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February 4, 2015 by Silke Jager 3 Comments

3 Ways To Grow Your Small Business With LinkedIn

If you have been searching for a new job in the past ten years, then you are probably familiar with LinkedIn. What you might not know is that LinkedIn, the world’s largest network for professionals, is more than just a place for job seekers or for finding new employees. It is also a place for small business owners to share stories and helpful tips, and to gain new customers.

How to grow a business using LinkedIn

LinkedIn has around 332 million members with 2 new members joining every second. That’s a huge number of professionals that might be looking to connect with you or are looking for what you have to offer. Bill Belew, a social media consultant stated the law of the Search Engine Universe in a recent LinkedIn post “If you want people to find you online …. give them more ‘stuff’ to find.”

Three ways you can grow your small business with LinkedIn:

  1. Create an attention grabbing Profile
  2. Join Groups to interact
  3. Publish Posts to spread the word

Create Profile:

Your profile is usually the first thing people will see, so make it the best it can be. Don’t just focus on your own achievements, but include your company’s information. Describe what your business can do for others and what your customers and clients can expect from you, now and in the future.

  • Use a professional-looking head shot that will allow people to recognize you
  • Craft a headline that is catchy and describes what you do and who you serve, don’t just name your job title
  • Add the industry you work in to your profile
  • Write a summary that includes your keywords and is filled with the information your target audience is looking for
  • Include relevant images, YouTube videos, blog articles or any other media that gives credibility about who you are and what you do

Join Groups:

It’s a good idea to find and join several groups to contribute your content and to make further connections. Two to three relevant groups are enough in most cases. Look for groups with members who are prospective clients in your industry or create your own one group, then interact with them by leaving comments. You can also share content such as articles, how-to’s, guides, info-graphics and blog posts that feature subjects relevant to the group. Here are a few general guidelines to keep in mind:

  • Read the group rules, if applicable, and post appropriately
  • Self promotional posts should always go under the “promotions” tab
  • Some groups will allow you to promote a free event
  • If you have started a discussion, stay involved in the thread and answer any questions/comments promptly
  • Avoid making overly negative comments or criticisms
  • This is a business platform so it’s a good idea not to mention politics or religion
  • Don’t promote your own group in someone’s else group – it’s bad form

Publish Posts:

Publishing posts is another great way to get noticed and helps to spread the word about your company. Creating blog posts on LinkedIn has become very easy. To get started simply go to your profile and click on the little pencil in your ‘Share an update…’ box, add an image and start writing.

Posting regular blog updates a couple of times a month is a great way to build a following and to get your message in front of potential clients or customers. You could write about interesting developments within your company, share customer feedback or answer frequently asked questions.

You don’t have to be a professional writer or even need to visit this networking platform more than once a week.

Darren Rowse from ProBlogger says, “Aim to inform, inspire and interact!” If you can do that on a regular basis you will be able to grow your small business on LinkedIn in no time.

Silke from Jager Web DesignThis guest article was brought to you by Silke Jager.
Silke builds websites for her clients with content management systems like WordPress. She has several blogs she updates on a regular basis, among them is the Jager Web Design Blog, where she shares small business marketing ideas, SEO, web design & craft marketing solutions!

Connect with Silke on LinkedIn here.

Filed Under: Articles, Social Media Tagged With: marketing, social media

January 19, 2015 by Eric Rowen Leave a Comment

Why You Need to Build An Email List – Like..Yesterday!

Why-need-an-email-listIf you’re like me, you use your various social media channels for your business. You might use a Facebook Page, Linkedin, and Google+ to promote your latest blog post (wait your not blogging ? – you need to read this) or to announce a new product or a sale item. Furthermore it goes without saying that you use your website as well.

You may also be aware that you are using someone else’s “property” in doing so. Even though these platforms are free they are not ultimately controlled by you. The social media owners decide who your posting goes to, when, and even how it looks.

As an example.. those that have been using facebook pages for a period of time may have noticed that due to facebooks policy changes over the years that now your post only reaches about 10% of your fans. That can result in a pretty poor conversion rate.

To be clear, I’m not bashing any particular platform I just want to remind you that there are pros and cons to each social media channel and that they are controlled and owned by someone else.

Renting Days

little-houseIt reminds me of the days when I rented an apartment. I could have spent thousands renovating, painting, and fixing up an apartment but when I eventually moved all those improvements would have to be left behind. I almost think of social media channels in a similar manner. I can spend hours and hours crafting perfect social media channels but then the owners can decide to make an algorithm change and poof! my work is suddenly changed/altered etc.

BUT what if I spent all that time and energy on developing my fans/subscribers on my terms.

What I suggest to website owners is that instead of spending hours and hours (and remember time is money) solely on their social media channels that their time is better spent creating and building an email list for their business.

Conversions

A study done in 2013 showed that email marketing converted 4.5 times better than social media! Let me say that again .. 4.5 times more conversions that social media!

  • Email is more likely to be seen than social media messages
  • There are over 3 times as many email accounts as there are Facebook and Twitter accounts combined.
  • Conversion rate is much higher than social media channels
  • Email goes directly to the individual you want – its more personal.

In Summary

Using social media channels are ok to use for promotion but you can get far larger reach and higher conversion rates if you use email marketing. Email allows you to start establishing a more personal relationship with your readers and subscribers and has a higher ROI for your marketing efforts.

Many of my clients are pretty busy running their business’s and choose to have someone else do this for them. Feel free to contact us if you are interested in hiring Silver 6 Media to get your email list up and running. 

 

Filed Under: Articles, Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized Tagged With: conversions, email marketing, list

November 17, 2014 by Eric Rowen Leave a Comment

Slides – Increase Your Website Traffic

How To Increase Your Website Traffic – Presentation Slides from November 17, 2014 Event.

Filed Under: Articles, Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized

July 3, 2014 by Eric Rowen Leave a Comment

Be Strategic About Using Your Social Media.

Website Strategic Social Media Head Often I meet with clients looking for a new website or a re-designed one. When the topic of social media integration with their website comes up, clients say “Oh yea, for sure I want that, the more places we can post our content the better”. On the surface it seems like a reasonable approach.

But is it really? I advise my clients to strongly consider having a blog page. You don’t even need to call it a “Blog”, you can call it “Articles” or “Helpful Hints & Tips” etc. The blog page is a dedicated page where content will be updated on a regular basis.

What kind of content? I suggest content that helps your customers solve their problems. For example, think of the top three questions you are ALWAYS getting from your customers. You might instantly have three separate articles you can write. Sell leather jackets? Don’t people ask – How do I maintain my new jacket? Do I have to put some kind of protective coating on it and how often?. Repair cars? Do people ask “How long does it take to change a fan-belt?” You get the idea.

So, what does this new blog page have to do with Social Media? Lets say you have created a fantastic article on “How to maintain the look of your new leather jacket” and you posted it to your new Blog page. Now the shotgun approach says – let’s post this article to all our social media channels too.

Lets see how that would look.. Someone is on your facebook fan page and reads your article on facebook. They might say to themselves “ok that was a nice article, now what else is on facebook”. You had someones attention for a few minutes and now their gone.

But what if you made one small strategic change.. What if you only posted the link to the article on facebook. Then facebook (by default) captures a small image (from the post) and the first paragraph as a teaser, and when someone clicks on the link they are directed to your website where they can read the entire article BUT now they are on YOUR website – not facebooks. Then you have an opportunity to capture that visitors attention to take another action – inform them of a sale, ask them to sign up to your newsletter, read another related article etc.

By being strategic about your approach to Social Media you will be driving traffic to your website where visitors can learn more about you and your services and have them connect to begin a dialogue and/or relationship. Now you have begun planting the seeds to grow your customer base and isn’t that the real reason you wanted to integrate social media with your website in the first place?

What about you? Do you have a good tip to share? Would love to hear from you below..

Filed Under: Articles, Social Media, Uncategorized, Website Design

May 29, 2014 by Eric Rowen Leave a Comment

How Often Should I Blog ?

How Often Should I Blog

A while back I wrote an article on 6 Reasons Why Your Business Should Be Blogging. That article talked about the ‘why’ of business blogging but didnt get into the ‘How Often’ aspect of blogging. I have read dozens and dozens of articles on this very topic and they all have very interesting advice on how often you should be doing it.

As with various articles there were many ‘it depends’ in the articles. It depends on your business size, your goals, your audience etc etc.

I am going to narrow down the focus of this article to get to the meat as soon as possible. So let’s begin by cutting out some readers by making some assumptions.

1. You are a small business.

2. You don’t blog just for the sheer joy – but want results from your blogging.

3. Your time is limited – because ‘hey you’ve got a business to run’.

So I will say goodbye to readers that don’t fall into the above categories – sorry. Based on my research here is the bad news. The consensus seems to be the more you blog the more results you achieve. Now I am not sure about you but I simply can’ t allocate that amount of time researching, writing, image sourcing, proof reading etc etc to blog everyday – nor would I want to.

Silver lining..

One approach is to determine what your potential customers sales cycle is then post based on that – ideally doubling the frequency. For example.. Let’s say it typically takes your customers about a month to decide to purchase your product/service. Then try posting on a monthly basis – if you can manage it 2x a month. This approach will keep you top of mind of your potential customers yet not tie you down to your keyboard.

The one caveat here is to hold yourself to a pre-determined schedule with a pre-determined time. If you post consistently a certain day of the week, a certain time of day, your readers will tend to follow and be waiting for the next post. So there you have it, a logical approach to how often to be blogging.

What about you – do you have a frequency that works best for you ?

 

Filed Under: Articles, Marketing, Social Media

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