Drive Customer Interactions With Social Media!
Social Media has taken over the world when it comes to digital marketing. Everyone’s phone comes with a copy of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and everywhere we look when we go out there are people looking through their phones on Social Media.
Facebook is not only the most popular Social Media platform in the world, it is also the best suited to advertising. With major companies investing in Facebook Pixels so they can track and retarget to potential customers! Most companies own their own Facebook Page and run adverts from them. Using Facebook pages you can promote your products and services using images and video and advertise them efficiently.
Twitter can get very mixed results for business and whilst many major companies use it, the majority of their followers come from the fact that they are major, well known companies. Twitter have several ways of promoting their business with adverts and it can be exceptionally useful if you have a very social business.
Instagram is absolutely perfect for restaurants. The main sense that most people use is their vision and the first bite is with the eye! By uploading videos and encouraging customers to use hashtags, you can get your pictures to go out there! A good Instagram account offers a behind the scenes of your business so your customers can get to know you and build trust with your brand!
Photographs will really help sell your business. People want to see what you can do, your products and the things that you make. You can also put up photographs of your staff as long as they are happy with you placing them on Social Media. We generally advise that businesses don’t take pictures of their customers unless their customers approach them to be photographed as a lot of people find it alienating and this can actually lose you customers!
Maximise Your Efficiency Using Hootsuite!
Posting for your business on multiple platforms can get to a point where it’s arduous. Imagine a world in which you can post to all of your platforms at once! Hootsuite is an absolutely amazing platform which allows you to post out to all of your social media accounts at once, but what’s more, you can also schedule posts far into the future. Hootsuite allows you to post to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and more, giving you a lot of flexibility when it comes to posting to multiple platforms.
You can also set up your posts so one post will be released on all of your platforms at once, which will give you great time efficiency. Whilst this is possible, we would always recommend tailoring your posting to each platform separately to get the best interactions out of your audiences. People on Facebook will generally prefer different posts than those on Twitter. As you know your audiences best, play around and find what works for your company best on these websites.
If you are a busy business owner managing your own social media, you can take times when you are less busy to log into Hootsuite and schedule all of your posts to go out in advance. This will allow you to manage your time most efficiency.
The demo of Hootsuite allows for you to post to up to three platforms at once with up to 30 messages scheduled into the future enabling you to truly get your Social Media platforms performing at maximum efficiency.
Get Found Online With A Website!
When people look for your company online, what can they see? If you don’t have a website, you might be missing valuable traffic which will include customers interested in your company and what you can offer.
People will look at you to find out more information about your company and the services you provide and the best way to showcase them is with a website. Your website can be advertised on Facebook and on Google and it’s a great way of making money if you set it up right. If you don’t have your own website, you could be missing a trick and possible customers might go with other companies, losing you business!
You’ll want 4 main pages.
- Homepage
- Services
- Gallery
- Contact
Your Homepage is the keystone of your website where most, if not all of your traffic ends up. A lot of websites usually have an “About Us” page, however I feel this information fits best on the homepage, so people have something to read, rather than just finding a giant company logo. Homepages which contain information have a much higher retention rate than homepages which are just a picture or a logo, which will benefit your website’s SEO. It’s possible to have everything on your homepage and have a one page website, but it’s much nicer as a browser to go through the site to the places you want to go rather than relentlessly scrolling through each section whenever you load the site up!
Your Services page lists your company services with the descriptions and the prices of those services if required. For Restaurants, you might want to have an online menu instead, featuring all the food and drink your company sells. Some companies prefer to do this as an online PDF, but again it benefits your website to have your menu written in text. You might even want to invest in an ordering system if you’re not using a company like Just Eat or Deliveroo to handle online ordering, however if you use any companies like these, it is best to just use their systems as they will compete with you for profits which can end up with costing you money!
Your Gallery is simple, it features a selection of pictures usually 20+ so people can look at the different things your company can do, see your staff, see awards you have won, the food you make, the things you craft and build. It’s good to have high quality pictures in your gallery, but to limit their resolution so they can load quickly.
Your Contact page is simple, just some basic information on how people can write to you, your number, address and email will suffice. Some companies like to use contact forms for this process. If you are processing customer information or if you have a website which performs business within Europe, you might want to look into GDPR or the General Data Protection Regulation.
For people who are inexperienced web designers wanting to make a small efficient business website, we recommend Wix for it’s easy to use interface.(https://www.wix.com) Wix has a plethora of useful plugins, templates and a fantastic site building ADI which make designing a professional looking website a cinch! You can get plugins for just about everything a website would need, from bookings applications to ordering online for takeaways and restaurants!
Capitalise On Video!
Video is very important when it comes to business, and there are so many ways you can get your videos out on the internet these days! Videos promoted online can link back to your business which will help increase your web ranking if done correctly.
YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion are all websites where you can upload your video content. Videos can also be shared on Social Media platforms such as Facebook and Reddit. Facebook loves video and Facebook posts featuring video will get a lot more exposure and interaction than posts featuring just pictures or text.
Improve Your Web Ranking With Blogging!
Blogs are incredibly useful when it comes to promoting your business! If you want to stand out in your industry, it is important to show a great understanding of your business, your products and the benefits of choosing your brand and Blogging is a great way to do this. It also humanises your brand and turns you into something more than just another faceless corporate entity.
Great Blogs are well keyworded and will increase your presence on search engines allowing more people to find your companies increasing your leads and conversion rates naturally. Taking the time to learn to blog effectively and efficiently will really benefit your business.
A well written Blog will help build your domain authority by encouraging people to link back to your website. This will help bump your site up the search engines, allowing you to rank higher than your competition if they aren’t focusing on increasing their web presence.
