Below is an email I sent to a client today. I was quite happy with what I came up with and thought I might share it with the world. Please feel free to comment should you have additional input in to the subject. Obviously, I have removed names and so forth to maintain the anonymity of the client. Happy reading :)
Dear ******,
I do hope that my email finds you well.
Further
to our previous discussion regarding social media and the marketing of
your website, I have had some time to think about different strategies
and come up with some suggestions. The services suggested below are not
something we will directly be able to assist you with, but simply some
recommendations and suggestions that could be of use. Bear in mind that
there is no one fix that will accomplish the results you are looking
for, and any solutions really need to be holistic in approach. You
might like to read this when you have some free time as it is a long
email and covers a wide range of different strategies.
1. Yelp has 1 bad review.
From
what ***** tells me, previous customers had posted positive reviews, but
Yelp had the nerve to pull them down saying they weren't legitimate. It
is my understanding that Yelp has a lot of dissatisfied users and you
might be better off removing your Yelp account all together. Some say
that there is no such thing as bad publicity, but if you don't have much
user contributed content, and what you do have is a bad review, I would
suggest that this does not represent your company that well. You might
like to have a read of www.yelp-sucks.com for more stories of the bad
business practices performed by this web service.
2. Google+ Local for reviews and as a Yelp replacement.
I
just had a quick look at your G+ Local page and it looks to be
pumping. Nice work. I think this is a far better replacement for
Yelp. That being said, the last review was placed 7 months ago. It
would be great if you could try make a target of 1 to 5 reviews on G+
Local a month. You have 18 reviews but you really want 50 to 100.
3. Facebook page needs more posts directly from your website.
Posting
links from your website will help in establishing back links that
Google will recognize, lifting your Google ranking. I believe I may
have suggested it previously, that you could easily share some select
content and products from the website direct to your Facebook page maybe twice a
week. This will be a small push to lift your Google reputation.
4. Back link swaps with other websites via a links page on your website.
With
an added links page on your website you would be able to initiate back
link swaps with other websites. This would involve communicating with
other like minded website owners and exchanging links to provide on
eachother's respective websites. However, ****** has informed me that
this method is not really effective in this day and age, being swamped
by the likes of Facebook and other mass social media providers. For the
effort put in we don't believe this will provide you with the coverage
you are looking for.
5. Registering your website with AOL, and Yahoo directory listings.
This
idea stems back to the good old days before Google. Yahoo evaluates
websites on a case by case basis and includes them in listings, much
like the Yellow Pages. Users can search by different categories for
whatever they might be interested, unlike direct keyword searches and
mass website evaluation (as in Google search). That being said, you may
need to search a bit further to find the many other listings out there
for this strategy to be effective. I suggest that Yahoo and AOL would
be a good first step, but you would definitely need to add your site to
potentially dozens of different listings to see real results.
6. Contribute to community group pages, forums, and blogs for additional back links.
This
strategy holds a lot of potential if enough time and effort is put into
the task. Basically you (or perhaps an intern/work experience student)
could visit lots of different community pages from a variety of
different related industries and interests. By contributing to
discussions (and adding your link to posts) the users that read them
will no doubt click back to your website, especially if they believe
your interest in the community group is genuine. As you might imagine, a
lot of companies post more or less fake contributions to get their link
out there. However, should you actually interact with these groups,
you will start to build relationships with users that actually trust
you.
7. Contribute to blogs as a guest blogger (yes that means a bit of creative writing).
In-line
with the above point, by contributing to "respected and well known"
blogs as a guest blogger, you have the opportunity of getting your voice
to a large audience. And, there is much more potential than simply
contributing to discussions and communicating with commenters. For this
to work you would need to post articles to more than 1 blog (perhaps 5 -
10, the sky is the limit). It would also be best if the articles were
unique, but I could imagine there is still a benefit to posting the same
article to a variety of blogs. What is most important is that you
guest blog to a wide range of fields and interest groups. There is
little benefit in posting to 10 blogs in the same field, as a lot of the
visiting users visit the same blogs. By diversifying you will reach a
wider range of customers/users. Moreover, by guest blogging you place
yourself as a professional in your field, and not just a commenter.
That alone must carry some weight over just commenting and discussing
other people's articles.
8. Start a Blog, and update it REGULARLY.
This
is also an option, but you might be best geared to start with trying to
get some good slots on other well recognized blogs first.
9. More AdWords and Facebook campaigns.
Advertising
campaigns can have substantial benefits; however, you need to be sure
you have just the right keywords in order for these to work (definitely
worth getting advise from a professional in this case). Also, the
problem with this sort of method is that every man and his dog is paying
for these services, as it is the easy way out, so you could find
yourself spending a lot of money for nothing. Any investment like this
needs to be well researched or trusted to a company that has a good
track record. All things being considered, I believe a small investment
in web ad campaigns isn't a bad idea, but the previous suggestions of
contribution and interaction are far more positive and don't cost
anything. The long and slow road will build a solid base where as an Ad
campaign dies the moment you stop paying.
10. Monthly or bi-monthly newsletters.
This
is definitely something you can do in house, but depends entirely on
the size of your email mailing list. If its small I would suggest there
is little benefit to expending the time on creating the newsletters.
Well
that just about covers it. And just to reiterate, these are simply
suggestions. We cannot guarantee that any of these will work, especially
if only 1 or 2 strategies are tried. The process needs to be holistic
and needs to be a long term vision, which will no doubt change at least a
part of the way you deal with marketing from a web perspective.
In the meantime, should you require any additional information or assistance at any time, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Best regards,
BenC
One thing I forgot to add to this was the importance of YouTube, and producing short films that are fun and informative. It really gives a face to the company and its staff. I doubt he would have gone for that anyway.
I look forward to continuing this discussion with my fellow bloggers.
Peace Out.
