Internet Marketing 101

How to Utilize AI Programs to Enhance Your Marketing

September 28, 2023 Beth Devine

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the world around us, and these AI programs are making it possible for everyone to experience the benefits of this powerful technology. From writing and coding assistants to creative tools and productivity boosters, there is an AI program out there for everyone.

Would you believe me if I told you that that first paragraph was written by AI? Hello! A real person is typing now, but isn’t it interesting how with a simple prompt this AI could do my job for me? That’s what I want to talk about today. Not about how I want to be replaced but how this technology can help create more content quicker.

I’m sure you’re all keenly aware of the thousands of articles debating AI and the other half-dozen buzzwords surrounding these new technologies. From ChatGPT to Midjourney, there are dozens of companies vying for your eyeballs on their service.

But what if you’re not sure how this technology could be best utilized for your marketing needs?
Well, I did some research and I want to showcase one service (Bard) that could save you time and energy.

To start, I’d like to highlight some issues that you might be aware of with these experimental new technologies. It’s not all sunshine and roses but as my mother told me, “You should always hear the bad news first”, but if you stick around for the pros portion, you’ll find some great tips there.

Cons

Technical Accuracy
For manufacturers specifically, this is a big one. You could be dealing with terms or acronyms that could be very specific to your work that an AI might not know how to handle. This actually leads well into the second point where

Not False, but not specific.
I’m sure you’ve heard the tales. An AI program creating facts out of thin air with no idea where it got that info from. In my personal testing, Bard claimed things that were technically true but made for a bland story. In writing, specifics help ground and compel your audience and I often found Bard failed in that sense.

Repetition. Repetition. Repetition!
The program is great at finding different ways to re-phrase the same points and that’s certainly a skill, but in reading over what it gave me as a whole, it wasn’t an asset.

Alright, now that we’re done with the cons we can get to the good stuff. How could we use this for your website, social media, etc. content? As a writer myself, I don’t want to advocate for a program that could replace me, but in my eyes, this is a perfect tool to market your company. Let’s imagine a scenario.

You’re sitting at your desk with a cursor blinking at you. You’ve created an amazing product but now you need to sell it. How do you sum up years of work into a simple tagline, slogan, or about section? The blank document stares at you as the deadline fast approaches. You know what they always say, “The hardest thing is to start”, but you just can’t.

That’s why we’re here. To find a way to use innovative technologies to help brand your business. We’ve started to use AI programs like Bard as an idea generator. Let’s look again at the cons I brought up in a different light.

Pros

Technical Accuracy
Imagine you have a ton of text full of these explanations that span pages and pages, and you know the casual viewer of your website isn’t going to want to read all of that. You need to hook them in. How do you do that? We can submit all of that text to Bard and ask it to make a list of the key topics. It might not be able to provide details, but it’s able to highlight content a casual reader would care about to draw them in.

Not False, but not specific.
In fact-checking these claims, I stumbled upon a 2022 report full of statistics about manufacturing in Connecticut with dozens of interesting statistics and reports on the state of things. Would I have found this great resource if I wasn’t looking for the exact number of employees in the manufacturing sector in CT? Probably not! Now you have a statistic to write a more compelling story/blog post.

Repetition. Repetition. Repetition!
The repetition highlights what the AI thinks is important. In this online world, key terms are vital to all parts of the writing process to get traffic. That’s how these algorithms work, right? And an AI knows that. So, a particularly helpful thing I’ve found is that Bard is great at creating lists. These can be full of ideas that will allow you to submit a bunch of text in your prompt and have the program narrow it down.

These types of new technologies are what we use to help make more new content faster and more effectively. If any of this sounds interesting to you feel free to ask us for help!

In the end, there are so many ways to use programs like this to help create more content. To start, we use AI as a brainstorming tool.

Are You Hitting Your Target Audience?

May 19, 2022 Beth Devine

It’s that time of year again. Time to review your database. It’s common knowledge that segmenting your email marketing lists results in higher open and click rates. According to a 2017 MailChimp report, click rates are 101% higher for emails sent to a segmented list versus a non-segmented list. The report was based on data from 11,000 segmented campaigns sent to nearly 9 million recipients.

The data also showed that email unsubscribes were significantly lower for segmented lists, by more than 9%. People are quick to unsubscribe if they receive emails that are not relevant to them. Since they often find these emails annoying, this can lead to a negative impression about your company and its products.

For your sales and marketing team, an “unsubscribe” is the kiss of death. The only way to reach these customers once they’ve unsubscribed is by telephone (which nobody answers anymore), a face-to-face visit, or postal mail. Knowing this, it’s easy to see the value of using segmented lists.

Where It Begins

Segmentation of a list is best done from the beginning, however, that’s not always possible. If you already have a large list, we suggest transferring it into a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool to start. CRM software platforms like Sharpspring* contain all of your customers’ demographics, contact information, touch points, and purchase histories. They can also display how customers and prospects engage with your website, emails and other online content. For example, if you send an email telling customers about a new product, you can see who opened it, how long they viewed it, which links they clicked on within the email, etc.

Typically, a database is segmented by industry. This should be the bare minimum when building a database. However, with data from your CRM/In-bound programs, you can now segment your email lists by product interest and level of interest, among other things. For example, let’s say John Smith and Mary Jones each opened your email. You can see that John only clicked on the link for product A, but he stayed on that page for 15 minutes, indicating a high level of interest. You can also see that Mary only clicked on the link for product B, but she stayed on the page for just a few seconds before closing the email.

Armed with this information, you can segment John and Mary into different lists based on their product interest and their perceived level of interest, with John seemingly much more interested than Mary. You can then send another email with more detail on product A to John, which he will find relevant. Sending that same email to Mary, however, might cause her to unsubscribe. It would be better to put Mary on a segmented list for people interested in product B.

In a Nutshell

Segmenting your email lists is important. It ensures you’ll get a relevant message to the right audience at the proper time. Take a look at your CRM database and segmentation strategy. Is all of the customer information up to date in your CRM? Are your email lists segmented so they reach the most appropriate audience? If not, Contact Us to learn how we can assist you. Remember the most attractive and interesting marketing message is useless unless it gets to the right person.

*If you’re interested in investigating a CRM solution, contact us at 860-432-9977 for information regarding the tools we’ve reviewed and the ones we’ve chosen to use ourselves.

Feel the love, speed and SEO all swirled together.

November 7, 2017 Carolyn Griswold

Hocus pocus, give me focus, make my website fast, loved and popular. Feel the love, speed and SEO all swirled together. Are you looking for the magic SEO potion? Ta Da! Here you go.

First, find love.

Find out what people love about you, about your product and about your business. Find out how they’re looking for love. Where are they looking? Are they looking on Google, Linkedin, Facebook. Do they even know they’re looking? How do you find out?

Use Data. Find the key to love with Analytics. It can tell you what your clients or prospects are looking for and how they’re looking for it.
Anecdotal Evidence. Ask your clients. Something as simple as “How did you find me?” “What made you decide to call me?”
Be bold. Ask for some love. Ask for online reviews on Google, Yelp, LinkedIn, or for a testimonials on your website. Ask people to Like your page, subscribe to your YouTube Channel, sign-up for your email newsletter, or meet for drinks. There are so many ways to ask for love. Find the best ways for you and ask!
Respond. Listen to your clients. Answer their questions. People love that.

Then swirl some love on your website content. Make sure your website content loves your clients – make sure it answers their questions. Make sure it presents your product or service so beautifully it’s impossible not to love (buy) it! Make sure it presents material that your analytics indicate will bring results.

Spread the love. Social media makes it easy. Share on the social media outlets that work best for you. Share your blog posts, events, product news, business news, even jokes, inspirations, photos and anecdotes.

Second, find speed.

No one wants to wait. Waiting frustrates people. It’s not loving. Make your website fast. Google loves speed. Give Google some love. They’ll love you back. Your page speed is known to be one of the factors (among many) in your search engine rank. So make your website zippy.

To find out fast your website is check out the links in the post The Need for Speed. How to check your website to see if it needs a speed tune-up.

Here are some of the most common recommendations you’ll find when you run a speed test:

Optimize images. The first thing to do is make sure your images aren’t size larger than they appear on screen. That’s just wasting bandwidth. Please. Don’t upload a 4000 px x 4000 px image to your website, if the size is going to be viewed is 400 px x 400 px. But that’s just the start of image optimization. Check out this Image Optimization article to find out just how complicated it can get.Fortunately, there are plug-ins for WordPress users that will help you optimize the images on your website. Two of the most popular are:
1. WP Smush
2. Ewww Optimizer
Eliminate or reduce CSS and Javascript rendering above the fold.Fixing the above the fold recommendation can get complicated too, as sometimes, depending on the theme, relocating scripts can break the website. There is a plug-in for it that’s worth trying. (I hope to test it on soon and will review it for you then). The plug-in is Optimizing Above the Fold. Beware, the plug-in is intended for pros and is not something you can install and it will automagically fix things for you.
Minify Javascript and CSS – Optimizing Above the Fold can handle this for you too, but Autoptimize is a simpler plug-in that might be easier to use for most users. As always with plug-ins make sure you back up your database prior to installing and running, so if something doesn’t work right, (ie. it breaks your website) you can restore to a functioning version without too much trouble.
Enable caching. W3Total cache is one popular plug-in used in WordPress sites to configure caching. Be careful with it though, the wrong settings will break your website. (BACKUP prior to use). Some hosts offer their own caching systems and disallow W3 Total Cache. WPengine is one that we use that has their own object caching process.
You could also consider a CDN. Basically a Content Delivery System that helps serve and cache your site’s static, cacheable content from multiple worldwide server locations.
Server speed is slow. Check with your web hosting provider to see if they can help you with this. You might also check your DNS settings to ensure they aren’t slowing things down.

Sometimes it’s the WordPress theme itself that is slowing things down. If that’s the case, you might be able to speed it up using some of the tools above, but if given the chance it’s best to start with a fast theme. I found a list of 20 fast themes at https://colorlib.com/wp/fast-loading-wordpress-themes/. I haven’t had a chance to install and test their speed yet, but may test out a few for review in a later post.

Let the SEO Magic begin.

Swirl some love on your website by ensuring that it provides a good user experience with interesting, valuable content and make it load fast. That’s when you’ll begin to see some SEO magic happen.

Update Your Local Internet Listings With Citation Services

October 12, 2016 Beth Devine

citation edits — “Save yourself an extra call (1962)” by Eric Fischer, used under CC BY / Modified from original

If you’ve moved your small business to a different address, changed your contact information in some way, or you have a new second location, how do you go about updating all of your local online listings? And do you even know what directories your listings are in?

It’s important to track down all your local internet listings with the correct updates instead of creating new ones because duplicates are a big problem. They can lead to Google penalties in search results. Leaving incorrect listings due to a move or other change causes confusion for both the user as well as the search engines.

While it might seem like a simple matter—you just log into the existing accounts and re-verify every listing—the claiming process isn’t always straightforward and the data clean up is time consuming and requires thorough attention to avoid duplicates.

Citation editing, marketing jargon for updating your business listings, involves a comprehensive process that requires much more than a quick edit on Google. Google is a good place to start, but there are hundreds of apps and directories that direct users to the right destination and Google is watching them all.

Google constantly crawls the internet looking for updated information to provide in its search results. This means two things:

The more listings for your business, the better. The more information available to Google, the better your business will do in search results.
Erroneous information on listings can cause Google to update using this incorrect data. The more listings for your business, the greater potential for Google to find incorrect information, which it pulls from many sources across the internet.

By completing an accurate and complete digital footprint or NAP, Name, Address, and Phone number, you’re removing as many barriers to online discovery as possible.

There are many methods to updating your business citations. In this post we’ll go over the popular business citation services, and in the next post we’ll cover the top business listings you need to be on.

Yext

Called the godfather of citation building services, Yext boasts a PowerListings capability to make sure your listings have correct information with automatic updates across over thirty local listing sites. By entering information into your Yext account, including details such as special announcements or specials, you can change it whenever you want.

Pros: Fastest service available; increased accuracy when you need to update regularly.

Cons: Most expensive; limited to somewhere around 50 directories.

Cost: Ranging from $200-$999 a year.

BrightLocal

BrightLocal claims and submits directly to 1,600 sites. You select which sites and the number sites, with 70% guaranteed to go live in four weeks.

Pros: High accuracy with manual submissions; prioritize NAP fixes; duplicate removal.

Cons: Don’t currently submit to top data aggregators Factual and Localeze; don’t provide custom citation research.

Cost: Single Business – $29/month
Multi Business – $49/month
SEO Pro – SEO Pro – $79/month

Whitespark

Whitespark has two separate citation services:

Citation audit and cleanup removes duplicates, fix inconsistencies, make corrections, and claim the important listings you’re missing.
Citation building looks for relevant key listings and manually submits them.

Pros: Greater accuracy with manual submissions and cross-checking systems.

Cons: Cleanup service doesn’t provide verification of listings (although there are step-by-step instructions available); building citation service doesn’t remove duplicates but doesn’t create them.

Cost: Citation cleanup and audit $900 one-time fee includes top 30 sites. Citation Building $4 each for national directory listings and $5 each for local city level directories or industry-specific listings.

Moz Local

Moz helps you claim all the important listings, including the ones that require manual verification with Google Local. You get access to all the local data aggregators for fast updates.

Pros: Make updates at any time via one dashboard; great Q&A service.

Cons: Listings are slow to go live – can take up to three months; doesn’t create listings on all directories.

Cost: $84 a year.

UBL/AdviceLocal

Universal Business Listing is now working under Advice Local. Easy updates from one dashboard. They provide ongoing checks for consistency. Submit to top fifty directories as well as popular review sites, and will even do social media profile optimization.

Pros: Merger provides expanded local listings with full access and ownership.

Cons: Need to subscribe to higher-priced packages to get full-service offerings. Reviews indicate complaints about duplicate listings.

Cost: Packages beginning at $100 a year up to $250 a year plus $20 monthly fee.

Synup

Synup is a relatively new service that covers forty-six of the top directories. You can manually add and manage an additional 150 sites. All changes made from one dashboard.

Pros: Duplicate listings suppression and monitoring of reviews included.

Cons: Not 100% effective in identifying duplicates; can get pricey with multiple locations.

Cost: $30 a month per location.

Directory Bug

Directory Bug manually lists your business on a minimum of sixty sites without creating duplicate listings. Over 100 of the top local business directories scanned. A premium members option is available with better optimization for local SEO.

Pros: Creates report with these sites and any other existing listings found.

Cons: Requires a custom quote for updating and cleanup based on number of sites needing it.

Cost: $140 for citation audit and $169 for power listing service.

It’s not an easy choice to select a business listing service. Each one has limitations, so the decision depends on your unique business needs. None of the citation building sites are completely hands-free. Many of the big search engines require manual verification of listings. The tendency for duplicate or inconsistent listings depends on various factors, including which data suppliers used and the relationship the service has with the directories. In addition, in some cases when you stop paying for the service all of your listings may be dropped.

As a small business owner, business listing services can save you time and money. In return, you get your business out there in the local search ecosystem without spending the many hours needed for accurate, thorough results.

Why A Small Business Blog Is Important For Growth

September 30, 2016 Beth Devine

business blogging — “Blog Machine” by digitalrob70, used under CC BY / Modified from original

Information is being shared across a landscape of digital information that’s growing faster and faster. The internet population has grown by more than 60% in the last five years, with mobile phones outnumbering people on the planet. No wonder our mobile use now makes up 65% of our time over desktop.

Everyone is on their mobiles or computers, engaged in digital exchange. They’re communicating, reading, and searching on the internet for all their needs. It’s more important now than ever to meet your audience where they’re spending time and adopt a blogging strategy for your small business.

Here’s how you reach new and existing customers with a small business blog.

Increase Traffic To Your Site

Every blog post published is one more opportunity for someone to find your business and drive traffic to your site. People read blogs to discover helpful industry information. Search engines like Google read blogs to learn what your website is about, and then send the right response to users performing internet searches.

For example, every time you write a blog post about a specific process or service you provide, you’re giving people who’re looking for more information on that subject another way to find you and get answers to their questions. The more blog posts you write, the more opportunities you’re creating for people to discover your business. Write 100 blog posts and you have 100 more avenues of discovery.

Improve Your Search Engine Results

Your search engine results will reflect the amount of information you’re publishing on the internet. Your blog isn’t meant to be a static page like your About Us or Home page. It’s a brand new search result for search engines and people searching the internet for what you offer.

Blogging helps your business website get more traffic because every blog post you publish is a new URL. There are only so many product and service pages you can create, but the number of new URLs you can create with blog posts is endless. And every one of your posts will be read by both Google and people – people that didn’t realize your business sold the very product they’re looking for.

“Am I the only one who realizes you could hide a dead body or drugs on the second page of a google search and it would never be found?” This insightful bit of humor was first found on Twitter in 2011 and still holds true today, because who goes directly to Google’s second page search results?

Search engines are smart grading robots who take your written content and put it through algorithms. The more frequently you post and the better quality the content, the better grade your blog gets and the higher it will rank in search engine results.

Build Trust With Your Audience

When you’re shopping for a new household appliance, you’re more likely to buy from someone who’s spent time with you answering your questions and giving you unbiased advice. Someone with whom you’ve grown comfortable with, not someone whom you’ve never laid eyes on before.

Not only are people more likely to buy from someone they’ve spent time with, they’re also going to remember who gave away helpful information. Blogging is a way to communicate to your audience so they grow to know and trust you as a source of information.

Once you’ve established yourself as a credible resource, people will choose to buy from you over your competition, or they’ll consider working with you as a business partner rather than a business who isn’t making the effort to communicate and share valuable content.

Develop New Leads

Being a strong source of information is a conduit to being a source of value. You provide value up front for free when offer a continual source of educational, entertaining, and informative content.

The new opportunities created by blogging about valuable content are also opportunities to develop leads. For every blog post you publish, you’re creating a new call-to-action within the post. Again, 100 blog posts become 100 potential call-to-actions.

A call-to-action can be anything that asks your audience to do something else. It could be to click on a link for more help, your contact us page, a free ebook, a free quote, or another page, such as your product page, for more information.

Blogging brings you new leads because you’re writing about things you want to sell. You’re tailoring your audience to individuals who’re interested in your topics and who would feasibly purchase your product or service.

Thanks to your increased traffic due to the new ways (a.k.a. blog posts) to find you, and your improved search engine results from all the new URLs (a.k.a. blog posts), your opportunities for new leads grow.

Blogs continue to be a source of leads for years. Have you ever Googled something and got a response dating back to the 1990s? Those earliest articles or blogs are still chugging along, sending out digital data into the cybersphere, bringing in a new audience of potential customers.

It’s never too late to begin blogging for your small business. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the French novelist best known for writing The Little Prince, said, “The time for action is now. It’s never too late to do something.”

Hyperlocal Marketing: The New Buzzword On the Map

May 13, 2016 Beth Devine

What’s with all the hype over hyperlocal marketing? It’s nothing new to small businesses. Don’t you perform hyperlocal marketing every time you attend or sponsor a community event?

This old-fashioned component to hyperlocal marketing, dating back to the first shop that opened its doors to Main Street, continues to be very valuable. But there’s a lot more to it in our Internet Age of WiFi and GPS.

The term hyperlocal made its debut back in 1991 in a Washington Post article about local television news. Today, hyperlocal is the term being used to describe digital marketing targeting a specific geographic area. It can be focused on a town or a county, although that’s a large area. Hyperlocal marketing often targets a segment of the population that’s more defined, such as shoppers in a mall or consumers anywhere within a mile from your place of business.

There are a variety of ways to employ hyperlocal marketing, such as using news items, the weather, or apps. The most common application is – you guessed it – mobile phones. The built-in GPS and WiFi allows companies to connect with customers based on their particular neighborhood, zip code, or shopping location.

Thanks to Google and the search function, local online directories, and social media, this ability to connect is at an all-time high. Our digital world gives companies without big name recognition the opportunity to be found at a local level like never before.

So even though it’s a new buzzword for an old idea, hyperlocal marketing is here for the long haul. Here are a few things to be sure you’re doing with hyperlocal marketing as a small business.

Claim Your Local Business Page

By signing up with Google My Business, your business gets on Google Maps and your local search rankings increase. Customers can easily find your location as well as your business hours, updates, and reviews.

Make sure your business name, address, and phone number match what you have on your website. If you have more than one location, each business should have its own listing.

Optimize for “Near Me” Searches

Google said that ”near me” searches doubled in 2015, indicating that this is a trend that’s not leaving anytime soon. With “near me” searches, Google’s algorithm increases how important distance is from the searcher’s location.

To help optimize for this, make sure your business name, address, and phone number are prominently and frequently displayed on your website. Get someone who’s tech-savvy to provide local business information to Google by doing a structured data markup for your site.

Respond To Any Negative Reviews

Google and Yelp, the two top consumer review platforms, give businesses the option to respond to customer reviews. Your attention to consumer comments can be a great way to demonstrate your excellent customer service.

Anytime your business site is mentioned in reviews online, it’s counted by ranking algorithms used by search engines. Getting a lot of positive reviews is helpful with your local map rankings, so aim high.

Mobile-Friendly Location Pages

Mobile marketing is an important focus as mobile use continues to grow — with 62 percent of digital media time spent on mobile, the next frontier in digital marketing is here. It’s important to have a mobile-friendly website, and in particular, mobile-friendly location pages.

Avoid giving users a frustrating experience when they try to get to your location. Because these pages are often the most viewed, and more than half of all web activity is on mobile devices, it’s critical to get your site’s location pages optimized for mobile.

Like so many old ideas in marketing, hyperlocal marketing has been reinvented with new dynamics. Get your hyperlocal on and into your marketing plan.

Pay-Per-Click – What is it, Do I Need it and Can I do it Myself?

February 26, 2016 Beth Devine

Pay-per-Click or Adwords is a paid program that buys you ranking for your website. Most often referred to as Google Adwords, a good pay-per-click program can be effective across multiple search engines like Bing and Yahoo. This is an advertising campaign where you only pay if someone clicks on your ad.

If your industry is highly competitive, you don’t add content to your website frequently or are a fairly new company, getting on the first page of Google can be a challenge. Although we recommend investing in an overall content marketing program, it can take time for the search engines to rank your site. Pay-per-click allows you to have a strong on-line presence while you wait for your natural ranking to improve.

Can you manage your own campaign? Yes and No. Pay-per-Click programs give you the tools to create your own campaign however, unless you have a great deal of time to commit to becoming an expert, I would not recommend managing it. Search engines change their algorithms frequently. To run a truly effective campaign you need to have an thorough understanding of these changes.

We have worked with clients that have managed their own programs and once transferred to a company that does this alone have seen results that are twice as effective for half the cost. Managing a campaign is a combination of art and science and requires constant education to stay on top of it.

Please contact us at 860-432-8756 for help with your Pay-Per-Clicks (Adwords) Campaign.

How to Get Found on the Internet: Nobody Cares What I had for Breakfast

February 24, 2016 Beth Devine

Whenever we approach the subject of blogging with our manufacturing clients we get the same push back…

Nobody cares what we had for breakfast, or
Our customers already know that

We’d like to address these two misconceptions.

First, a company blog has nothing to do with what one consumes for the first meal of the day. The concept of blogging is often confused with a teenager tweeting or posting their mundane life updates on Facebook. When in reality, blogging is simply a way to add content to your website. Blogs can be presented in various formats from a written piece to a video blog. All formats can be useful as long as the information presented is educational and written with the audiences needs in mind.

Second, as far as “our customer already knows this”, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they know you do it. We can say with almost 100% certainty that every manufacturing client we’ve worked with for the past 20+ years has told us at one time or another, “I can’t believe my customer didn’t know I did this”. The reason they didn’t know was that the one time they shared with the customer all their capabilities, the customer only had the one need, so they didn’t retain information about the other services/products. Blogging helps to keep all your capabilities in front of them at all times.

Blogging is essential for several reasons…

Your search engine optimization depends on frequent updates to your site. The most recent content gets ranked higher and therefore, sites that publish more frequently get better ranking.
Adding content to your site helps to ensure you can be found on a search. If you don’t have the right keyword terms on your site, how are people to find you when searching those terms?
A good blog helps to establish you/your company as experts in the field. People are more interested in having a conversation with someone who obviously knows what they’re doing.
Blogs can be used to help you to stay in front of your customers and prospects on a consistent basis (can be used to as content for an e-newsletter).

Many of our manufacturing clients are concerned with SEO (search engine optimization) as they want to be found on searches that apply to their business. These days SEO is all about content. Therefore, content creation is critical and blogging is the way to go.

Please contact us at 860-432-8756 for help with your content creation (aka blog).

Also from our Blog: 5 Reasons to Blog for Your Business: Blogging Resistance Beware

Social Media of the Future Is Here

January 25, 2016 Beth Devine

Social media of the future is going to be more exceptional and carry bigger impact. It will be a more prominent go-to tool for self-expression. What does this mean for small businesses in 2016? How do brands prioritize the increased engagement that’s required to establish and maintain customer loyalty?

Every brand should have social media as part of their marketing strategy. Consumers want to have relationships with companies, and they want companies to participate in the narratives and systems that are being built to accommodate these relationships.

Here are three areas to focus your attention on in social media for 2016:

1. People Power Rules the Social Planet

Personalization is more important than ever. In the relationship between brands and customers, social media is a valuable asset in creating personal connections. There are three elements that are growing in the social arena to pay attention to:

User-generated content is a growing trend that gives companies a great way to engage with customers. Since Doritos began its Crash the Super Bowl contest, the user-generated concept has moved into other platforms, such as Instagram and Vine.

Lately, user-generated content is making waves in “unboxing” as brands jump in on the resurgence in popularity. While unboxing has been around as long as video-sharing software, the format is experiencing a rejuvenated appeal due to the rise in video sharing platforms and smartphone video technology.

Wikipedia defines unboxing as the “unpacking of new products, especially high tech consumer products. The product’s owner captures the process on video and later uploads it to the web.” It’s expanding to include cosmetics, fashion, cars, and toys, and brands are getting involved by sponsoring the unboxing stars.

Employee advocacy needs to be encouraged in companies for its positive effect on generating a wider reach and more personal appeal. Link Humans defines employee advocacy as” the exposure that employees generate for brands using their own online assets.” Your employees are your biggest advocates, and they will help build a more authentic trust for your company.

Instead of advancing more of your own marketing content, recruit your employees to talk about your company on social media, including forums and discussion boards. Create brand ambassadors to share a human perspective to your brand that customers will gravitate to. Most of your employees’ lives are already intertwined with social media. Enlisting their help to maintain and nurture company relationships as brand ambassadors is also a way to empower them.

Influencer marketing is a way to reach the audience of an influencer in your market. By establishing a long-term relationship with a key influencer, you establish trust with your customers while promoting your brand. Because audiences are so fragmented on social media, influencer marketing can help build your presence on multiple platforms.

2. Social Video Takes Over the World

Video is flourishing on social media. Facebook surpassed YouTube with daily video views, Twitter launched its own native video, and Snapchat reports it’s getting 6 billion views of video daily. U.S. adults watch an average of 5.5 hours of video every day.

Video shoots of the past are morphing into new formats. No longer does the prospect of costly professional video prevent you from creating and sharing video content. Today’s video, live photo, livestream apps like Periscope and Meerkat, GIFs, 8-second Vines, 15-second Instagram videos, and Snapchat video messaging are all easily adaptable to the novice videographer.

70% of companies now say video is the most effective tool in their online marketing belts, with video content dominating social media, thanks to the growing number of platforms and features. Video is set to become one of the most powerful communication tools of 2016. Be sure to engage with social video using your most creative content. Try out livestreaming services such as Periscope, Blab, Snapchat, and Meerkat. Video offers an immersive experience for your customers, giving you an opportunity to communicate in the moment.

3. The Moment Is Now With Messaging

Companies are gradually entering into social messaging as the number of active users grows, with 75 percent of internet users worldwide accessing messaging apps on their mobile devices. Business Insider reports that messaging apps are now bigger than social networks. Their growth will continue to accelerate as the apps change and more features are added.

Messaging gives internet users what they have come to expect, instantaneous responses and answers. Google’s high quality and fast delivery, and social media’s constant updating and auto-loading are conditioning people to expect consistently fast results.

While social messaging for brands might be in an undefined grey realm, it’s only a matter of time before businesses are courted by new data for marketing purposes. Already, one-on-one customer support and direct service has moved into the messaging channels. The major social platforms all have a messaging component, making 2016 the year for companies to tap into the social messaging potential.

For 2016, you can expect new challenges and opportunities in digital — how will you use them to grow your business? Get your story out using the rising power of people, video, and messaging on social media.

What Does Your Online Presence Look Like?

January 22, 2016 Beth Devine

Do you have a solid footing for your online presence for 2016? As another year begins to unfold with all its possibilities, once again we are confronted with goals, predictions, trends, expectations, and best-laid plans.

In order to have the competitive advantage, you need to create a strong identity online. To help you succeed in the year ahead, consider these three areas when establishing your online presence.

1. Make a Good First Impression With Your Website

An established business needs a professional website if you want to promote growth. Your site should reflect your current success as well as set you up for further advancement with a strategy that matches your business model. Your first impression is critical in attracting new clients and retaining current ones.

Your main internet tool is your website. Your customers aren’t looking you up in a phone book or the Thomas Register. A continually updated website helps with your SEO, so when people search for you online, they find you.

Does your home page address your customer needs? The immediate message should describe how your customer will benefit from your product or service. This is far more meaningful than an explanation of what the company does, what products and services are offered, and the who and when of the company’s background.

Frame your content around your customers rather than making claims about how great your company is. You’re more likely to elicit skepticism and indifference with self-promotion. Impress your customers with testimonials instead of giving them unsubstantiated claims that falsely inflate your business.

Don’t forget to keep your website updated. A good first impression will be lost if your site gets hacked through plugins that weren’t updated or you’re operating under the misconception that your small business site won’t be targeted.

2. Other Ways to Build Your Online Presence

There are many opportunities to grow your online presence once you’ve established a professional website. Does your business write white papers? Would short videos of your processes or service be of interest to your audience? Do you have a blog for sharing information with your customers? What else will help with your website activity?

When you create compelling content, you’re opening wide the doors to your website. The more you offer, the more your online presence grows. The more good content you share, the more your SEO will improve.

Remember, there’s no such thing as digital writing. Writing for SEO is dead, but writing for the reader is what’s going to help the search engines — and your readers — find you. So give your customers something to search for in addition to a well designed website.

3. Building Relationships on LinkedIn and Social Media

People want to do business with companies that share useful and relevant information. Today’s social media is a giant indicator of how important relationship building is in the business world. And for professionals, the social network is LinkedIn.

With over 380 million members, LinkedIn is growing in its B2B transactions. It’s the place to be for businesses, no matter what your expertise is. Connecting with your contacts just got a lot easier with the updated Voyager app, helping you stay informed about the conversations and content that matter the most.

Search also improved, and is 300% faster for your jobs, people, and group searches.

LinkedIn has also acquired Lynda.com, an online education company that features thousands of online video courses on a wide variety of topics. Employers can see what courses prospective employees have taken, and members can grow their skill sets.

Your online presence is incomplete without social media. Get involved in the online networking community and give your website more internet exposure.

Know Your Audience

Each of these three online areas has an important ingredient in common. To better understand your customers and their needs, all of your online strategies have to include audience awareness. Getting to know your audience’s demographics involves doing some market research. Entrepreneur defines market research as:

The process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a market, about a product or service to be offered for sale in that market, and about the past, present and potential customers for the product or service; research into the characteristics, spending habits, location and needs of your business’s target market, the industry as a whole, and the particular competitors you face.

The ideas you get from your market research will inform your content ideas, helping you to target your audience’s needs. With the right information you’ll be a better online communicator whose online presence will reflect your concern to meet your customer’s needs.