It seems every company now has to have a website, social media presence, blogs and maybe even a periscope account. It all takes work and sometimes for very little reward. When it comes to having an online presence, it isn’t about working hard, it’s about working smart.

Improving your visibility online are lessons I am still learning, everything from SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), PPC (Pay Per Click) and everything to do with social media posts – optimal times, content, images etc.

I have been applying some of these tools to this very blog, with mixed results…

SEO

SEO is essentially working to get your website noticed through Google, Bing etc. This means meeting the search engines criteria with your content. This criteria changes every week!!!

One week I tested my blog on Bing. I searched ‘Can you find motivation’ – to my amazement, my blog Motivation Isn’t Hard to Find was the NUMBER 1 result! However at the time of writing this, I’m not on page one or two, and as the joke goes; The best place to hide a dead body is on page two of google! If you aren’t page one, you aren’t there.

[As far as I know] there are two levels to SEO. SEO built into the backbone of a page and SEO built into content. I won’t even pretend that I know much about the first, however the latter is something I am continually trying to improve in my own posts. To get good SEO within a post requires good use of a target keyword, setting up post URLs and Meta Descriptions, these enhance that keyword, improving the chances of a post appearing in a search engine when that word is searched.

It also helps a lot if your post is shared, mentioned and linked as it shows popularity.

Social Media

Everyone jumps to social media as the go to place to promote themselves or their business. For me, it’s a little over-rated!

I find that people are bored of seeing promotions on their social media…. Think about it – firstly when was the last time you looked through all your posts of Facebook or Twitter and when was the last time a generic “Hey, we’re close to 500 followers, why not give us a share?” actually got you to share. Ok one or two may do, but it is nothing compared to thousands of shares when the content is attractive.

To win at social media, you have to be clever and fast! Speed is everything.

Social media is now less about planning good content and more about reacting to the world. Twitter ‘Moments’ are the future and you need to be ready for them. If you run a sport related company, you MUST have the capacity to tweet within 5 minutes if there is a sudden news story in the sporting world. People want to use social media to stay up to date with the world and if you are the first to provide that information, you will attract the crowds you seek.

 

It is difficult and time consuming and that’s why large corporations have specific teams to manage it all. However if you are small company, startup or even on your own it can be a challenge.

A friend of mine has his own digital marketing agency to aid companies with all the above online tools. If you ever have a question or want support, check him out. If you say I sent you, I’m sure he will be extra nice 🙂