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Lights, camera, action! Using video for business

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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 

Blog as part of content marketing strategy

Why blog?

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We work with a wide range of clients including those within the accounting sector. Often when we meet to discuss initial marketing proposals, a blog is far from the agenda. People are under the misconception that blogging is for… ‘bloggers’. There’s this misconception that a blog is about polished lifestyles and food! In this blog we aim to set the record straight and give small business owners more insight into the purpose behind a blog.  

Whilst your content is essential to attract your target audience, blogs are essentially about your blog fitting into your marketing strategy in particular, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).  

Now is a good time to review your business website. If you don’t already have a blog page, then these points will help you to understand the purpose of the page and its importance in helping your website rise in search rankings. If you already have a blog, then there’s some tips for content that could help your overall digital marketing plan.  

A blog forms part of your content marketing  

A blog is an important page on your website to provide tips, advice, guides, and offers. All your content is aimed at supporting your target audience as well as positioning you as a thought leader in your sector.  

But that’s not all. Content that you post on your blog helps to keep your website fresh, frequently. The strategic inclusion of keywords – phrases that you want to be found for in search – will help search engines find you. And, because you are posting content regularly it helps search engines see that you are ab authority in your field.

Red more about optimising your content with keywords in our blog; What SEO agencies should offer London firms.

See, there’s a little more to it than fancy coffee pics!

Content marketing plan 

Create a content marketing plan to help you schedule when you will write a blog and on what topic.  

To help your creativity, initially think of key dates in the year that you can use as a hook. If you’re an accounting firm, then list out key dates for tax return deadlines within the year; the Budget and so forth. Also include exhibitions you may be attending or charitable events you are involved with so that your audience gets an all-round look at your firm. This will help you schedule timely reminder blogs for your audience.  

Use news articles as a hook – often referred to as a news jack. Or if there’s some research just published of relevance to your target audience you could write a comment piece on it and why your prospective customers or existing clients should take note. A word of warning on this though, always make sure to reference any source in full and add backlinks to the original article or report.  

Internal and external website links

Backlinks are all about helping your website increase its domain authority and appearance in search. Blogs are a great way to add backlinks to your website. You can add links back to key ‘pillar’ pages within your website as well as adding links to external websites. Not only that, the aim is to have backlinks reciprocated.

The more you write, the more thought leadership authority you accrue with search engines, this will help you be sought for backlinks too. Now this is a long-term SEO strategy as it takes time to build up a catalogue of good quality content and a lot of work to seek out opportunities that you could provide comment on with external sites.

So, your quick wins are that once you’ve checked your own website has relevant links to other pages on your website is to check any websites that you already have a mention on and whether they have a backlink to you. For example, are you a member of an industry association, speaker or exhibitor at an event or formed a partnership with a supplier? Do these sites have the correct website mentions in place and importantly a hyperlink back to your accountancy website?

Google My Business 

Always make sure you have completed your Google My Business page. Continue to update it with your latest blogs. This also adds another backlink to your website. Plus, it tells this dominant search engine first-hand all about your business which helps you be found by prospects as well as provide ongoing support to your current client base. 

Read more on the benefits of completing your Google My Business page in our blog – have you told search engines you exist?

Titles and keywords 

And now for the website backend tech SEO. Make sure you always complete the H1 / H2 header tags as well as meta title and alt tags when you upload your blog. 

If you partner with a website designer and developer, then they will be able to guide you on this. If you’ve not updated your website in a long time and have a Content Managed System (CMS) such as WordPress, you should be able to look at the backend and complete these yourself.

Equally if you wanted a Free Website Review, which will highlight areas that can be updated such as  missing header tags  or meta titles, then get in touch with us and we can run this report for you.

Our blog 9 tips for optimising your website has some further tips on SEO for inbound marketing.

Smart Cow Marketing is a digital marketing agency providing services for a range of clients including marketing for accountants.

Searching for why google reviews can help business growth

Why a Google Review can help business growth

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At the core of a digital marketing campaign is the need to drive traffic to your website and in turn win new clients or clinch that sale. But to help with brand awareness and to build a trusted brand, growing the number of Google Reviews you have is one of the most cost-effective ways to help achieve this.

In our previous blog, we spoke about one of the first things you need to do when you create your website is to help search engines find you. So, setting up a Google My Business page – which is free – is a great way to get more information and brand awareness out there about yourself. It’s also another way of letting Google know you exist. And, as part of this page you can welcome reviews from clients and customers.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. Think about how you approach buying goods for yourself or perhaps booking a holiday. How often do you look at comments from people who have stayed in the hotel you are looking to book? It’s amazing how this can influence your booking isn’t it?

Therefore, in much the same way, encouraging people to leave reviews on your Google My Business page should become part of your conversation with clients. These reviews can help build awareness of your brand as a trusted leader in your sector.

So, if you have received feedback from a happy customer ask if they can complete a Google review. You can also share your reviews via your social media channels to ensure people know about the good service that customers have experienced.

Book a Practice Growth Session

You can explore setting up your own Google My Business page yourself for free. If you have any questions or would like to delve a little deeper into ways to grow your business then why not book a Practice Growth Session with us? We tailor these sessions for businesses keen to grow and ready to invest in a digital marketing campaign to achieve their goals. A digital marketing agency based in Croydon, we will arm you with the fundamental details for you to be able to implement a campaign to help you grow. You can book a session with us for £95.

Get in touch for more information.

Laptop searching for inbound marketing agencies in London

Have you told search engines you exist?

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Grow your business with Google

To help your business grow, you need to tell people that you exist. These days your shop window is a virtual one – it’s your website. However, just like a bricks and mortar premises your website needs to be found, it’s just that these days that means via a search engine. Just as you would have a sign on your window advertising your products and services you need to let people know where you are.

One of the first things you need to do when you have created your website, or if you are embarking on a digital marketing campaign to grow your business, is to make sure you’ve told search engines that you exist. The most popular way to do this is initially is by populating Google My Business with your company details.

About Google My Business

This is a free tool to use and well worth the time and effort to complete. Google is one of the most popular search engines after all, so you may as well let them know about you by filling out as much about your company as you can.

The very basics to complete are your website URL, opening times, address, contact numbers and email addresses and a short paragraph about your company. But it is worth exploring what else you can complete as this will all help Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and your company being seen in search, further optimising your website.

For example, you can add ‘posts’ to your Google My Business page. This allows you to add offers and event details with clear call to action buttons. It’s worth noting here that you don’t need to create fresh content for this you can just edit one of your blogs or offer from your website and repurpose for Google My Business as part of your routine SEO work.

Images say a thousand words and you have the ability to add imagery to your Google My Business page too.

A regular look at your ‘insights’ on this page will reveal the most popular search queries for your business by unique users. These insights can also assist you in keeping the keywords and phrases you use up to date.

Reviews

These business pages are also a great way for you to ask customers to leave reviews. When people look for a product or service they are comforted by reviews from people and this could be the difference between whether someone clicks on your link or the person with a populated Google My Business page. 

Book a Practice Growth Session

Google My Business is just one of the tactics we recommend that our clients implement. If you would like to find out more, our Practice Growth Sessions are tailored for businesses keen to grow and ready to invest in a digital marketing campaign to achieve their goals. As an inbound marketing agency in London, arming you with the fundamental details for you to be able to implement a campaign to help you grow is well within our abilities. You can book a session with us for £95.

Keep an eye on our blog for more tips on growing your business with a well targeted digital marketing campaign.

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