In our last blog, we introduced you to Google Analytics, a free service from Google that allows you to measure who visits your website and how they interact with it. Once you have a basic understanding of Google Analytics, the next step is to use the data you receive from it, to identify trends, and adjust where necessary. Learn about how to boost your online presence with analytics using both paid and organic tactics that draw the right visitors to your site, social channels and, ultimately, to patronize your business. 

Your business’ online presence can be measured in a few different ways, but ultimately, it boils down to how many people on the internet find your website or other channels and how much they interact with them. Google Analytics gives you empirical data about what users do on your site and who they are (i.e., demographics, type of technology, etc.). 

Attracting the Visitors You Want 

You know who your target customers are. If you notice on Google Analytics that you’re pulling in visitors that match your target customer profile, you can see which pages they’re visiting most frequently, which pages draw them in, then translate what works on those pages across your site and social platforms. If you’re not pulling in customers who meet your customer profile, you can try changing content and choosing different keywords to better reach your ideal audience. You may also want to try a paid search campaign to ensure you’re highly visible when those users search for your product or service. If you continue to get visitors that you weren’t expecting, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. There may be opportunity to turn that traffic into business, either for yourself or a referral partner.  

You may want to evaluate who your target customers are and possibly expand your marketing to include other key groups. Everyone who visits your website is valuable, even if they aren’t ready to make a purchase or contact you just yet. Blogs and other informational pages are a great way to increase visitors to your site and build trust, though not all of them will result in ROI. Remember: the more visitors who trust your site for information, the more Google will respect your site, improve its search ranking, and increase the likelihood you’ll be seen by more potential customers. 

Translating Empirical Data into SEO Finesse 

By using search engine optimization techniques on your site, you can improve your ranking on search engine results pages (SERP). The higher you can get your website on the SERPs, the better chance you have to hook searchers and bring them to your site. One of the most valuable components of Google Analytics is the organic keyword search results, which shows you which existing keywords on your site are drawing visitors regularly. You must make sure to connect your website to Google’s Search Console in order to obtain some of this data, as not all will be available. Sometimes, the keywords you thought might be popular are too competitive or simply not getting as much traction as you’d like, so adjustments must be made to your strategy. When you identify those keywords that are performing well, you can create more content to better serve those queries which will in turn add more value to the users on your website. 

Making and Evaluating Goals 

Once users are on your site, it’s important that you have set goals for what you would like them to do. If you place a call to action button asking visitors to click and submit their information to join a mailing list, you need to follow “conversions” on Google Analytics to see how many people follow through with that task. If you’re getting a lot of visitors, but few clicks and submissions, you can try some different tactics. Maybe the button is in the wrong place. Maybe the message is wrong. By trying different options, you can see which are more motivating to your visitors. 

If you’re not sure you have the time to dedicate to boost your online presence with analytics, you’re not alone. Owning and/or managing a business is more than a full-time job, and using Google Analytics to improve web presence takes a lot of time. Instead of investing this time or hiring an employee to do so, many small and medium business owners choose to work with an online marketing specialist or team to help promote their web presence. Whether you’re dedicated to becoming an analytics pro or plan to use a marketing professional, good luck and be patient! 

The post Boost Your Online Presence with Analytics appeared first on 220 Marketing Group.

A strong and unified social media presence is an important part of any modern business’ digital strategy. Unless you’re a digital marketing pro, you may be unclear where to begin when it comes to creating a comprehensive and aligned social strategy. In this week’s blog, we’ll discuss the social media audit, which can diagnose any problematic or disjointed areas across all of your social channels and help you create a plan of attack to fix them. As part of a comprehensive online strategy, your social media channels are an undeniably important part of your business’ brand.  

In the digital world, there are three types of media channels: owned, paid and earned. Your business’ social channels are typically considered “owned” media, because you control the content that’s released through them. If you’ve ever participated in any paid social campaigns, you’ll need to ensure that those campaigns are also included in your audit. For the purposes of this blog, we’ll talk about metrics that relate to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, though the basic principles relate to most other channels as well. 

Identify Accounts and Naming Uniformity 

One of the first steps in your audit is to analyze how uniform your brand is across all social channels. You want to identify what name, address, contact info and “handle” (your username) are used on each channel and if you’re registered on each as a business or personal account. If this information isn’t exactly the same on each, it should be. While you may use certain social channels more – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are commonly among the top three business friendly outlets – you will also need to look at any stray accounts you may have forgotten or neglected over the years. Whether you’re using them or not, these accounts are still visible to potential clients online so you’ll need to determine whether you want to start maintaining and monitoring them or delete ones you don’t use. If there are “fake” accounts using your name on a channel, you can contact the network to dispute the account so there’s no confusion when people search for your business online. This is also a great time to take note of any social networks you’d like to explore using in the future. 

Measure Engagement 

The second important leg of your audit is to make a list of traditional metrics that speak to how users interact with – or ignore – the content you release.  You’ll want to gather the following data either manually or using analytical tools made specifically for social media: 

• Number of Followers

• Number of Likes 
• Number of Shares 
• Number of Comments 

By cross analyzing this information, you can identify which posts have performed the best and received the most positive interactions. You’ll also identify content that may have received minimal or negative interactions – such as negative comments – so you can avoid mimicking this type of content in the future. An even further analysis can show what types of media are successful, and on which channel. Videos, for example, may garner a lot of engagement on your Facebook page, while links to relevant articles may be a huge success on LinkedIn. 

Identify Your Audience 

Many social networks, like Twitter, offer some basic audience analytics for business accounts. There are also several affordable analytics tools that can provide a high-level view of your audience. The following are great pieces of information to understand about your audience: 

• Age 
• Gender 
• Language 
• Interests 

• Technology (mobile, desktop, or tablet) 

If your social media audience isn’t what you expected, you can use that information to adjust your content to reach a different target. Additionally, you may identify a segment of readers you hadn’t previously considered who may be worth your marketing efforts. 

Create New Objectives 

It’s important to create tangible goals for your social media strategy. You can set objectives to improve engagement and to drive clients toward other goals, such as visiting your website. With the right combination of website analytics and social media links, you can measure which clients complete a goal on your site, such as making a purchase or signing up for an email list. Month over month, you can analyze what percentage of readers are completing your goals and adjust your strategy as needed. If you’re engaging in any paid social media ads, you will want to establish measurable goals like these, rather than simply hoping for improved engagement. That way you can compare the value of your monetary and labor investment with the increase in business. 

Create a Plan to Achieve Your Goals 

A targeted social media strategy allows you to keep in constant contact with existing and potential clients. A social media audit    will help measure your existing performance and identify any red flags that require immediate   attention. It can also help you better understand your audience, create content for each network   and set measurable goals. A digital marketing specialist can help you with a social media audit   and other pillars of digital marketing so you can make the most of your interactions with your   audience. 

Written by Kyle O.

The post Get a Grip on Your Social Channels with a Social Media Audit appeared first on 220 Marketing Group.

Like any aspect of building your business, creating a strong and visible online presence requires an informed and flexible strategy. The content you create online is neither effective or profitable when you don’t reach the right audience: customers. Content distribution is the field of online marketing that revolves around the way you distribute content through different paid, earned and owned platforms. It’s important that you employ each of these categories, using different channels to reach different segments of your audience where they are. 

Just as you wouldn’t rely on a single marketing effort in the physical world – like putting all of your marketing spend into a single ad on a single radio station – you don’t want to silo your efforts online. Here, we’ll discuss the different content distribution portals that, working together, can create a strong presence online.  

Content distribution is an umbrella term for all the ways that you deliver content online to mass audiences. There are all types of content – from blogs to informative web pages, images to advertisements. The way you disseminate these various messages to your clients is grouped based on where the content lives and if you’ve paid to distribute it or increase its visibility or not. 

Owned Media 

Owned media lives on a website, blog, or social media account that belongs to your business. You own your website and/or blog and may also have handles (like @220Marketing) on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other channels. 

Social Media 

Social media is a key component of content distribution that are relatively affordable. Creating a Facebook account for your business, for example, is completely free. You can communicate through this and other social media accounts with your clients and get a good gauge on how engaged they are with your posts (i.e., how many times posts receive likes or comments). When a client asks a question or posts a comment on your business’s social account, you can create individualized responses, all for free. Later, we’ll discuss paid ways you can use social media. 

Email Marketing 

Email marketing was one of the first types of digital content distribution, and today it remains a popular option because it’s easily tracked and can be personalized for different segments of your readers. Companies use email marketing to share specials and sales, to drive traffic to their websites, and create brand familiarity among potential and existing clients. 

Website Content 

Over time, clients will begin to recognize your online presence through your owned media channels. Google and other search engines likewise observe and evaluate your public content as they crawl (scan through) owned media. When it comes to your website, you can improve the way that search engines read and classify your site by using search engine optimization (SEO), which includes strategic placement of keywords and adding “meta data” on the back end of your site. By actively and consistently releasing quality content through these channels, you can improve your ranking and visibility on SERPs (search engine results pages). 

You can maintain a great deal of control over the content you release through owned media. Releasing content through these channels is typically very affordable or even free. Maintaining a domain name and website can cost just a few hundred dollars a year, while social media channels are typically free, even for businesses. 

Earned Media 

Earned media describes any type of content distribution that occurs when other people online contribute to or share your content. If a customer leaves a Yelp review about your business, for example, that content becomes part of the web of information about your business that exists online. When a review, comment, tagged Instagram picture or other piece of content is positive, that can improve your reputation online. It may also improve your ranking on SERPs when a search engine  recognizes that there’s buzz about your business online. Links are another type of earned media in which another website, blog or person hyperlinks to your website or tags your business. This sets you up as a source of information, which can improve visibility and drive traffic. 

When its favorable, earned media can be a huge boost for your business. Much like word-of-mouth, digital earned media creates reputation and buzz online. It serves as a reflection of your interactions with your customers. It is important to note that bad reviews or buzz online can similarly damage your online presence. 

Paid Media 

Paid media, as its name implies, is a way to reach customers by leveraging pay channels to distribute your content. Paid channels include advertisements, pay-per-click advertising on SERPs (which bring up your business as a top result when certain keywords are searched), and sponsorships. Each of these methods can be very helpful in improving visibility online, usually in coordination with earned and owned media efforts. You can use paid media to drive traffic to your website, to a coupon page you’ve created for a special promotion, or to any other piece of content for which you’d like to improve visibility. 

While creating a business page on most social media applications is free, you also have the opportunity to build visibility through paid campaigns. These campaigns allow you to improve visibility among targeted consumers based on their demographics and activity. With this information, you can schedule posts and ads to reach your target demographics at the right time and even track leads. 

Many businesses choose to work with a marketing professional to create the right combination of paid media efforts. You’ll want to target any paid media to target customers in a specific area or demographic, without paying for visibility in front of people who aren’t likely to ever patronize your business. A marketing specialist can create a campaign using online tools like Google AdWords that will help you get the biggest bang for your buck. 

Content Distribution for Long-term Success 

One of the most important rules to take away from your efforts in content distribution is to create quality content that your target audience finds valuable. A content marketing specialist can help you create a plan of attack to improve your online presence using this quality content. Ultimately, you can build the right buzz about your company through well-planned content distribution and turn it into real-world business success! 

The post Becoming a Pro at Content Distribution appeared first on 220 Marketing Group.

Whether you’re an online marketing pro or have just begun to learn about the many ways an internet presence can help grow your business, blogging is a proven tactic to consider. Blogs are pieces of original content written by experts in a given field about a certain topic and published online for public consumption. Blogging for your business is a way to establish yourself as a thought leader in your trade to local clients and interested people across the world. Great blog content with search-engine optimization (SEO) also improves the way Google and other search engines view your site, which in turn boosts your visibility to potential customers. Developing a blogging strategy, adhering to a schedule, and delivering customized, SEO-rich content can create excitement and growth for your company.

What Are the Key Elements of a Strong Blog?

There are a several characteristics that make a blog stand out among the endless content on the internet and, most importantly, translate that interest into real returns for your business.

Content is King

First, a great blog will have custom-written content. Google and other search engines give negative marks to websites with duplicate or “canned” blog content. Whether you write your blogs yourself or hire a company to write them for you, it’s important that they write about fresh, interesting ideas or write about common themes in your world of business in a fresh, new way.

Improve Your Standing with Search Engines

Search engines are an increasingly popular way for clients of all ages to find products and services in their local area. Online searchers rarely look past the first one or two pages of a search engine results page (SERP). Quality blogs written using SEO best practices will incorporate key words, elements and locations that help search engines recognize your content as valuable and improve its ranking on SERPs. The more valuable pages of content on your site – including blogs – the more influence it has and the higher your site will rank in general.

Answer Your Clients’ Questions

As a leader in your respective market, you want to be a resource and thought leader among would-be clients. Your blog posts can not only improve your visibility for clients looking for products and services; they can give them answers and improve your value in their eyes. Your blogs should feature concise, easily digestible content that helps clients see you as an expert and friend in an area where they have little experience. When clients read content that they can understand and relate to, they’re more likely to trust your expertise when it comes time to use your service or product.

A Digital Presence to Create Real Returns

A forward-thinking digital marketing strategy that incorporates SEO-optimized blog posts, rich with expert insight for your clients, can boost your online presence and translate to tangible ROI. A strong digital presence provides a gateway for new clients, a pathway that can be easily tracked using analytics tools available online. Blogging is a valuable opportunity to generate quality site traffic that no business should pass up.

The post Driving Interest in the Digital Age: Blogging for Your Business appeared first on 220 Marketing Group.

1. Email and Social Media

Because most lead generation campaigns collect email addresses, email campaigns are one of the strongest tools available to any person running a marketing campaign. With new developments, it is now

possible to build upon the already powerful database with email addresses, and reach even more potential clients than those on your list. This can be done through Social Media.

Adding Social Media share icons to the emails that you are already sending out will help promote the work you are doing on your social media sites with minimal effort. Adding icons for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc to your email footer will provide a way for people to join your networks with the click of the button. Additionally, it’s crucial to make sure you are advertising all of your social media sites on anything that contains your business name. Add a “join our community” bar on your website or other social media sites.

2. Email and Blogging/Social Media/PPC

All of the time that you spent writing that amazing new eBook will go to waste if no one reads it. Posting an excerpt from the book with a call to action to download the full book on the same day you are