SEO – Mobile – Web – Social Media –
These are technologies and concepts that need to be utilized in everyday business life. Just because you have been doing the same thing for the past dozen years does not mean it will work for the next dozen years. You have a story to tell and SEO, Mobile, Web and Social Media are the concepts and technology that can help you bring life back to your story.
SEO rules changes every so often by the search engines, and it is not to keep us on our toes. They are making the changes to better serve people and their search habits. The reason they change is because people change and evolve how they search for things. If you do not stay up with the changes, you will begin to slip away into the bottom of the world of search results. If you have enjoyed the good fortune of being on top, you must adapt to stay on top. Search engines do not make SEO a secret, they publish the rules and formulae and give you the tools that you need to get the job done. If you find yourself slipping and you haven’t done anything new, review, research and implement. Find someone you trust and can get it done.
Mobile – the technology of the future. How many of you have a smart phone, tablet or laptop? These devices need to be supported more than before. Your websites need to be more responsive and adapt to the technologies. Pay attention to how your websites will look on various devices. Know what your audience is using to view your website ( Google Analytics tracks this ). If your audience is using tablets and phones to view your site, you may want to scale back on the external images and jQuery libraries that you are using in order to save data usage. In some cases ( not all ), it may be in your company’s best interest to think about creating their own application for mobile devices. In some case a mobile application may streamline an online catalogue usage, enhance communications or simply bring another dimension to your overall business. Plan it. Test it. Use it. Needs to be done proper from the start, but it can really inject some energy into your company’s story.
Web – If you do not have a website; you should probably think about getting one. If you have not updated your website in years; you should. A website tells your story and has the potential of reaching a broad audience. If your website is old and stale, what does that say about your business? If your website is bulky, it will have trouble being viewed on a mobile device and eat up people’s data plans. It is your story to tell.
Social Media – A love hate relationship of business owners. They love the idea of social media, but they do not want to invest in it because it takes too much time and they do not see immediate return. Here is a simple test. If you rely on print media or banners on your website, spend a month doing the same campaign in social media. During that month, measure your results and see which is more effective. I am not saying social media is going to be more effective always, but it is a nice compliment to what you are probably already doing. What social media does is allows you to engage your customers and community. It allows you to get your ideas, concepts, new products out to the market place faster. Recently I have asked the marketing team I work with to track their traditional marketing and their social media marketing separately so we can see and measure the results. If the social media marketing is planned properly, the traction is often faster – it is like starting your marketing campaign with a sprint. It is worth the investment and it can be a full time job depending on your engagement requirements, but it can be as simple as planning out some well worded tweets for a couple of days or week.
Cha-Cha-Changes are in the air – don’t be a stick in the mud! These are your stories to tell and these are the technologies that can help you push your story.
