuisine search results, then don’t name your board “Food We Love” or “Food We Make.”  Name it simply “Our Italian Cuisine.” 

As a Chicago Marketing Company, we have really been able to see the different search engine optimization makes for our clients.  Don't just optimize your website.  Optimize your social media pages as well to achieve optimal results.  If you have comments or questions on anything SEO related feel free to drop us a comment or contact us.  

Why Your Website Needs SEO Today

Here at Integraphix we fully believe in the power of Search Engine Optimization.  Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is essentially the process of improving your website’s keyword usage, content, graphics and organization to achieve better search engine rankings amongst engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing.  We are not just a Chicago Design Firm, in fact we do much more than just design. Through SEO we make websites visitor and search engine friendly.  We are a full service Chicago Marketing Company that simply wants to see our clients succeed and one way we know how to help our clients is to build websites that are fully optimized.  Here are some of our top reasons why you need to optimize your website:

(1) More traffic to your website: The main reason you probably have a website is to generate business by attracting new customers and maintaining relationships with all of your current customers, right?  SEO will help you drive more traffic to your website.  Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing will rank your site higher for relevant keywords, which will help usher in traffic to your website.  Choosing the right keywords and being ranked highly for those keywords will get you more traffic or visitors to your page, which should help bring you more business.

(2) Improves your website's overall appearance: Chicago SEO companies, or any SEO Company for that matter, typically recommend changes to your website that will greatly improve its appearance and functionality.  Having a more functional, aesthetically appealing website will help attract customers that you are attaining through the SEO process.  How will the improved appearance help your rank higher?  Well-organized websites tend to rank higher than unorganized websites, which makes sense.  Organized websites are easier for search engines and visitors to read.  Optimized websites use fewer large graphics, have fewer irrelevant pages or posts, and load faster, which will no doubt help your website maintain and attract new traffic. 

(3) You can spend less on online advertising: With SEO you are essentially advertising your website for free.  There’s no need to deal with pesky pay-per-click ads when you are doing SEO.  Yes, the process of SEO can take time and be a tad time consuming, but in the end it’s worth the money you will save on doing less online advertising.  SEO is a process that takes time to go into effect and build up, but once it does it will pay for itself probably more than a burst of online ads.

(4) Your website becomes your ultimate sales tool: When optimized, your website becomes one of your best assets and biggest sales tool.  You may be in bed sleeping, but millions of people are up late at night and they’re checking out your website and perhaps, they’re buying your products all while your catching some zzzz’s.  Your website needs to be more than just some brochure that people either (A) never see or (B) disregard and SEO is the key to avoiding both the A and B. 

We know SEO can be a confusing topic, so feel free to comment on this post or speak directly with us.  

Making a Social Media Plan

Creating a social media plan is probably one of the smartest tactics to implement to help your business succeed.  A social media plan will outline your goals for your social media use and will help you achieve them.  Even as a Chicago Internet Marketing Firm we have our own social media plan for ourselves and our clients.  Being successful using social media isn’t all about posting a million times a day (if anything, don’t do that, people will ignore you!) it’s about the quality of what you’re posting and doing it on a rather regular basis.  Here are a few steps you should take when you develop a social media plan for your business: 

Step ONE: Outline Your goals- First, identify what you hope to accomplish with social media. Not all social media sites are created equal, so outlining your goals will help you choose what sites will best help you work towards your goals and eventually, achieve them.

Step TWO: Stay Focused- Establishing your presence on social media takes time, so don’t lose hope and try to stay focused.  Be patient.  Use the goals you outlined in step one to help you stay focused and on the right track.  If you feel unfocused, remind yourself of what you want to achieve and reengage yourself!

Step THREE: Check out your target audience or current fans- Does your business already have fans?  If so, see where they hang out in the realm of social media and start there.  Engage with them by being a strong presence wherever they are.  No fans yet?  That’s okay.  Start by identifying your target audience and check out their social media site use via demographic research.  You and your business need to be in the center of where your fans or target audience are.

Step FOUR: Scheduling- Create a schedule to help you determine how and when (frequency) you’ll engage with your fans or target audience.  Creating a schedule keeps you accountable and when it becomes a habit you’ll be able to keep up with posting more easily and perhaps stay engaged more easily as well.  Start engaging with your target audience and users and you may be surprised by how often they’ll begin engaging with you.

Step FIVE: Content, Content, Content!- Social media isn’t all about selling yourself and your product.  It’s about being social and connecting with people, who may (if you do it right!) at some point, be very interested in what your company is selling.  Don’t provide them with endless amounts of status updates or tweets about your company.  Give them something to talk about at the water cooler.  Give them industry information.  Your posts and tweets should mainly be relevant to the industry your business is in.  Write a blog, explore relevant trends and show your fans and target audience case studies and infographics.  Position yourself as the expert in your industry and you’re likely to succeed. 

Step SIX: Contests and Promotions- Every couple of months run a contest or promotion to keep your fans and target audience coming back for more.  A contest or promotion is an opportunity for you and your business to be seen by a greater number of people on a larger platform.  A contest or promotion encourages fans and followers to keep up with you and your company, so it’s worth the legwork. 

These steps will help keep you and your business on the right track with your social media use.  Looking for more tips on creating a social media plan or have a comment?  We always love to talk social media, so contact us.

Create More Engagement on Pinterest

We are not just Chicago Graphic Designers, we are also social media experts.  We love trying new social media sites and seeing how they can help our clients.  When it’s being used by the right client, Pinterest has a ton of potential to capture a target audience.  Here are some of our tips on how to create more engagement on your Pinterest page:

 (1) Fill your boards with tons of pictures:  Every once and awhile you may come across something you want to pin that doesn’t have a picture that is attached.  Try to only pin things that have a picture since pictures are a big part of what makes Pinterest interesting for users.  Aesthetically, it will look better on your boards as well.  

(2) Make your boards interesting: Your boards need to do two things for followers- help and entertain.  Typically, Pinterest users are looking to learn or be entertained, so do a little of both.  Provide followers with boards that will be entertaining, but will also teach them something related to your brand.  Just keep all your boards and pins related to your company and industry. 

(3) Allow contributors: Pinterest gives you the option to allow contributors to post on your boards.  Allowing contributor posts helps you draw in fans of your company.  Allowing someone to contribute to your boards means you’ll have more people adding pins to your boards besides just yourself.   Adding contributors helps shape your page and boards around your audience and will help increase your popularity. 

(4) Contests:  There are a wide variety of different contests or competitions you can run for your Pinterest page these days.  Contests are great because they drive interactivity on your page.  Scavenger hunts, pin and wins, and most repins are common types of contests found on the social media site, so try out a contest and see how many people you can get involved.  There could be a huge payoff in the form of people visiting your website. 

(5) Analyze your page: As you should with all of your social media sites, make sure you are taking the time to analyze your Pinterest progress. Check out the “Popular Pins” section often.  This page shows you what pins are the most popular and who is sharing them.  The people sharing those pins may be people you want to connect with.  The popular pins section also gives you ideas on what types of things you should pin to drive traffic on your Pinterest page.  You should keep track of what is being pinned from your site to help get a better idea of the types of things you should pin more frequently.

Use these tips on your Pinterest page or build off of these tips as a springboard for even bigger ideas.  Looking for social media tips and tricks, contact us.  

Working with an SEO Agency

It appears the demand for Search Engine Optimization Agencies is only continuing to increase.  Recently conducted surveys have found that businesses today are spending more and more of their marketing budgets on search engine optimization.  Some businesses have claimed that they spend nearly a third of their marketing budgets on SEO services.  And why not put the money into SEO?  Businesses who put money into SEO report higher earnings. 

An SEO company has the expertise to launch a full-scale campaign for a brand.  If your company is getting serious about working with an SEO company, here are a few things to look for:

(1)  They research keywords for your company: A good SEO firm will start by evaluating keywords that will directly link to your business.  SEO firms will make sure your website is properly optimized so that it will appear in a higher ranking spot on search engines.  After all, that is the goal.

(2)    They optimize your content: An SEO company will continually generate new, compelling content to captivate readers and of course, improve search engine rankings.

(3)  Link Building: SEO companies know that content that is constantly linked can improve search engine rankings. Links help establish a level of credibility with websites as well.

(4)   Generate new content: Search engines love constant new content.  SEO companies know that generating a plethora of content is key to improving search engine rankings. 

(5)   Perform website analytics: SEO agencies will frequently perform website analytics to ensure that business objectives are being achieved.  Search engine marketing tools help measure, research and report results.  It helps keep a campaign on the right track.

Investing part of a marketing budget into SEO efforts is well worth the spend.  Firsthand we have watched our clients greatly benefits from our SEO campaigns.  If you are interested in what SEO can do for you and your company, talk to us.   

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