david_k0k46923, Author at My CMS

When it comes to their marketing and specifically website content, businesses frequently make a big mistake. They target their current audience!

For many businesses this is a lack of vision and in all cases without considering the future this is leaving a lot in the hands of fate.

Think of your own business and your current crop of customers. Everyone has clients they love because they are easy to work with, pay on time etc. We also have those that make life really “interesting” by being difficult and less profitable. But do you use this information to decide where your business wants to be and who it wants to attract?

With some quick demographic analysis, you might be able to determine where your best customers can be found. Can they be found by industry? Locality? Business size? Or perhaps by referral type? Spend some time learning from the past.

This same exercise might also help you work out where the tough customers live. With this information, you can change or predict the future of your business, if you take action. Change the language and the marketing approach to target your best customers.

Now you can predict the future of your business by speaking and resonating with the group of people you want to attract to your business! All the benefits of your business history will support your business growth in the future if you leverage it.

Imagine working with customers you love and seeing less of the customers you find challenging. Your website can be the key to unlock this new future.

We’ve all heard the hackneyed phrase, “An image is worth a thousand words” but research indicates its still true and they are very important when doing any sort of social content. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc all of them are reliant on images to capture the attention and provide context.
But… there are some huge issues with images and this article will help you avoid some of the traps and given you some free tools to make images a little easier to use.

Copyright.
It still astonishes me how many businesses use images found in a google search and don’t consider copyright or they realise it’s a problem but think, no one will know. Wrong. If you do some quick googling of some of the bigger stock image firms you will find the web littered with examples of people talking about being sued by these companies who are acting to protect their rights and the rights of the photographer / illustrator. These are very large, wealthy companies and they use the law to punish misuse and they are very, very vigorous.
How do they find the images? They have software written to do matching of their stock to yours images. If they find a match the software checks your company against that image’s licencing. No match = legal action. Morale here is buy the images or take / create the image yourself or have someone take/create it for you.
Image Sizing.
Even when you have the right image your problems aren’t over yet. You need to ensure it’s the right size with respect to dimension, resolution and file size. Just because an application will accept the image doesn’t mean you have done it correctly. This becomes particularly evident when clients use their social feeds on their website which is a great idea but with large images you now have a very large overhead and your website load speeds drop.
How do you fix it?

Read this article to see how to modify the images to suit the various social feeds and your website. It even touches on appropriate approaches to SEO treatment of images. Check it out here: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-optimize-social-media-images/

Just waiting for the right time?
Want to be sure you get it right?
Not sure if its worth your time?

Pick an excuse. We’ve heard them all. These excuses relate to many things we put off… but the one that is bothering us at the moment is social media content. Why? We all know social content is powerful for good rankings with Google. As a result social content can impact your business significantly. Great right?

It should be but… A number of people became our clients after they realised they had a social media problem. Social content they didn’t write. Social content they didn’t reflect well on their business and was ranking very highly.

For example one caterer had an unhappy customer who created a post about their experience with the business. Because this business didn’t have a strong social presence (actually they didn’t have any) this content ranked really well with Google. In fact when anyone searched their name the second result was this post saying some really awful things about the company. Needless to say this impacted their business.

Worse the company didn’t realise what was going on until a customer called and suggested they check out what was on the search engines. Because the content had been up for a while it took some time to resolve the issue!

Search engines don’t discriminate on the type of content or on the accuracy of it. When they index it they will supply it to anyone searching. So if you are still sitting on the fence maybe fear will get you moving. If you don’t create content maybe someone else will. People only bother to post about businesses when they are passionate. And while they could be in love with your business, generally it will be because they are not happy!

So the time is now. Start social marketing. Embrace your opportunities.

If you need a guide to getting the biggest bang from social media give us a call. Or if you are like some of our other clients and you have a social media problem we can help you too!

Social media is a funny thing. It was SO hot at one stage, businesses were killing themselves to get posting. And now? Well social media is still a great device but it isn’t the marketing panacea everyone was hoping for.

For companies facing consumers you really need to get into it. For companies facing businesses you really need to think about it. Some level of engagement is good because… its great for search engine optimisation. Google loves that stuff.

But one thing is still massively valuable that is often overlooked. Your website. Yep. It can still be the engine in your marketing vehicle regardless of the type of business you have or want to have!

It should be the focal point so you keep driving customers through it via social marketing, pay per click, traditional advertising. Why? It is still the best way to give your customer a message that’s clear and perfectly pitched to get their attention.

Do me a favour – be smart about it. If people are interested in a specific service of product send them direct to a page on that – don’t waste their time. Everyone is time poor so show them what they are after quickly and they will love you for it.

Not sure how? Call us we can tell you!

Ever wonder what people see when they visit your website? There have been lots of studies done on this very topic. Eye tracking studies to work out what people focus on first. Where their eye travels and the direction of their gaze. What’s even more interesting is… where they look doesn’t always match what catches their attention.

Peripheral vision makes the whole things a little more exciting. The point is however even if you have a strong call to action how can you tell if people notice it? In fact you can almost guarantee an unbeatable offer will disappear into the background if you put in the bottom left corner. Why? It’s the last place eyes go and unless your home page is really exciting people have moved on well before the eye gets there.

Ok… so where is THE spot on the page that’s guaranteed to be seen? Top left is awfully good for navigation but not for an offer. So where is it?

Tell you what – call us and we will tell you. No strings attached. In fact I will also give you 3 other important pieces of information that will massively improve the value of your website, free of charge. No strings attached. You can hang up straight after I tell you. Try it 🙂

I saw an interesting study recently that showed if someone is in distress shouting help wasn’t the way to get people’s attention. Why? People are choosing to become increasingly insular, detached and worse still scared to get involved.

But if you change help to something different it has a huge effect. If you shout out help to a specific person – while looking at them – and calling them out by appearance you will get a much stronger result.

Want an example? You in the red shirt – HELP Me. If you get red shirt’s attention they will be MUCH more likely to respond to your plea.

This has an interesting mirror in marketing. Every heard “Speak to many – speak to none?” Or put more simply, if you speak to a whole lot of people, you end up speaking to no one. Don’t do the shotgun blast and hope to hit someone. Do the laser target and aim for a very specific audience.

Don’t believe me? Listen to a radio station sometime. The ones that ask listeners to call in if something has happened to them. They never say something like: Call up now if you own a pet. What they do say is: Call up now if you own a dog that walks backwards when it eats.

Why? The first one is too generic and everyone listening thinks… I might own a dog but … I can’t be bothered.

The second one is very different. If someone has a dog like that they will think, you know I have to call, because they are talking to me!

So next time you plan on doing any marketing. Get narrowed in. Think about a niche! Think about a specific group and make the message all about them. They will feel connected to it and call. Not sure how? Call us!!

Author: david_k0k46923

Want to predict the future of your company?

Images – the Joy and the Pain!

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