3 Steps to Reel In Customers from Social Media Marketing

In this article, I'll explain as I walk through the 3 steps to social media marketing success.  You'll see that one step alone doesn't do much for your business.  You need all three working together.

1. Build Your Audience

This should be obvious, but social media relies on first building an audience.  If you don't have an audience then no one is going to read your posts.

When you're first starting out and you don't have an audience, it's like fishing in a pond or a section of a pond that has no fish.  It doesn't matter if you're the best fisherman using the best gear, you're not going to catch any fish!

That means you need to adjust your goals in the early stages of social media marketing.  If you expect to drive sales right away, then you're going to be disappointed.  Instead, focus on tactics to build your target audience first.

2. Engage Your Audience

Now we get to the true secret behind the Banjo minnow.  When you watch the training video, you learn how to cast and reel in the lure to give it the lifelike action described in the commercial.  Again, if you just cast and reel in the lure normally, then the Banjo minnow does not work!  I've tested both ways. 

You must use the technique in the video.

The reason why the lure works is because the action engages the fish -- it catches the fish's attention.  That's the secret to fishing right there.  You need to use a lure combined with the correct action to get a fish to bite.

The same thing is true with social media.  You must engage your audience with the right content, at the right frequency, to maintain the attention of your target market.

3. Convert Your Audience

Finally, we get to the step we all tend to focus on: conversion.  As I mentioned earlier in step 1, it's not realistic to expect conversions when you're just starting out with social media and you do not yet have an audience.  It's also not realistic to expect conversions if you are not yet engaging with your audience as explained in step 2 above.  As you can see, the order of these steps matters greatly.

When you're fishing, you need to first pick a spot where you know there are fish.  That's step 1.  Then the next step is to find the right lure and action that engages the fish you're targeting.  In my case, the Banjo minnow is perfect for catching pickerel!  The final step is to reel in the fish.  That's the conversion step. It's also the part of fishing where you have the most fun.  Everything up until the reeling in is basically hard work and trial and error to find the most engaging lure and action.

In other words, focus on finding the right types of content (informational, educational, inspirational, entertaining) for your social media, and then step 3 will get a whole lot easier (and more fun).

Still not active on social media? 3 Reasons to Invest in Social Media

If you’re skeptical about social media, you’re not alone. I was actually very skeptical for a long time. But now I truly believe that every business should be active on social media. And here’s why...

3 Reasons to Invest in Social Media

1. To Boost Your SEO.

Social media is a growing factor in Google’s ranking algorithm.  If you're not active on social media, prepare to see your more "social" competitors climb above you in Google in the months and years to come. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you...)

2. To Control Your Online Reputation.

More and more customers are checking out businesses on social media sites and reading reviews before deciding whether or not to do business with a particular company.  Staying active on social media is one of the best ways to cultivate a positive online reputation (so you attract more customers).

3. To Strengthen Customer Relationships.

Nothing is more valuable in your business than your customer relationships. And social media is one of the best ways to build stronger relationships with prospects and customers, so you close more initial sales, get more repeat sales, and generate more referrals.

Too busy to manage your social media?  

Let us manage it for you. 

Why Duplicate Content Is a Problem (& How to Fix It)

 In this article, I’ll review what we covered in the training and go into a little more detail so make sure your website isn’t suffering in the search results due to duplicate content issues.

Why Is Duplicate Content a Problem?

First, let’s address the question why is duplicate content a problem with SEO? Once you understand the problem from Google’s perspective, then I promise this will all make a whole heck of a lot more sense.

I’ll use an example that I’m sure we all can relate to.  Let’s say you just finished a book and you want to find a new one to read.  You send a quick email to your friends (or post to Facebook) asking them for suggestions and then you anxiously await their replies.

In this example, the best possible outcome is to get several different book titles that you can review and decide which one to read.  The worst possible outcome would be to get the same exact book title from all of your friends and upon reviewing that title decide it’s not for you.  In other words, you want to get a variety of different options in order to maximize the chances that you’ll find a book that fits your criteria.

This is similar to Google’s approach to their search results page.  Google knows if they give their searchers 10 webpages that are nearly identical, then that severely hurts their chances of providing the searcher with the information that fits her criteria.  How frustrating would it be to click on all 10 webpages in the search results only to find the same information?

To combat this problem, Google’s algorithm prevents duplicate pages from showing up for the same search phrases.  That means, if your page is nearly identical to another webpage online (either on your site or on another website), then only one of those pages will rank in Google.

How to Check for Duplicate Content

There are a lot of tools out there to check for duplicate content.

The two I recommend are:

1. Siteliner.com (free)
2. Copyscape.com (paid)

In both tools, you copy/paste your website URL into the search bar and click “Go” to run a duplicate content check.  In many cases, you will find some duplicate content so now let’s talk about how to fix it.

How to Fix Duplicate Content

At this point I know you’re hoping I’m going to give you the one, quick-and-easy, push-button solution. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy and the correct solution depends on your situation.  Here are some possible solutions to help you make the best choice:

1. 301 Redirect.  A 301 redirect would automatically forward people from one duplicate page to the other.  By 301 redirecting, you effectively eliminate the duplicate content because now there is only 1 page that can be accessed online. 
2. No Index.  You can add <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” /> to one of the duplicate pages to tell all search engines you do not want the page included in their index.  In this case, you’re not redirecting the traffic; You’re simply removing one of the pages from being considered in the search results. 
3. Rel=canonical. Finally, a third option is to use the rel=canonical tag on your duplicate pages.  This tag tells search engines which URL of your duplicate pages should be included in the search results.  The code to add is <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/the-url-you-want-to-rank-in-Google.html” />.

As you can see, all 3 options are fairly technical so I recommend talking with your web developer to see which one makes the most sense for your website.

Are There Other Issues Preventing You From Ranking In Google?

Duplicate content is just one of many issues that could be hurting your rankings in Google.  If you think there may be other problems with your website, then you need to conduct an SEO audit.