LinkedIn. It’s the most popular social networking site for business-to-business professionals. But if you’re in the tech field, LinkedIn plays an even more important role, according to a recent report.
The new information results from a survey in which LinkedIn queried 5,241 global professionals who recently “participated in or influenced the purchase of various hardware or software solutions,” reports Social Media Today.
Tech vendors should take note of the characteristics shared by tech purchasers, according to the LinkedIn report:
Tech purchasers are collaborative, seeking advice from online sources as well as colleagues.
Tech purchasers use that advice to identify, vet, research, purchase, implement, and renew business technology solutions.
The buying habits of tech purchasers makes the decision-making process for buyers quite complex. It also creates a competitive landscape for vendors.
Key takeaways from the LinkedIn survey
Tech vendors should make sure they have a well-developed presence on LinkedIn, which in April reported it is seeing “record levels of engagement” among its 610 million users. Remember: LinkedIn makes up more than 50% of all social traffic to B2B websites and blogs.
More advice includes:
Know your audience. Within the next few years, millenials, those born between 1981 and 1996 and comprising 25 percent of the population, will be making more than 50% of the tech purchasing decisions. What’s more, there are 87 million millennials on LinkedIn, with 11 million in decision-making positions.
Know your users. 4/5 of employees impact tech purchase decisions.
Make your content informative and worthwhile. Why? Ninety percent of tech buyers look to the outside for useful information. And most Fortune 500 decision-makers and executives like to spend their spare time on LinkedIn, reports Foundation. They are looking for valuable content. So make sure you provide it.
Make your brand stand out. It should convey trust, dependability, quality, support, and service.
Make sure your marketing and sales messages align. Both should align.
We assess your needs, determine which social media platforms will best serve them, and set up a regular process for sharing carefully crafted content about your business via selected platforms.
We create a cohesive strategy and measurement plan.
We integrate the plan across the organization.
Finally, we use metrics to monitor content marketing performance and ROI.
Google My Business (GMB) is just one of the many online tools you can and should take advantage of to help promote your business or brand on the web. Did we mention that Google My Business is a free service? Well, it is.
If you’re not too familiar with GMB and how it can boost your online profile, read on!
First of all, what is Google My Business?
Google My Business is a free web tool Google offers to businesses that allows them to showcase their services, location, hours, and other essential information.
The ultimate goal of GMB is to empower potential customers to find your business more easily.
GMB is a service available to any business that has a physical location. Google’s expectation is that customers will come to your office, shop, restaurant, service center, etc. in order to buy your goods or take advantage of your service offerings.
Even if you offer a mobile business that has you traveling to meet customers, you can still have a Google My Business profile provided that your business has an actual physical location. Examples of these types of businesses include plumbers and exterminators, among others.
I already have a website, so why do I need a GMB profile?
Your company’s GMB page serves to enhance and complement your existing online presence. This (presumably) includes your business website, your business-related social media profiles, and all of the reviews you’ve (hopefully) been encouraging satisfied customers to post.
Having a Google My Business profile makes it easier for Google to present information about your business to searchers. And you definitely want Google to do that.
In fact, the information that you, as the business owner, place in your GMB page is what Google presents to users when you appear in search results, as shown by the screenshots below.
First, here is what the “Info” screen looks like on the Triple Canopy Media GMB page, as we here at TCM see it, (with the most relevant portion circled in red just for this post):
With that in mind, check out what Google shows a user who brings up Triple Canopy Media in a search (again, the red serves to highlight this text for illustration purposes here):
Just in case you can’t quite make it out, it’s the same copy! In other words, Google will describe your business to searchers using the words from your GMB page. The power to promote yourself to the public in your own words actually does lie with you!
Google My Business can be especially helpful when it comes to the all-important local search, (when users, for instance, type “search engine optimization near me”). More on this in the “Location” section below.
Google stats
In case TCM has to actually spell this out, Google dominates the search engine marketplace. In the first quarter of 2019, there were more than 150 billion searches conducted using Google’s search engine. (Those are numbers for just the U.S. Google page, so obviously the global numbers are higher. You can track Google searches in real time here.) More than 90% of all search engine traffic worldwide goes through Google.
Bottom line: Most people are finding what they want to find through Google. And GMB gives you a chance to tell those people all about your business and what it does.
Keep the content flowing!
TCM isn’t going to stop blogging about the value of content anytime soon. That’s because content is the lifeblood of your company’s online presence. This is just as true for Google My Business as it is for your business website.
First of all, make sure that you have a well-written, concise, and engaging description of what your business is and does in the “Info” section of GMB. (Check out the words circled in red in the screenshots above.) Be sure to use relevant keywords, but make your description readable prose. Don’t just list a string of keywords!
Look at your GMB page as yet another opportunity to post content that will give your business online authority.
Write content for the “Posts” section. This is a good place to keep your customers apprised of upcoming events related to your business or special deals you plan to offer in the near future. You can also upload images and videos to enhance your GMB profile. Show your customers more of who you are!
Product and service offerings for the win
Next, take advantage of all of the opportunities that Google My Business gives you to spell out your company’s product and service offerings. You can list them on the “Info” page and then again, but with more detail, on the “Services” page.
The “Services” page gives you a chance to write a much longer narrative about all of the things your business can do to solve your customers’ problems for them! You can create “sections” and add “items” underneath them. TCM strongly encourages you to do this. Google will then tie your keywords all together and link them to the name of your business, which is exactly what you want a search engine to do.
For instance, in the screenshot below, you can see that the section is entitled “Reputation Management,” which is one of the main services that TCM provides. Underneath that main offering is a list of items that comprise it, along with a narrative about each one. These include vital components of reputation management such as branding and positioning, public relations, website development, content strategy, printing & graphic design, and social media.
You can write up to 1,000 characters for each item. That should be more than enough to tell your customers (and Google) what you can do for them.
Location, location, location!
Remember when we said that local search plays a big role in helping Google find and recommend relevant businesses? Well, it does. Fortunately, GMB gives you several opportunities to showcase your company’s location, making sure that both Google and potential customers take notice.
Going back to the “Info” page, there is a subheading where you can list service areas for your business. You can indicate the names of cities, townships, counties, or ZIP Codes. Just be sure that you actually do service an area if you tell Google that you do.
While we’re on the all-important subject of location, this is a great time to stress how vital it is for your business to ensure that your NAP is consistent everywhere you’re listed online. In this instance, “NAP” stands for “name, address, phone number.” (Make sure that you properly list the website address for your business on its GMB page as well. Think “NAPW,” if that helps.)
GMB has you list the location and contact information for your business, of course. It is absolutely essential that the information you list here not only matches up exactly with what is listed on your website but is also perfectly in line with all of the other sites that list this information. This includes social media sites—your business Facebook page, LinkedIn page, and so on—as well as other places where you’re listed online such as the BBB site.
In Conclusion
If your business doesn’t have a Google My Business page, create one now. It’s a free service that will put you, in your own words, in front of searchers using the most-used search engine on earth. Be sure that all of the information you put on your GMB page is accurate and up to date. Use the platform to write content, post pictures, and inform your audience about what’s going on with your company right now.
And, if you need some help creating an outstanding GMB page, reach out to Triple Canopy Media!
When you’re outside on a sunny day, your shadow will tag along with you, serving as your constant companion wherever you go. But at night, in the darkness, it hides. Your reputation, on the other hand, follows you everywhere, all the time. And people know it.
Day or night, fair weather or foul, the way that others perceive you shapes your ability to gain their trust—and their business. This is true online just as it is in life. If you’ve got a bad reputation anywhere, you’re likely scaring potential clients away.
You might think that you can build and maintain a good reputation simply by living an honorable life. That’s a solid start, and a noble goal. Triple Canopy Media applauds you for your devotion to virtue.
Sadly, maintaining a good reputation is often not as straightforward as it ought to be. That’s where reputation management comes in.
Reputation management is the process of influencing and shaping how others see a person, a company, or a brand. It was always a part of the marketing and public relations world, but in the online era it’s more important than ever.
You can do everything right—work hard, run your business honestly, treat your employees and your customers fairly—but still not reap of the full benefits of an earned positive reputation.
This is because there are a number of moving parts that define your reputation online.
One major way that customers learn about your business is through reading online reviews. Reviews matter. A lot. In fact, more than 95% of shoppers check them before committing to a purchase.
This isn’t just true of online shopping either. The same high numbers apply to local businesses, with 91% of searchers in the coveted demographic of 18-34-year-olds trusting online reviews just as much as recommendations from people they know in real life.
Getting good reviews is huge. But there’s more to reputation management than that. What are some of the steps you can take to ensure that you and your business maintain a positive online reputation? Read on!
Don’t Be Shady, Don’t Be a Jerk
Alright, perhaps there’s not a lot of technical knowhow wrapped up in this one, but we would be remiss if we failed to lead with it. If you lie, if you cheat, if you’re rude, if you’re undependable, then that’s going to damage or completely shape your negative reputation.
Some people feel that the universe is out to get them. It’s probably not. They’re just inviting its retribution by embodying all of the bad traits that they were (hopefully) told not to embrace when they were children.
Nastiness begets people who call nastiness out. And online, people aren’t shy about telling you and everyone else what they really think.
Abhor the Vacuum
Let’s accept that you’re generally an honest person and you run your business above board. Good for you! Unfortunately, if you don’t have much of an online presence, then it won’t take very much effort on the part of a bad actor to define your web identity for you.
Bad actors could include unscrupulous competitors looking to get ahead the easy way, disgruntled customers pursuing a vendetta, or random trolls scheming to make someone’s life miserable for their own amusement.
There are plenty of proactive steps you can take to make sure that it’s an uphill climb for anyone who wants to defame you.
If you run a business, make sure that it has a phenomenal website. Create a business Facebook page for it. Make sure that you’re on LinkedIn too. Basically, you should have some kind of presence on all of the major social media platforms. (This is good from an SEO standpoint as well, as it gives search engines more of you to find.) It doesn’t hurt for you to join chambers of commerce and trade associations either.
For individuals, these same tips apply. Create and maintain social media accounts but be sure that their content presents you to the world in the best light. Join professional organizations in your industry or field of study.
Content, Content, Content!
There’s that word again: content. It’s a mantra for TCM, and it should be one for you as well. A bare-bones business website is better than no website at all, of course. But a dynamic business website full of robust, informative, and authoritative content is even better.
Creating good content that can help you rank highly in the search engine results will push bad content down lower on the SERPs. Plus, if a customer reads it, they will hear about you, from you, and in your own voice, not someone else’s.
Those Reviews Once Again
As we mentioned above, bad reviews can harm your standing with customers, especially younger, more online-savvy ones. Sometimes bad reviews from customers are justified. Other times, they’re unreasonable. Needless to say, you want way more good ones than bad ones.
The best way to combat bad online reviews is to actively solicit good ones from customers. TCM’s rabid fans know that we have written about this in a previous blog post.
Still, flooding the online space with positive reviews won’t make the bad ones disappear completely. But it will dilute their power.
There are also benefits, believe it or not, to having some negative online reviews.
Put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer for a moment. If that person, looking at a host of online reviews, sees nothing but glowing comments, that could be a red flag. The customer might start to wonder if the deck is stacked.
A few negative reviews can allow your business to avoid the axiom: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” They can help give a potential customer a fuller picture of the business in question, from the best- to the worst-case scenario.
Negative reviews can also empower your company to engage with dissatisfied customers and publicly demonstrate to future customers the manner in which you respond to difficult situations. They can also be useful internally, as many negative reviews are actually constructive, and not just libel meant to destroy you.
In Conclusion
Be the best “you” that you can be, both as a person, and as a business. Actively shape your online character by creating content, soliciting positive reviews, and staying engaged with customers.
If you find this process to be overwhelming, don’t worry. The professionals here at Triple Canopy Media know all about reputation management.
We can help you devise a comprehensive reputation management plan, push negative results down below the top search results in Google, and create outstanding content to take their place.
You’re writing a blog post. And you plan to share it on your social media accounts by posting the link with a photo and hoping your followers will click and follow you there. But there’s another way, one that will allow you to generate a month’s worth of social posts from just one blog post.
Share a teaser. Create interest in an upcoming blog post by posting an image, an excerpt, or a quote.
Share a fact or stat. Your blog post is likely to be full of them. Pick the most intriguing and share them on social.
Pull a quote. Make sure your blog post includes a few lines that are quote-worthy and they can provide fodder for social.
Ask a question. Make it thought-provoking.
Make a bold statement that connects with your blog post.
Mention – and tag – your sources.
Create a visual slideshow. Choose the most valuable sub-headings from your blog post, place them into a slideshow that provides a post summary.
Turn your blog post into an infographic.
Think quizzes and polls. Figure out an angle that connects with your blog post and post it on social, possibly as a story.
Got a good photo in your blog post? Post it on social. By itself.
Try a meme that picks up a point from your blog post. Make it entertaining.
Add a GIF to a short piece of copy from your blog post.
Create a video post from your blog post.
Summarize your blog post in a list. Post it on social. Include a hashtag.
More social media post ideas
Still in need of ideas for things to post on social media? Check out this list:
Workplace photo: behind the scenes
An answer from your FAQ
Introduction to new employee
Share product/service popular with your customers
Interview or case study with a customer
Customer review
Community event
Something funny
Your company’s story: share one piece at a time
Podcast
#TBT
Seasonal item
Inspiring quote
Highlight customer of the month
An event you attended
Attention-grabbing statistic
Poll
Fill-in-the-blank post
Video featuring products or people from your business
Repeat top-performing posts
Email newsletter
Infographic link
Survey link
Image
Correct a misperception
Favorite book or playlist
Shout-out to other local business
Industry research
Helpful tip(s) related to your products or services
Celebration of company milestone
Promote your other social networks
Ask people to join your mailing list
Reap the rewards
Doing all this – and more — will help you reap the rewards of social media. You’ll engage your customers by delivering interactive and professional content that will help improve your online visibility and expand your customer reach.
TCM can do it for you
If you’re not sure how to do your own social media, reach out to Triple Canopy Media. At Triple Canopy Media we would be glad to show you how it’s done. Or do it for you.
Here’s what we do:
We assess your needs, determine which social media platforms will best serve them, and set up a regular process for sharing carefully crafted content about your business via selected platforms.
We create a cohesive strategy and measurement plan.
We integrate the plan across the organization.
Finally, we use metrics to monitor content marketing performance and ROI.
The scenario was familiar, as it was one I had repeated dozens of times during the past two years. I was driving my twin 13-year-old grandchildren to the orthodontist. And both were staring at their iPhones.
This time, though, something was different. When I glanced at my granddaughter’s phone, I didn’t recognize the app she was using. Same thing with my grandson.
I was surprised. And chagrined. After all, social media is part of my job.
So I asked about it. “TikTok,” responded the granddaughter.
“Do you use that a lot?” I enquired. “Sure,” she said.
“And what about your friends?” I continued. “Is it popular with them?” “Yeah, everyone uses it.”
“What about Instagram? Snapchat? Do you and your friends still use those apps?” “Sometimes,” she replied, eyes glued to her phone and the TikTok video on its screen. As I watched, her lips curved into a mischievous smile.
At that moment I decided I had to find out more about this social media site.
Bringing the fun back to social media
So I checked out the numbers. As a video creation site, TikTok has attracted more than 500 million users. It was the fourth most downloaded app worldwide last year. And it ranked #3 in the first quarter of this year, topping the chart for Apple non-game apps.
A glowing 2018 New York Times article about TikTok claimed it had brought the fun back to social media. TikTok, wrote Kevin Roose, “doesn’t sound like much. But, somehow, it adds up to what might well be the only truly pleasant social network in existence.”
He said TikTok made him happy. “It’s a safe haven for people that are seeing the world on fire and being like, ‘I need silliness,’” he explained.
A social media network that spreads happiness? A social media network that provides a safe haven for a world on fire?
More about TikTok
Now I needed to know even more. And magically, links to a number of stories about the “refreshing outlier in the social media universe” began appearing in my inbox, each contributing a bit more information about this popular network.
First, I learned that it was no wonder it was my 13-year-old grandchildren who turned me on to TikTok. It is young people who make up the bulk of its audience. The median TikTok user hovers in the mid-teens, according to a March 2019 story in the New York Times. Which may be why “there’s a lot of bad language and racist language in the videos,” each of my grandchildren confided to me privately.
Second, I learned a bit of TikTok history – namely that Musical.ly rebranded as TikTok one year ago, after being acquired the before by Chinese company ByteDance, which describes itself as an artificial intelligence company.
Third, I read that “TikTok has stirred up a revival of short video clips—only now, it’s even more interactive, collaborative, and downright addictive.”
The company website explains it this way: “TikTok is the world’s leading destination for short-form mobile videos. Our mission is to capture and present the world’s creativity, knowledge, and moments that matter in everyday life. TikTok empowers everyone to be a creator directly from their smartphones, and is committed to building a community by encouraging users to share their passion and creative expression through their videos . . . To help users make the videos they’ve envisioned, TikTok developed a native text editing feature that creators can use inside the app.”
According to the New York Times, TikTok operates on a “simple premise” where “Users create short videos set to music, often lip-syncing along, dancing or acting out short skits. The app includes:
templates and visual effects to spice up the videos
a live-streaming feature that allows users to send virtual ‘gifts’ to their favorite creators, which can be bought with real money
followers, hashtags, likes and comments,
filters, as on Snapchat, etc.,
the ability to search for sounds to score videos,
encouragement to engage with other users through “response” videos or by means of “duets” where users can duplicate videos and add themselves alongside.
TikTok boasts 26.5 million monthly active users in the U.S. alone, with nearly 40 million downloads since November.
The majority of TikTok’s users are young; 66% of those worldwide are under age 30. In the U.S., 60% of the app’s monthly active users are 16- to 24 year-olds, and 52% use iPhones.
Users spend an average of 52 minutes a day on the app.
TikTok’s engagement rate is 29%.
Download figures for July 2019 show TikTok in second place, just behind Facebook.
TikTok has offices in Beijing, Berlin, Jakarta, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo.
TikTok and your business
The lessons here are clear. If a target audience for your business is a younger demographic, TikTok may work for you. So think about checking out the platform’s current ad products and find out how to post on TikTok via the HubSpot blog.
Although few brands use TikTok, Google used it successfully to promote its voice assistant, with its #HeyGoogleHelp campaign garnering 150 million views.
Macy’s used it for its “All Brand New Challenge.” The challenge urged mobile users to record videos and inspire others to share their style for the school year. TikTok’s hashtagged video challenges are hugely popular and have the potential to go viral, as users record themselves doing something odd and urge others to respond by adding their own videocreations
However, because TikTok has a high volume of both users and content, videos must be eye catching and super entertaining to stand out. Creativity and authenticity are also key.
Here’s a look at what you could see on TikTok, according to this video from the platform’s YouTube page.
Yes, of course we understand. You want more clicks, more traffic on your site, more eyes on your blog posts. Perhaps you want to sell more of your company’s products or services, or maybe you dream of cornering a niche in your industry and leveraging that to become a major online influencer.
Whatever your motivation, or your most favored outcome, a good solid blog can help you get there.
But building a blog that works for you or your business doesn’t just happen because you want it to. (Obviously, right?) It happens through planning, persistence, and a bit of strategy.
How can you get more eyes on your blog posts and reap the benefits? Ask yourself the questions below!
Am I Focused?
You should always focus your sights squarely on your subject matter. Pick a niche and stick with it.
If you run a business, then this choice has been made for you to some extent. Blogging about your industry is not just a logical thing to do; it also draws on the considerable experience and expertise you have to offer in your field.
On the other hand, if you’re an individual hoping to raise your profile or make a living through blogging, picking your niche could be a bit more challenging.
Above all, your blog should be focused.
If you want to just chronicle your random thoughts from time to time and call that a blog, then you certainly have the full freedom to do so. But the result of doing that will be more of a fun diversion for you and your friends than it will be evidence of why you should be a major influencer.
Focus! Yes, you should pick a well-defined subject area that you know fairly well. In addition, you should have enthusiasm for your chosen topic. That way, you’ll be more motivated to stay in touch with the hottest trends in the field. Plus, your excitement will shine through and your readers will feel that and want to read more.
Speaking of readers…
Do I Know My Audience?
Your blog should hold your interest, certainly, because you’re going to be the one writing it. But it’s actually much more essential that it covers what readers want to learn about if you’d like for it to be a part of your business strategy.
You’re welcome to occupy online space by writing about your cats or your favorite 1980s TV shows—feel free! But if you believe that this will bring you a lucrative payout or result in you getting calls to give TED Talks, you’re likely to be disappointed.
If you really aren’t sure what you should be blogging about, but you hope to make a living with your writing, think about the marketplace first. Prioritize your audience. Consider the needs of your readers and cater to their interests. Think about their pain points and drill down on that.
Cornering your niche in the blogosphere involves writing about something that can be monetized. It may also center around subject matter that is highly-technical. If your chosen topic is one that very few people can write about, and you’re one of those people, then there’s a possibility that there’s a lucrative future in it for you.
Can I Post Like Clockwork?
Dependability is a great quality not just in real life, but also online.
If you want people to read your blog posts, work on posting them regularly.
Perhaps you have enough material to post every other day? Schedule a time to go live and stick to that. If you feel like you will only post something once a week, try to have your post up on the same day every week, and at the same time of day if you can.
Again, post regularly. People will then come to expect to see your posts at that given time. And, if your posts are enthralling, informative, or entertaining enough, readers will make seeking them out a regular part of their weekly routine.
You can write posts ahead of time, too, of course, and schedule them to go live in advance.
Can I Make Social Media My Blog’s Friend?
While we’re on the subject of getting your blog posts on a regular schedule, we should talk about using social media to promote your posts.
You can set your post to go live at a particular time and day, and then, for example, schedule a tweet to go out at the same time which summarizes the post and provides a link that your followers can click on to visit your blog and read your post.
If you don’t have your social media posts scheduled to run at regular intervals already, you should strongly consider doing so. You can manage multiple social media accounts using tools like Hootsuite. You can then dedicate a portion of your workweek to composing all of your social media posts but still have them see the light of day gradually.
Will I Be Able to Change with the Seasons?
Naturally, users search for content relevant to their needs. And those needs, of course, are not static.
For business owners, their needs may change as their businesses grow. For users of all types, their searches are likely to vary with the calendar.
This concept is easier to understand in relation to some business sectors more than others. For instance, if your business involves selling apparel, you’re probably going to be getting more interest in boots in the wintertime than you are in the summertime.
Similarly, the holiday season is going to witness spikes in all sorts of retail sectors, and you’re going to want to stay on top of those trends.
But every business, even those that aren’t seasonal (or don’t seem seasonal at first glance) will have to respond to the pages flying off the calendar. Spoiler alert: In December, or thereabouts, you can look forward to a TCM blog post highlighting “SEO trends for 2020.” Feel free to set up an alert for it.
In Conclusion
Choose your blog post subjects wisely. Make them about things that your potential readers will find useful, informative, and valuable.
Post as frequently as you can, and always according to a regular, predictable timeline.
Stay up to date with the latest trends in your industry and be mindful of the date on the calendar when thinking about what’s “hot” right now for companies of your type.
Use social media to drive more traffic to your blog and, by association, your website and your company.
And, as always, write the very best content you can!
According to the 2018 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 87% of respondents experienced increased exposure from using social media, 78% reported increased website traffic, and 63% saw an increase in customer loyalty.
But social media is about more than sales. It is about building a strong communication and feedback system that will lead to sales, if done correctly. Outsourcing your social media efforts can help you do it right.
Ten good reasons to outsource your social media
Outsourcing will give you consistent brand messaging, along with consistent tone and voice.
Outsourcing is more cost effective. You save the full-time salary and benefits of a social media manager.
Outsourcing gives you an experienced specialist trained in best practices, without training expenses or a learning curve.
Outsourcing saves you time, time you can use to build and grow your business.
Outsourcing can allow you to provide 24/7 posting and engagement, without hiring staff.
Outsourcing allows you to experiment with different platforms. The experienced social media professional keeps up with them all and can test campaigns on different platforms to see which works best for you.
Outsourcing allows you to give better customer service. Social media is where most people turn when they want answers to a question about an order or a product. The experienced social media professional monitors and alerts you to customer queries that come in via your social media platforms and makes sure they are answered.
Outsourcing gives you access to professionals who know what to post and when.
Outsourcing gives you the ability to collect, record, and store data about your social media accounts, without expending your time and energy.
Six questions to ask yourself about outsourcing
Do I have enough time to manage my social media accounts?
Do I know how to manage my social media accounts and successfully engage with my followers?
Have I established a voice for my brand, one that is unique?
Do I know what kind of content to share and how often to share it?
Can I afford to outsource?
Can I afford not to?
TRIPLE CANOPY MEDIA CAN DO SOCIAL MEDIA FOR YOU
Trust us. Social media is a key element for marketing success. If you’re not sure how to do your own social media, reach out to Triple Canopy Media. At Triple Canopy Media we would be glad to show you how it’s done. Or do it for you.
Here’s what we do:
We assess your needs, determine which social media platforms will best serve them, and set up a regular process for sharing carefully crafted content about your business via selected platforms.
We create a cohesive strategy and measurement plan.
We integrate the plan across the organization.
Finally, we use metrics to monitor content marketing performance and ROI.
In a previous post, we here at Triple Canopy Media discussed the rising trend of users seeking out the products, services, and information they want to find through the use of voice search.
In short, as voice search apps and personal assistants become more commonplace, users will grow more comfortable using them, even in public. You’ll want to make sure that your company is prepared for this rising trend.
What steps can you take to make sure your website will still end up near the top of the search engine results even as voice search takes over? Read on!
Be Natural
How do you generally hold conversations with your (human) loved ones? It’s unlikely that you speak to them as though you’re a robot out of a science fiction movie from the 1950s. (But if you do this, contact us and we’ll take you out for a virtual lunch.)
If you’re proficient when speaking in a particular human language, you probably don’t have to think too hard when responding to basic questions. If someone asks you, “Where did you park the car?” you, without dwelling too much on the construction or sequence of the words in the sentence, will answer the questioner in the same conversational manner. Thus, you’re probably going to reply by saying something like, “I parked on a side street near the bakery,” rather than, “side street near bakery.”
In other words, you would respond in a way that sounds natural. That’s what we mean here at TCM when we say that your content writing should be conversational in style. And that’s more important now than ever before as voice search takes over and people speak to their devices as though they are (almost) human.
Consider constructing at least some of your chosen keywords as though they could have been lifted out of a sentence that one person would say to another person.
Speaking of speaking in sentences…
Longer keywords, longer tails
As TCM explained at length in an earlier examination of this aspect of SEO, the explosion in the use of voice search means that you’ll want to experiment with longer keywords in your website’s content. (And these longer keywords are often at or nearer to the end of the “long tail” on a search engine results graph.)
Sure, fewer people are going to search for a very long keyword compared with a shorter one, (thus, the position of those keywords on the long tail of the graph), but that means there’s less competition for ranking with regard to that keyword. That makes it easier for you to get near the top in the rankings.
And as people conduct more and more searches using voice search, they are going to be more likely to speak (that is, search) using longer keywords. Think about incorporating some nearly-full-sentence keywords into your content, if indeed your business is the best answer to the question that a user is likely to ask their device.
Be an authority
Keep in mind that people perform searches not just to find products and services they want to purchase, but also to get information. (Getting information, of course, is often research that people engage in when they’re planning to buy something—like what your business offers, for instance.)
Your website should be full of content that benefits users. It should be relevant and informative, in addition to being readable. Make yourself a repository, an authority. Compose your content with the goal of answering questions users are asking.
When writing with a set of keywords in mind, think about not only the questions people might ask, but the way in which they might ask them. Look at it this way: how are searchers trying to get the information they want and, most importantly, how are they framing their questions? The use of “question keywords” has been on the rise, in large part thanks to voice search. Composing your content with this in mind might produce real ranking benefits for your site.
Featured Snippets and FAQs
Another strategy? Try creating content for your site that might help you land in Google’s coveted Featured Snippet box. What’s a Featured Snippet? It’s the information in the box you see at the top of the page in the screenshot below.
The Featured Snippet in this screenshot of a question about Featured Snippets explains what a Featured Snippet is. In case you can’t quite make it out, the Featured Snippet is Google’s idea of the most direct, “best-fit” answer to a query. The Featured Snippet appears above the organic search results without displacing them, providing information while also showing a link to the page that is the source of this information.
Featured Snippets will take on increasing importance as voice search dominates searching methods in the future. It’s good to be listed above the organic search results on any page, obviously.
But if someone is using a virtual assistant designed to respond to voice commands and questions, (as opposed to a phone or a laptop that has additional interfaces), that device isn’t going to read off pages and pages of results in response to a query. Instead, it’s going to read out a short, best-fit answer from the Featured Snippet.
Thus, if you can write content that puts your website information in that spot, you’re going to be the only result for an increasing number of searchers.
You can’t order Google to make your content part of a Featured Snippet, obviously. But you can try to rank there through good, relevant content.
If your website has a Q&A section, for instance, the information you provide there can also go a long way in helping you to rank highly—maybe even in the Featured Snippet spot. Providing clear, concise answers in response to questions that users commonly ask their devices about your industry is a great way to get Google’s attention. And it’s well worth your time and energy.
In conclusion
Voice search is on the rise. And with the growth of personal assistant devices, that trend is not likely to reverse itself anytime soon. To stay competitive in searches, you should be composing good, relevant content, as always. Keeping voice search top-of-mind means making sure that the content you post is informative and answers common questions using the language people use when speaking to each other.
Find your voice, and others will find you by using theirs!
Facebook is flat. Instagram is down. Snapchat is on its way back. LinkedIn is seeing more traffic. Tik Tok is a rising star. It can be difficult to know which platform to use to meet our content marketing needs. So let’s take a look at the findings of a few studies that show the rise and fall of social media platforms.
Instagram: up or down?
Engagement rates on Instagram are dropping because of the prevalence of sponsored posts, according to a study that analytics firm InfluencerDB shared with Mobile Marketer.
However, sponsored posts tend to generate higher engagement than those that are not sponsored. InfluencerDB gives two reasons for that. One is that influencers tend to create better quality posts. The other is that Instagram’s algorithms give higher precedence to sponsored posts.
On the other hand, engagement rates for influencer content are declining as Instagram feeds get cluttered with sponsored posts, according to InfluencerDB.
On the upside, since Facebook-owned Instagram launched Instagram Stories in 2016, that function has overtaken Snapchat in overall usage.
Facebook: flat or losing?
According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted early this year, Facebook use – as well as that of other platforms — is flat among adults. However, Facebook still has around 2.4 billion users, and that number includes 69% of adults.
“The shares of adults who say they use Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter are each largely the same as in 2016, with only Instagram showing an uptick in use during this time period,” according to the survey.
But just last week, Facebook boasted that it is now up to 2.4 billion monthly actives and its daily active users figures continue to trend upward as well. Its most significant audience growth once again comes in the Asia Pacific region.
Other reports take a different view of Facebook’s numbers. Here are a few:
The latest Edison Research ‘Infinite Dial’ report indicated that the platform has lost around 15 million active users in the U.S. since 2017.
eMarketer estimates that Facebook lost around 2.1 million users under the age of 25 in 2018.
Older studies show that found that 42% of Facebook users had reduced their daily activity and engagement and that Facebook has continued to lose popularity with teens.
What about other platforms?
LinkedIn reported in April that it is seeing “record levels of engagement” among its 610 million users.
TikTok was the 4th most downloaded app in 2018. It was #3 position in the first quarter of this year, topping the chart for Apple non-game apps.
Twitter is the top platform for government leaders, but user growth is predicted at just 1%. However, the number of daily users has increased consistently since 2016, with 9% more people using it each day.
Growth may be slowing
The previously steady growth in the use of social platforms in the United States during the past decade appears to be slowing, says the Pew report cited above.
While Facebook and YouTube have the broadest reach among adults, Instagram and Snapchat have a strong following among young adults. These findings illustrate the age-, gender-, and race-related differences in platform use that the survey documented, information we shared earlier this year.
If you’re wondering which platforms to choose to meet your company’s goals and reach your intended target audience, Triple Canopy Media can help. We can assist you in setting your social media goals and metrics so you can actually move the needle forward for your business.
The world of SEO is constantly evolving. Naturally, your business and your business website will want (that is, need) to keep up with the ever-present changes in the online world in order to keep getting clicks, eyes, and the positive attention that come with them.
When it comes to SEO, many of the strategies that have worked in the past just won’t cut it in 2019. This statement isn’t limited only to tactics that might diplomatically be termed “underhanded.” No, it can also refer to the most basic elements of content creation.
That’s because people don’t search for answers to their problems in the same way that they did even just a few short years ago.
What’s changed? A lot of things, actually. One of the biggest ones? The advent of voice search.
A very short history of voice search usage stats
To many of us, finding answers using voice search has become almost second-nature. That means it’s surprising to some to find out that this method of looking for information online has only just recently become commonplace. But this searching method that started out small has grown tremendously in a relatively short period of time.
Google first added the voice search feature to Google Maps way back in the summer of 2008. It wasn’t until 2012 that the company launched a broader, more general version of voice search that went beyond the one used by the company’s web mapping service.
Although we might see ups and downs when measuring certain aspects of voice search trends from year to year, the overall arc is turning toward an increase. And you can see this in 2019 through the heavy competition various voice assistants are engaged in to try to win your business.
But regardless of whether you prefer to search using Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, or one of the multitude of others, the way that you conduct searches by voice is going to be very different from the way you conduct them when you have to type out your queries.
Why is the way people search using voice search so different?
If you’ve been a fan of Triple Canopy Media’s blog posts (and thanks, by the way), then you may already have a clue about how to answer this question.
Brevity likely shaped the old way you conducted an online search for a product you wanted to buy or a service that you needed to help address a business pain point. That’s a fancy way of saying that when most people have to type something out on a keyboard, they probably use fewer words than when they get to talk to a voice assistant.
People are more likely to speak in complete sentences when they use voice search as opposed to the fragments that they might hammer out using the old-school method of typing.
To help illustrate this, let’s say that I need some repair work done to the brakes on my car. I may very well use the same language to conduct that search whether I’m conducting it by voice or typing out my request. But I’m more likely to speak to my device the way that I would converse with a person.
Below are a couple of screenshots illustrating how that could make a difference in the search engine results pages that I will get.
Both of these searches were conducted using Google on a desktop and are tied to the ZIP code 44240.
The first one was a typed query: “brake repair near me.” That seems like a logical set of words to use, right?
In contrast, the second one was done using voice. Since I was speaking, it seemed more natural to ask a question in the form of a full sentence. In this case, I went with, “where can I get my brakes fixed [?]”
As you can see, these two queries produced a different set of results. If your auto repair shop specializes in brake repair, obviously you want to be as close to the top as you can get in both of these searches.
But as a business owner, one of your main takeaways should be that the importance of the number one spot in the voice search query is going to grow exponentially as people use this technology more and more to find solutions to their problems online.
Can my business get found by users performing voice search queries?
We’re glad you asked!
The answer is yes! But as always, getting found involves content. It’s a good thing that Triple Canopy Media knows a thing or two about content strategy!
Getting found when it comes to voice search starts with getting found to begin with.
When it comes to content, your company’s website should have lots of it. But it’s not just about content volume. You also need to make sure, of course, that the writing on your website consists of high-quality content.
Your blog posts should cover topics that are relevant to what your business does. The content on your company website should illuminate some aspect of your industry. Inform your audience, answer questions that readers are asking, and do it all in a readable, engaging, and conversational manner.
To sum up: The writing on your site ought to provide readers with value. That will help keep their eyes on the page once they find you, and that should get them to come back in the future.
In a follow-up post, we’ll discuss some of the step-by-step approaches you can take to make sure your content will get the attention you want from voice search browsers as the voice search revolution continues.
And, as always, feel free to contact us here at Triple Canopy Media for all of your SEO-related queries. We want you to get found, so find us!
