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Digital marketing tips to help your business during coronavirus

04/28/2020 by scmarketing

Regardless of whether your business was already embracing the virtual world, or you were just starting out in the digital world, one this is for certain, these times have highlighted the need for online presence and maintaining it.

So, we’ve gathered a few tips for you to action now to optimise your website to help improve your search engine rankings and online visibility.

If you need a hand with any digital marketing activity just drop us a line as we offer free consultations and free website reviews. These can really highlight areas specific for you to implement.

Website review

Once a website is built, you’ve got to maintain it with up to date content. The hospitality industry has already had to change the way they do business quickly to offer takeaway and delivery services. Whatever your business, you and your customers are being impacted. So, take a few moments to see that you are offering the right advice on your website. Makes sure you’re being informative and a thought leader. Add a simple message to the homepage of your website about your opening hours, how to contact your team and ‘business as usual’ even though working remotely.

Check your content details are up to date. The last thing you want is clients unable to get through to you when it may just mean a simple update of an out of office contact number. For most businesses, the use of VOIP phones mean no disruption when remote working. But it could be a simple overlook of not checking your website that could prevent business coming your way.

Also make sure you have ease of navigation across your side. Internal link building can help the flow for a visitor. So, see where you can add links to other web pages on your site so that it’s easier to move from one page to another by just clicking a link.

Specific content marketing plan

Review your content marketing plan, from blogs through to social media posts and offers. Make sure you’re answering your target audience’s specific challenges during this time.

Think of the challenges and draw up a specific marketing plan for the next couple of months, if you haven’t already. Schedule planned content on specific themes to help your clients and prospects. With constant change in our everyday, revisit your plan regularly and adjust creating content accordingly. During these times you may find a ‘news jack’ offers timely advice as well as links to great resources.

Search Engine Optimisation

This is at the core of your content marketing plan and website updates. A Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy is about getting your website seen. Now more than ever, you should make sure that you implement a few processes to continue moving forward.

Get your technical backend SEO sorted and up to date. This includes Meta Descriptions, Alt Tags, Meta title tag (H1 and H2 headers). Do this now and continue to do so. This helps your website in search engine rankings and is particularly good for local search.

Create at least a couple of blogs a month, if not more, to help with adding fresh content to your website. All the time think about what you want to be found for – those are your keywords you want to weave into your content. This keyword research will help with where you appear in the search engine result pages.

Social media marketing

Keep on sharing posts on your social channels throughout this time. Keep communicating with your followers letting know any business changes, how you can help them.

Take a moment to review of your channels. LinkedIn is great for networking but so often we’ve found that business profiles aren’t updated as best as they could. Add as much detail as you can about your business. Start following relevant hashtags and join groups. Start engaging. We’ve certainly noticed that engagement has increased as more and more people are reaching out as they find that the business world they were used to has changed.

Be thoughtful of your content. Share articles you found interesting. And, use imagery to help your posts stand out.

Video and webinars

Talk directly to your audience. You can make videos efficiently, simply and at no extra cost on your mobile phone.

Repurpose content from your blogs and make short and snappy videos to accompany them to bring your social posts to life and your web pages.

Read our blog on using video for business for tips on setting up videos for your business for some useful dos and don’ts.

Seek out local networking groups and see if you can create beneficial webinars for fellow members which can be hosted via channels such as Zoom.

We’re a member of London Chamber and will soon, be hosting a webinar on How to grow your business through online lead generation on 20^th May at 12:45. We’ll post details of how to register to join in due course.

Free resources

We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon and we have the following resources you can draw on during this time. Get in touch with us today to talk through your requirements.

Free website review: Find out how to improve your website’s performance.

Free digital marketing consultation: Our Free consultation should be between 15 and 30 minutes. The goal is to provide you with thoughts on how to start an effective marketing campaign and for us both to see if it would benefit your firm. No obligation at all, we just want the best for you.

Lights, camera, action! Using video for business

05/26/202204/15/2020 by scmarketing

With lots of people now working from home, many of us are getting to grips with video conferencing to hold our regular update meetings. But not only that, video is a great way to spread the word of your products and services, a tactic often used in digital marketing campaigns.

Video is great for content marketing and sharing on social media, but don’t just take our word for it, just look at some of these staggering statistics:

Well, it certainly makes sense to be in the mix when you see how popular video is.

So, if you’re embarking on creating some short video tips for your clients and prospects or perhaps you’re looking to host a webinar, here’s our top tips for working on video.

Tips for your delivery on camera

Look at the lens.
Keep hands away from your face.
Don’t fidget – Don’t hold anything (if possible) as you’ll have a tendency to fidget with it.
Avoid looking at notes when you’re talking. It doesn’t need to be word perfect. You want it to come across as natural.
Smile or make sure your face is animated. Be expressive, much more than normal.
Keep the message concise.
Speak slowly. This helps make the piece authoritative, easier to understand and easier to edit.
Practice, practice, practice.
Above all – be natural.

Tips for video set up

Appearance: Check your appearance, hair, collar, background should be as clear as possible.
Lighting: Nice soft light to the face, also a light to the wall behind works well, if possible.
Sound: Make sure there is as minimal background sound as possible. Reduce the hum of your PC, fans, air conditioning, switch of the ringtone of mobiles, and your messages on PC/Laptop etc.
Check your sound recording is good.

Relevant content for Search Engine Optimisation

It’s not about posting any video, it’s important that your video content is also targeted to your audience, with a relevant script, tagline and a clear call to action for increased engagement.

If you haven’t already, then develop keywords and phrases for your business. This is simply about what key term you would like to be found for when people search online. The more content you produce using keywords the more your website is recognised by search engines and improves your search engine optimisation (SEO). This is relevant to video, not just written content. You can add captions to videos so that people don’t have to switch volume on.

We’d recommend having accounts on channels such as Vidyard, Vimeo and YouTube. This all helps with your rankings in search. Think about the name of your video file and its title when you upload to the video channels as it should contain keywords. On YouTube you can add an SRT file to enable you to add subtitles and closed captions rather than burn them onto the video file. This can help with SEO within the YouTube channel. Don’t forget this is another search engine.

Video for your website

It’s not just about sharing your videos on social media and adding to video channels such as YouTube. Remember that you should be adding the video to your website. Ideally you want to push social media posts back to your website to view the video. Remember that placing the video higher up the page is much better for engagement with website visitors.

Smart Cow is a digital marketing agency in Croydon. If you’d like a free website review to look at how your website is performing in search to find out how an SEO campaign can help local search results, complete our form and we’ll take a look for you.

Resources

Is Zoom the new office?

03/26/202003/24/2020 by scmarketing

As we wake each day to new curbs and change in our everyday routine as a result of the coronavirus, many of us will now be working from home and getting used to social distancing. Yet somehow, are you finding that you’re more social than ever?

Working from an office base, communication on email still seems to be de rigueur. With a favour towards regular face to face meetings. Now, as many people adjust to remote working from home, here’s some tips on video conferencing.

Video conferencing apps

Well, video conferencing is not new, and it has been used by many businesses well before now. It’s allowed firms to be global when perhaps they may be based in Croydon in the UK.

Smart Cow had already started holding video meetings where distance between clients was an issue and as a great way to share screens and talk through work. But for many businesses, they will be starting to use this method for the first time. Not just for their work, but also for catching up with friends and family.

Zoom seems to be coming up top of the list for video apps. From business meetings to family drinks through to bands continuing to gig, the use of Zoom seems to be ticking all these boxes. Visit https://zoom.us/ – it offers a free sign up option.

If you’re finding it a bit daunting then Techtrader has a step by step guide on how to set up your Zoom video conferencing.

Microsoft teams is also a popular choice for businesses. Part of the Office 365 suite which includes Outlook, Cloud based Sharepoint and your Office stalwarts – Word, PowerPoint and Excel. It allows work collaboration in real-time but also offers mobile audio and video.

Check out this comprehensive list from PC Magazine featuring the best video conferencing software to find out what may be right for your business.

With the change in your daily routine, now is a good time to explore options for your business. Using video conferencing with colleagues is a great way to share ideas and thoughts for the business and how you can continue to maintain presence in a digital world.

Further resources

Tips for using images for digital marketing

03/30/202003/18/2020 by scmarketing

With 70% of YouTube viewers watching videos for “help with a problem” whether for their hobby, studies, or job, there’s not getting away from the fact that visual content is key for a digital marketing campaign.

And, with 62% of B2B marketers rating video as an effective content marketing tactic, here’s some top tips for using visual content on your website and part of your digital marketing strategy.

Website imagery

Imagery is engaging for a website visitor, it breaks up a page, helps maintain interest and importantly keeps people on a website for longer. So make sure you’ve incorporating imagery into your website design. For a good website design having a consistent look and feel for images or video you produce provides the perfect solution for a digital marketing campaign. You can repurpose imagery across channels from website through to social media channels and eshot campaigns. It helps to build your brand identity and therefore awareness and importantly trust.

Social media

IMaintain consistency with your website for all of your online marketing activity. For successful social media marketing create a header image to be used across all social media platforms, this is certainly relevant for Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. However, resize them for the respective channel. Here’s a summary of image sizes for the popular social channels:

Facebook
- Profile picture – 180 x 180 pixels
- Cover photo image – 820 x 312 pixels
- Social post image – 1,200 x 630 pixels
Twitter
- Profile picture – 400 x 400 pixels
- Header image – 1,500 x 500 pixels
- Social post image – 440 x 220 pixels
LinkedIn
- Company logo – 300 x 300 pixels
- Cover image – 1536 x 768 pixels
- Shared image – 1104 x 736 pixels
Instagram
- Profile picture – 110×110 pixels
- Photos – 1,080 x 1,080 pixels

Best to use either jpeg or PNG file format.

Video

Smart phones today are amazing. The technology allows you to create short and snappy videos that are ideal for sharing on social.

We find that doing face to camera at events is a nice informal way to chat to your audience. You don’t have to be clever about it with special effects, it’s what you’re saying that’s important. If you attend a regular networking event and feel your audience would benefit from joining themselves, then tell them why they should attend. Give stats on the number of people who attend, how many businesses are signed up to the group and give an overview of what to expect from the event. All this done in a short face to camera video that can be easily uploaded to social media.

Use images as your content marketing

If you have blogs, case studies create unique images or use email marketing. You could utilise quotes from a case study to help create stand out on social media but also to entice people to click the link and read the full story. Ultimately the goal is to attract people to your website and images help create standout.

Be aware of copyright

A word of warning though, do not use images from Google for any campaign. Images come with copyright and you will not have permission to use them if you take them from anywhere online. Either take pictures or video yourself, phone cameras are so good these days. Or, use a reputable stock library to source these from such as Adobe, Shutterstock or Envato.

Digital marketing strategy for Croydon businesess

If you need a hand with images and how these can work within your overall marketing strategy then get in touch. We can help you create a holistic digital marketing campaign including eye-catching images and video. This along with other digital marketing services we offer will improve your search engine optimisation and more traffic heading towards your website.

If you’re looking for a market leading digital marketing agency in London, we’re specialists in online marketing providing services for digital marketing in Croydon businesses and beyond.