The Importance of Online Video
We have been really busy here at Wow Internet; we just have launched our new corporate video. With this in mind we thought it would only be fair to share with you the importance of having an online video presence!
Tag Archives: Social Media
New Web Design, SEO and Social Media Project – Music Matters
We are proud to say that we have developed and launched one of our favourite web design, SEO and social media projects to date. The client, Music Matters, are an AV company that represent some of the most well respected brands within the industry including, Bose, Bowers and Wilkins, Sonos and KEF.
When we started the project last year, the guys at Music Matters wanted to completely transform their online presence and offer a website to their customers that would be simple to use whilst putting across everything that their brand stands for. Together, we designed a site that provides extensive functionalities to the user with a simplistic and sleek design to match. We are all really happy with the end product here and will be excited to see what the Music Matters’ customers think of it.
Interaction with Customers Through Social Networking
There are many advantages to businesses when it comes to engaging in a social media campaign. It has well publicised about the amount of online users that interact within social networking websites, with the likes of Facebook and Twitter at the forefront of this activity. A recent study shown that social media and blogging represented 23% of all online activity, which is a figure that businesses need to pay attention too and ensure that they have a presence themselves.
A recent study from Nielsen shows that the top five reasons for customers to ‘like’ a brand on Facebook were as follows:
- They’re customers of the company
- To receive discounts and promotions
- To show others they support the brand
- To be the first to know info about the brand
- To gain access to exclusive content
One of the big issues that has arisen from corporate social media campaigns is how to respond to customers effectively and manage user engagement effectively. It has been found that 62% of customers to a brand have used social networking sites for customer service issues and 76% of users would be more likely to do the same if they better understood the tools available to them. Because of this, it is really important that as a company, there are processes and tools in place to give customers the chance to solve their issues or queries directly through social networking.
The main industries that have shown benefit from using social media for customer service issues are the retail, telecommunications and hospitality & travel industries, which have seen 45%, 35% and 34% respectively of customers solve customer service issues this way.
How Important is Social Media within your SEO efforts?
A question that has been surrounded with many different views is the impact that a social media presence actually has on improving your SEO and whether it is even worth it at all. Well I can tell you that is most definitely has a large part to play on search engine optimisation and that it can be vitally important online tool for firms to utilise.
Looking at Google+ as a fine example of the changing trends in which search engines look at our online behaviour and habits, then link this in with our search engine results t give a much more personalised web experience. Google+ is not just a social media platform, but it is almost a search tool in itself. Many users that are logged into their Google+ account all the time (myself included) will find that the search engine results page (SERP) will be completely different to when they are not logged into their account. This is because Google recalls which pages you have given a ‘+1′ or linked to on your profile and give these website preference in where they place in the SERP in the understanding that they have more relevance to you. For example, when we search for local web designers Birmingham or SEO Birmingham and then +1 a couple of the websites showing up in say page 8, the next time we search the terms ‘web designers Birmingham‘ and ‘SEO Birmingham‘ these websites will now appear on the first couple of pages. This can be a hugely influential tool toward gaining instant SEO.
Google itself have also been building whats known as a social graph which goes through all of a user’s associated and linked to social accounts and platforms to develop a kind of map that interlinks all of the activities and enables Google to understand exactly which accounts are relevant to which websites, etc. This is important to understand and by using various different social accounts such as Facebook and Twitter, you can create this network of backlinks to your website and increase traffic and your overall SEO.
One other fine example of the importance that Google, along with other search engines places upon social media is with YouTube. YouTube is seen by the average user as a place where they can watch videos and engage socially with others on the site, however, in reality, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and Google hides no secret to the fact that it actively encourages video content to rank higher in the search algorithms.
These are just a few example of how important social media is to your SEO and online marketing, but the possibilities really are endless. The main thing to take away from this is that if you don’t have a social presence, get one!
Creating a Facebook Page for your business
With more than 800 million active users and at least 50% of those users logging in daily, Facebook has become an invaluable marketing tool for businesses to exploit. The average Facebook user is connect to around 80 different community pages, groups, and events so there is an instant route to starting your social community and improving your SEO.
You don’t need to be highly technical web designers to create a page due to the easy-to-use interface that Facebook provides which is aimed at the average user. The first step is to go to the Facebook homepage and underneath the sign-up form is the ‘create a page’ link which you can click through. Now you will be presented with a page (shown below) that will ask you what type of page you want to create.
Once you have selected which page is most relevant to you, you will need to fill in the registration form and then you can get on with creating your profile. The first step towards doing this is to upload a nice profile picture. We recommend a slim and tall profile image as it can be quite eye-catching and you will see many of the Facebook pages take this approach. Now that you have your profile image up you will be presented with the ‘Get Started’ screen, where you can then invite in your existing friends, email contacts, etc.
Once you have invited in your contacts, click the ‘publish this page’ link at the top of the page and you can send out a message on Facebook to let people know you are on the site. Go to the ‘Wall’ tab on the left and you are ready to start posting some content to your followers. The best practise is to keep content flowing and linking in material from your other social media accounts so that you can have a good community of people looking at your content.
Now your page is set up, you can start adding photos, videos and running promotions which will be able to drive web traffic through to your website and more importantly result in extra revenue. Facebook offers a free ‘Insights’ tool that can track the click-throughs, follower activity and many more statistics from your Facebook page in a similar way that Google analytics does which can be very useful. Also, once your page is up and running you can assign other administrators that can update and manage the page by going into the settings and clicking on the ‘admins’ tab.
This is the basics stages toward setting up your page but there are many other features that can be implemented to give it a more unique look via Facebook apps and we will go into this further in future blog entries so be sure to check back for more info!
SEO Expert Offers Social Media Advice to SEO Birmingham Firms and Others
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A leading expert in the field of SEO has claimed that companies that attempt to make use of social media in their SEO campaigns must be careful to do it right, lest they fail to attract the right audience to their website.
Gareth Owen, writing in the Search Engine Watch, has claimed that its is much better practice to ensure the quality of your social media posts, rather than simply going for pure quantity.
He suggests, for example, that having fewer fans who hold higher authority is better than having many fans who aren’t relevant to the company you are attempting to promote.
He also believes closely monitoring page rankings can give businesses new insights into how effective their various media strategies are. He concludes that “it’s quality and not necessarily quantity that will win the day with social SEO”, Mr Owen adds that creating quality content and links remain an important part of SEO campaigns.