In today’s business world, the popularity of big box stores and online shopping have changed the way that many businesses are able to interact with customers. Unlike in the days of mom and pop stores, many business owners today never meet most of their customers in person. Customer service takes on a whole new meaning many of our transactions are now done over the Internet. The third Thursday of each quarter is now officially Get to Know Your Customers Day, which can be a great opportunity for businesses to take the extra time and effort to reach out to customers.
When it comes to SEO, we unfortunately don’t have a guidebook detailing what to expect, or a crystal ball for predicting the date of the next algorithm change.
We do, fortunately, have some hunches about what we think is pretty darn likely to go down in 2016.
Check out what we think might be in the cards for online marketing in the next year.
What is clickbait? We’ve all seen it before. It can be the, “Watch what happens next. You’ll be shocked!” ads you see on Facebook, or the “You won’t believe this one weird trick,” that leads to useless content.
Media influencers have weighed in on clickbait that leads to nowhere. “I scroll around, but when I look at the internet, I feel the same as when I’m walking through Coney Island,” said The Daily Show host Jon Stewart. “It’s like carnival barkers, and they all sit out there and go, ‘Come on in here and see a three-legged man!’ So you walk in and it’s a guy with a crutch.”
Clickbait: A Great Way to Lose Followers
Clickbait can kill your social media efforts because it doesn’t work. Your readers are too savvy to fall for it time and time again. While using clickbait can work-at first-to drive traffic to your website, it rarely converts to leads. The more you disappoint your followers, the more followers you lose, and more than likely, they never return. You want to engage your followers, not drive them away.
Killing It Without Clickbait
While clickbait can kill your social media campaign, some small business have been killing it without a single, “You’ll be shocked.” For example, the Folly Theatre in Kansas City, Mo. wanted to reach a younger audience. They decided to encourage audience members to use their phones during the show. The audience used an app to vote on what they wanted to see and essentially directed the show, making for an interactive and engaging experience.
Simple but Effective
Burger Revolution in Ontario, Canada has a much simpler idea. The restaurant regularly posts the number of remaining burgers for the day, thus creating a sense of urgency. They also post a comment of the day, which is just a daily picture of a user’s comment. You don’t need to lure your followers with promises of shock and awe. Burger Revolution’s tactics are simple but effective, as the best social media campaigns often are.
Enlist Our Team of Social Media Content Creators
The Digital Content Creation Department here at Turn The Page is constantly striving to improve our strategy and practices by improving yours. For help creating quality social media content that won’t disappoint, call us today at (816) 527-8371 or (844) 889-5001!
Customer service. Everybody hates it, yet everybody needs it (unless, of course, you’ve disavowed all human relations, sworn off technology and ceased communication with the outside world, in which case, how are you reading this?). And yet every single entrepreneur, from the beginners to the more seasoned, should take on a customer service roll at least once in their lives. Being on the front lines, communicating directly with clients, is an invaluable experience for anyone, business owners especially.
Mike Burgess, Technical Director for Turn The Page Online Marketing answers your burning questions about web design, development and how much he agrees with me about content.
You won’t have too many customers if your business is underwater.
The mobile space is wide open for small business. Are you in it?
Technology is your friend. Not the kind of friend that you default to because all your other cool friends are out of town or busy, like how you default to Youtube or Facebook because you’re bored. I’m talking about that friend who comes over and helps you paint your house or fix your car. A useful friend. You want technology to save time, not consume it. Mint.com is just that: a time saving, useful friend.
What is Mint.com?
Mint.com is a website that tracks all your transactions from your bank account. Remember checkbooks? I don’t. I never used one. But if your older than 25 you might. Think of Mint.com like a digital checkbook. Instead of having to keep a record of every check you write in your checkbook just to keep track of your balances and expenses, Mint.com automatically reads all your transactions from your online bank account. It shows where you purchased items, how much it costs, and with a little help it categorizes it.
It’s safe. That’s usually the first concern. Mint.com only reads data. This means it can’t deposit, withdrawal or transfer any money, ever. It’s secure under 256 bit encryption, so you never have to worry about hackers.
Getting started is free. All you do is register an email address to sign up. Once you first login you’ll need to start adding accounts. Just search or type in the name of your bank, your username and password you use to login to your online bank account, and that’s it. The magic begins. Mint.com will start to pull your transactions automatically. You can now scroll through all the purchases you’ve made in the transactions section.
Mint.com For Business
Here are a couple ways Mint.com can be useful to your business.Categorizing transactions.
- After you’ve set up your first account, you can now see the transactions you’ve made around town. What you can start doing is clicking under the category column on the transaction and selecting the proper category. As you can see, the name of the business where you purchased the item is listed in the transaction so this makes it easy to categorize. If the category doesn’t exist you can create it by selecting a category on the right side. There’s an option to add/edit categories. A nice feature about Mint.com is once you start categorizing your purchases the system will remember and automatically file it under that category next time you buy something at that location.
- Seeing your trends. Another nice feature of Mint.com is trends. In the trends section you can see all sorts of options. After you’ve categorized a lot of your transactions, trends will start to appear. You’ll see if you’re spending too much on a specific item, like if you’re buying too much office supplies and need to cut down. Another nice feature is you can also track your income. Trends create a nice flow chart of all your assets and expenses. You can see why this could be useful to any business owner.
Now that you’re a little familiar with Mint.com, you can see how it can really save you time. No more pouring over checkbooks, receipts, and expense sheets. You can sit down and view it all from one screen. See, technology can be a useful friend. Now you can get rid of all those other friends. Youtube and Facebook I mean, of course.
Every website must have a purpose. When visitors come to your site, you want there to be an outcome from the visit. Whether it’s commenting on a blog article, submitting a contact form, or buying a product, you want your web design to foster engagement in some way. It makes no sense to start your web design by just throwing a bunch of pictures and text online and tell everyone to check out your website. That’s like inviting everyone over to your house to watch your dog take a dump. If you don’t give something of value to offer, you won’t get something of value.
Here are a few web design techniques that every website should have so you’re not exchanging your visitor’s time for the value of your dog’s crap.
During June, many companies experience a drastic slump in the amount of business that they do. Restaurants find themselves losing out to backyard barbeques. Retail businesses notice that their clients are spending more time at the pool and less time browsing in their stores. Service based businesses suffer because their clients have left their homes for summer vacations. While this decline in traffic might seem like a great chance to take a breather and recharge, many business owners find themselves struggling to maintain a sense of passion for their business when customers aren’t buying.
