Tag Archive: social media

1. 5 Ways to Improve Your Digital Presence in the Time of COVID-19

   With many businesses operating at less than full capacity due to the coronavirus, it’s more important than ever to have a virtual presence that makes it clear that you’re open for business. In addition, due to an increase in people working from home and the stay at home orders, businesses may find that their audience is spending more time online. With that in mind, it’s not too late to do a quick check over a few areas of your site to make sure you’re ready for an influx in visitors.

   1. Site Performance

   With more people staying connected from their home internet or cell phone data, site speed remains an important factor to keep visitors on your site longer. If site visitors have to wait too long for a page to load, they may leave and try to find the information they were looking for somewhere else. Site speed problems frequently start with the hosting service you purchase, which often means “you get what you pay for.” Providers that boast payment plans of just a few dollars a month are often where site speed and downtime can be an issue. Within the site content itself, excessive CSS loads, Javascript, and large photos and videos can cause load times to increase dramatically compared to lighter page content. Using a service like Google’s PageSpeed Insights can help you see what might be bogging down your site, and provide tips on how to improve it.
   
   2. Content Review

   Hopefully content marketing has been a long time strategy of your business. If it hasn’t, or if it’s been a while since you last gave your content a refresh, now is the time to do so. A good place to start is simply to make sure that your content speaks to your message at a basic level, and on a level that web crawlers will be able to connect the two. On each page, you’ll typically want around 300 words minimum, touching upon relevant keywords where possible. However, don’t sacrifice quality just to fill up space–ultimately your audience is customers, not just the search algorithm. Beyond this, check SEO-specific settings like your title tags, meta description, image alt-tags, and make sure your links are still working. While it’s difficult to have “perfect” SEO, chipping away at each of these factors can make a huge difference in the visibility of each of your pages.
   
   3. Shopping Experience

   Whether you’ve had to recently switch your business model to online sales, or you’ve been using ecommerce for a while, it’s important to make sure each customer’s experience is quick and painless. Go through the checkout process yourself on desktop and mobile to make sure there is little effort required to make a purchase. Also, look to your analytics and see where people are dropping off in the checkout process. If your shoppers are leaving items in their cart without buying, consider using a remarketing campaign to re-engage them as they browse the web and hopefully bring them back to complete their purchase.
   
   4. Business Listings

   Keeping your website up to date with any changes to your business’ hours, product availability, and other operational changes is essential, but that is not the only place this information should be updated. Many users find information about a business on other sites, such as Facebook, Google My Business, and Yellow Pages. If your information is outdated there, you may be losing potential business. Most listing sites allow you to claim your business in order to login and make updates to your page, however sometimes this can be a time consuming process — especially with the number of listing sites that are out there! A good strategy is to focus on some of the top sites where you regularly receive reviews, or where your customers are most active. However, if you want to make sure you cover your bases, Pulse offers a listing service that allows you to claim dozens of listing sites (and potential customers!).
   
   5. Social Media Integration

   For some businesses, it may be more natural to keep your social media presence active while your website stays relatively the same. However, it’s important not to let some of that great information go unnoticed for users who only visit your website. Some social media posts and updates may be more difficult to share on your site unless you’re keeping a blog. To make sure site visitors can see and engage with this information, make sure your site links to your social media profiles, or — better yet — utilize a social media feed plugin to bring your social posts and website together. There are several free and paid versions out there to help you show the content you want from your favorite social platform.

   Although it might take a little time to go through this list, the good news is that all of these suggestions will be helpful now and in the future when business operations return to normal. If you need additional help or insights into your site performance, take advantage of the free website audit we are offering to show potential areas for improvement including some of those listed above. As always, if you’re in need of additional marketing assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact the Pulse team!

2. Social Media Shift and How your Brand will Survive

   Since the rise of social media in the early 2000s, threats to our privacy have increased — and it’s not completely our fault. According to Pew Research Center, 91% of Americans ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that they’ve lost control of how personal information is collected and used on social media. Such public platforms are useful for businesses that use social media as an outlet for marketing (as they should be!), so how can we utilize these platforms while keeping privacy in mind?

3. How to Best Respond to Posts and Comments Online

   When it comes to managing a brand’s online presence, there is no question that responding to comments and reviews is an important element, no matter the platform or industry. This includes replying to comments on social media, customer review sites (such as Yelp), and your blog, if you have one. When done well, social interaction with your brand can go a long way towards managing and developing valuable customer relationships.

4. 5 Reasons Why You Should Listen to Your Customers Online

   Today’s digital world provides a variety of forums for people to express their opinions. Along with online review sites like Yelp, your customers are talking with their friends about you on social media. If you’re not listening to these conversations, you should be. They could help you to better serve your customers in the future.

5. 3 Ways to Use Snapchat as Part of Your Marketing Strategy

   Snapchat now has over 100 million monthly active users viewing an average of 5 billion videos per day. It may not seem like a likely social network for brands to include in their social media marketing strategy, but if your target audience includes millennials, Snapchat provides a significant opportunity to connect with this age group with 63% using this platform.

6. 5 Steps to Market Your Business on Pinterest

   If your target audience is women and you’re not on Pinterest, you’re doing your brand a big disfavor. According to eMarketer, 85% of Pinterest’s 100 million active users are female. With its combination of social media platform and search engine abilities, and recent kick-off of “Promoted Pins,” Pinterest is poised to become a respected major player in the world of social media. So, why do people use Pinterest? To plan for the future. Do you want to be a part of your customers’ future plans?

7. 8 Ways to Engage Your Audience on YouTube

   YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, processing 3 billion searches each month. By creating an active YouTube channel, you reach an eager, and younger, audience and your business also stands to gain more influence on Google. If you’re not making use of YouTube in your marketing, it’s time to embrace it and its billion users. Comments on YouTube are tied to Google+, which means creating and posting content on YouTube increases your visibility and credibility with Google’s search engine, if you can engage your audience.

8. 6 Tips to Help You Better Network on Twitter

   When it comes to engagement, networking is still your most powerful tool, even in today’s digital world. Social media is changing the way we network and has given us more options than we ever had before. You may not think of it this way, but Twitter is a valuable networking tool. Once you’ve mastered the art of tweeting, start networking. Your fellow Twitter users will put more value on what you have to say if they know who you are – so reach out!

9. How to Get the Most Bang for Your Buck on Twitter Advertising

   Most social media platforms have some form of paid advertising, including Twitter. Twitter’s paid advertising tools will help create further reach and greater impact within your audience. Paying for visibility will ensure that your content will be shared and will give you a much greater chance to generate traffic to your website.

   Here are 4 tools that Twitter offers to help you get the most for your advertising dollars: