As a marketer, your primary job is to reach out to your customers and prospects effectively. Whether you use traditional marketing methods or Internet marketing methods, the goal is to reach, attract and convert as many potential customers as possible. There are many ways to reach out to your customers effectively when we talk of internet marketing. And social media is by far one of the most effective ways to reach your audience.

You can miss out on opportunities if you don’t use social media to your advantage.

Yes, social media marketing or SMM is extremely crucial these days to promote your brand, engage with your existing customers, and attract potential clients. If you follow the right steps, SMM can give you great results. It can surely increase the visibility of your company and help you get noticed.

You can do SMM yourself or hire a social media marketing services company to do the needful for your brand and company. Regardless of the route you take, it is vital to understand a few things about social media marketing so that you can use it properly to propel your brand.

Let us, therefore, find out what is social media marketing, how it can help your business, and how to choose the best SMM platforms for marketing.

An overview of social media marketing

Social media marketing is by far the most effective way to reach your customers and prospects for businesses, both big and small. When you use social media platforms in the right manner, it can help you connect with your audience, enhance brand awareness, increase your sales, and bring more traffic to your website. What you need to do is publish high-quality content on your social media profiles, connect and engage with your followers, run social media ads, and finally analyse your results.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat are some of the major social media platforms that businesses need to factor in to promote their company.

Here is an overview of the social media marketing that will help you understand why you need it:

Earlier SMM was all about publishing content. Businesses use to share their content to increase traffic coming to their website and improve sales. But social media marketing has evolved over the years.

These days social media is used for various other reasons as well. Businesses use social media for social listening and engagement, where companies monitor social media to know what people are saying about their brand. Businesses also use social media to analyse their performance on social media in terms of reach, engagement, and sales, which is known as social media analytics. Also, businesses use social media to reach their specific target audience, which is known as social media advertising. And, when you work on all these aspects, it is referred to as social media management.

But to get the best result from your social media activities, you need to ensure that you do it in a structured way.

To start with, you need to have a social media strategy in place. Without a robust social media strategy, it is highly unlikely that you will get the desired results. And, a good social media strategy starts with understanding and setting your goals and objectives. Then, you need to pick up the social media platforms that you think you need for your business. Finally, decide on the type of content you need to attract your audience – do you need to put out educational or entertainment content, will it be in the form of a link, image, or video, and how often do you need to fine-tune your content strategy.

To get good results, you need to make sure that your presence on social media is consistent. You need to publish your content, be it a blog post, social media post/s, image, or video, regularly and consistently on the social media platforms you use. Hence, if you want to reach out to your audience regularly, you need to plan well in advance what you would publish on these platforms. Timing and frequency are also important if you want to get good results from your social media activities. You need to post at the right time and be consistent with your efforts. There are social media scheduling tools that can help you post your content without any delay.

Listening and engagement are also extremely important social media aspects that you should never ignore. Social media is an interactive medium. It is crucial to listen to what people are saying about your brand and engage with them so that you send out a message that you are receptive to the needs of your customers and prospects. That is why it is vital to monitor social media conversations that are happening about your brand. If you don’t engage with your customers and prospects, it will not go down well with them.

It is vital to assess your social media marketing performance periodically so that you can fine-tune your strategy as and when required. That is why social media analytics is extremely crucial to the success of your strategy. Most social media platforms provide this information. But you can also take the help of other social media analytics tools to get a more in-depth analysis.

If you have the resources and want to take your SMM to the next level, then you need to consider social media advertising. Advertising on social media allows you to reach a wider audience. You can create groups and target your audience based on their interests, demographics, buying patterns, and behaviours.

What can social media marketing do for your business?

It is important to understand what can social media marketing do for your business. If you are a search marketer, you might think of how social media would help your cause. But as a search marketer, it is important to know that there is a close relationship between SMM and search. Social media and search have a close relationship because social media keeps discovering new content and discovery is at the heart of search activity. Also, social media can help you get links, which can support your SEO efforts. It means social media marketing can have a positive effect on your website ranking on search engines like Google. Further, people these days also search social media sites to find social media content. Moreover, social connections can make some search results more relevant, which could either be within a social media network or at the level of a search engine.

Social media marketing can do a lot more for your business, and some of them are:

SMM can boost your website traffic.

Social media marketing can improve your conversions.

SMM can enhance your brand awareness.

Social media marketing can create an identity for your brand and improve the brand association.

SMM can improve your interaction and engagement with your audience.

How to choose the best social media platforms for marketing?

If you want to get good results for your SMM activities, you need to select social media platforms carefully. You should select platforms that complement your business. It is important to understand that each platform has a unique user base and environment. Hence, you should devise different strategies for different social media platforms.

Here is an overview that can help you to choose the best social media platforms for marketing:

Facebook

Since Facebook has a casual and friendly environment, you need an active SMM strategy to do well on this platform. To start with Facebook, you can create a Facebook Business Fan Page. Also, since the visual part plays the main role on Facebook, you need to pay a lot of attention to the layout.

Also, since Facebook is a casual and friendly platform, you should ensure that your content is light and friendly. But you need to understand that organic reach on Facebook is not all that great; hence you should consider Facebook advertising. Facebook advertising can impact your organic Facebook presence positively.

Pinterest

Most website owners are now familiar with the term SEO. Search engine optimization or SEO is the method we use to get traffic from organic search results or search engines. SEO is a broad term that has several aspects attached to it. And one of them is local SEO.

As a business, it is crucial to understand why local SEO is so important.

Local SEO or local search engine optimisation promotes and optimizes a website to get favourable results in the local search results. And that is what matters to most businesses.

Local search includes all those search terms that are intrinsically local and caters to the local audiences like restaurants near me, doctors near me, restaurants in my city, or doctors in my city.

If you have a brick-and-mortar business, and you want to cater to a local audience, then you need to work on local SEO. It can help your website to rank well on local search results when people search for businesses in your niche.

Working on local SEO means, all your efforts, namely content, on-page optimisation, and link building should have localised intent. But when it comes to localised link acquisition, you need to ensure that all potential link signals are consistent and correct across Google’s local search spectrum. If the information is not correct and consistent, then there is a chance that your local results throw up something different than what you wanted the result to display.

It is vital to understand the local SEO issue in the right perspective.

Let us, therefore, try to understand why local SEO is important, what are some local SEO services, and how do local SEO and organic SEO work together.

Why is local SEO important?

So, why is local SEO important?

If you serve primarily to a local audience, it is important to work on local SEO so that you get the desired traffic.

To explain the importance of local SEO, let us take you through some of the vital Statistics:

According to a study conducted by Google in association with Ipsos MediaCT and Purchased, half of those who conducted a local search on their smartphone visited a physical store within 24 hours, and 34% of those who conducted their search on computer/ tablet also visited a store within 24 hours.

18% of local mobile searches convert to a sale within one day.

50% of mobile phone searchers who conduct local searches are interested in things such as a local business address.

One in three searches on a smartphone was conducted just before reaching a store.

What are some local SEO services?

Local SEO is dynamic – it keeps changing thick and fast. That is why you need a lot of time and effort to get it right. To get local SEO right, you need to have an in-depth knowledge of local SEO. That is why, as a business owner, it is important to know some of the local SEO services so that you know what it takes to do well in local search results.

Here are some local SEO services that you need to know about:

Localising your website

Website localisation means that your website should have the name of your city, country, or region all over your site. If you operate from several places, then you need to create separate pages or content hubs for each place. Another way of website localisation is to involve your business in local community events and carry articles and news about them on your website.

Focus on citation building

Make sure your site is added to citation sites and online business directories. Adding your business on citation sites and online business directories improve your website visibility and help your potential customers to find you easily. Moreover, when you feature on citation sites with all your contact information like name, address, phone number, and website URL (NAPW) and add other information to business directories, it improves your search engine rankings.

Adding your business to Google My Business listing

You need to add your business to Google My Business listing so that it prominently features on Google services like local search results and Google Maps. If you want to do well on local SEO, the first thing you need to do is add your business to Google My Business listing. You should also add your business to Bing Places for Business

Focus on managing reviews and ratings

Reviews are important not just for showcasing the quality of your product or service, but it is also critical for sending the right signals to search engines. That is why it is vital to concentrate on genuine and honest reviews. Positive reviews boost trust and usefulness of your site and product/ service in the eyes of search engines. The number of reviews you receive, their quality, and the authority from where they are coming are some of the factors that can make a difference to your local search rankings.

Focus on getting high-quality and relevant backlinks

If you can get high-quality and relevant backlinks naturally from trusted and authoritative websites, it can improve your local search engine rankings. Getting backlinks from trusted sites sends a positive signal to search engines that your website is a trusted source of information, which helps you scale the local search algorithm. To improve your search visibility, ensure that you get links from local newspapers, business associations, bloggers, and citations.

How do local SEO and organic SEO work together?

Local SEO and organic SEO work in tandem. If you follow SEO best practices, it can help both your local search rankings as well as organic search rankings.

So, how do Local SEO and organic SEO work together?

When you add your business page on local listing directories like Google, Yelp, Bing, and TripAdvisor, it means you are also creating a link back to your website. When you add your phone number, address, and name of your business to local listing sites, it helps local SEO by informing search engines about your location. In doing so, you also create a link back to your website, which helps your organic SEO efforts because it is a link building strategy that can propel your ranking on search engines.

Your on-site local SEO activities like writing a blog post that talks of local issues or updating a page (adding your business address) not just helps your local SEO efforts, but it can also help your organic SEO. You need fresh content to keep search engines in good humour. And, when you write local posts or update your page, it not only helps your local SEO efforts, but it can also enhance your organic SEO efforts.

Both local and organic SEO can help improve your rankings if you do these activities in the right manner. But if you don’t follow best practices (or do it the wrong way) for local and organic SEO, it can have a damaging effect on your website rankings.

While you should do everything to please search engines, you need to understand that your potential customers should not have any problem in finding your business. After all, it all boils down to improving customer experience. And, that is exactly what Google emphasises on from the start. You need to make sure that your visitors don’t have any problems locating your business. The information they are looking for about your business, which includes the correct address, your working hours, the products and services you offer, etc. should readily be available to your visitors.

If you have any problem in managing your local SEO activities, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutionsnow. We are a full-service digital marketing company, and we have adequate experience and exposure in the SEO industry to propel your local SEO rankings in the right direction. You can also contact us for all your social media marketing needs.

Every website owner wants people to frequent their website. But not all of them succeed in attracting visitors in hordes.

Why?’

The reasons could be many. But one of the prominent reasons why people fail to visit your website is irrelevant or out-of-context keywords. If you want people to visit your website, you need to know what they search – the keywords or words they use and the content that best matches their intent.

Hence, if you want to get on top of the Google game, you need to do two things right – keyword research and understanding user intent.

Changes in the digital world happen thick and fast. For example, Google keeps updating its algorithms frequently, but one thing that has remained more or less consistent over the years is keyword research.

However, though the keyword research hasn’t changed much, the way it is done has seen quite a twist and turns.

Let us, therefore, take you through what is keyword research, how to develop your keyword strategy, and creating content with the user in mind so that you can optimise your online presence.

What is keyword research?

If you want to do well on search engines like Google, you need to know what search queries are used the most by your audience. It is in this context that keyword research assumes so much significance.

So, what is keyword research?

It is a process that helps you to know and understand the actual search terms people use to find what they are looking for on search engines. When you get a clear understanding of the actual search terms, the insight helps you to create a robust content strategy and a smart digital marketing strategy.

As a business owner who has an online presence, you must be aware of the importance of SEO. But that doesn’t mean that keywords or keyword research have lost their relevance.

When you do keyword research properly, you get to know what topics your audience is looking for, what do they like to read about, and the most popular topics among your audience. With proper keyword research, you also get to know your SEO keywords. SEO keywords are the terms/ phrases and keywords in your web content that allow visitors to find your site via search engines. When you optimise your site for search engines and speak the same language as that of your potential visitor, your chances of connecting to your target audiences increases substantially. And, that is what keyword research helps you do with ease.

Hence, with proper keyword research, you can get to know the keywords that are generating high volumes of searches every month and create a robust content strategy to target tour audiences.

How to develop your keyword strategy?

But if you want to do your keyword research properly, it is extremely important that you first have a keyword strategy in place. Doing keyword research is vital, but how you take your journey forward from there is equally important, and this is what makes your keyword strategy.

Based on your keyword research findings, a keyword research strategy is what guides you to make informed decisions about the content you need to create and how you need to monitor and track the results in analytics. A keyword strategy tells you how you need to target your keywords.

So, how should you develop your keyword strategy?

If you want to develop a robust keyword strategy, you need to focus on all the insights. A smart keyword strategy starts with self-assessment. Learn everything that you can about your product/ service and your competitors.

Understand your business

As mentioned earlier, you should first start to assess yourself, your business, your objectives, and your goals. Find out your USPs. Ask yourself, why would people want to visit my site? What is it that you want to convey to your audience? To learn all of this, you need to get hold of all the insights that you can so that you can utilise your resources properly.

Understand search intent

Search intent is an extremely important aspect if you want to do well in the digital world. If you want to know about the intent, it is important to know your audience first. You need to understand what people want, what they are looking for, and where they want to proceed. Try and learn whether your audience is only looking for information, or are they interested in buying things from you. When you know about the intent, you can create content to target the specific intent of your visitors.

Understand words

Words are the be-all and end-all of search. When you do keyword research, you come to know of the words people use to find what they are looking for on search engines. It helps you create user-oriented content that matches their intent to meet their requirements.

Understand your competition

When we talk of keyword strategy, competition forms an integral part of it. You need to have complete knowledge of what your competitors are doing. You need to know where your competitors are ranking for the search terms you are planning to target. When you study your competitors carefully, you can find out ways to outmanoeuvre them. You will get to know the keywords that will work for you – long tail or short keywords.

Understanding search engines

You will, of course, do all your competitor analysis on search engines. When you analyse your competitors, you don’t just get great insights into your competitor’s strategy, but you also get a fair bit of idea of what will happen when you type your main keywords or phrase. When you work so much on search engines, you get to know more about them, how they work, and how search engines give answers that result in no-click searches. Working on search engines over time can help you get a sense of a lot of things like featured snippets, local packs, and rich results.

Understanding data

If you want to make your keyword strategy successful, you need to analyse data. The more you analyse data, the better will be your keyword strategy. To analyse data, both before and after keyword research, you can take the help of Google Analytics. Google Analytics gives you great insights that can help you formulate a successful keyword strategy. Also, you can take the help of Google Search Console to get meaningful insights and pursue opportunities.

Creating content with the user in mind

People search the web with a clear intent in mind – most want answers to their problems, are looking for information about the products and services they want, or things they plan to buy. If you want web users to discover you, you need to optimise your content to match the user intent of your visitors.

Since Google takes pride in displaying the most relevant information to its users, you have to optimise your content for user intent so that it has a better chance of ranking well on the SERP. If you create content keeping user intent in mind, it helps your overall SEO efforts.

That is why it is essential to create content with the user in mind.

So, how do you create a user-intent SEO strategy for the content you produce?

The first thing you need to do is understand the different types of user intent. There are three stages of user intent. Turn to Google for help, and enter the search terms you think your audience will look for the most. The result you get will help you identify the type of content you need to create to tackle your audiences at different stages of user intent.

Informational search queries – The user in such search queries are just looking for more information about the product, topic, or service, and they are not ready to buy the stuff. For example, the query “how can a CRM help my business” is an informational search query. The result Google throws up for such queries are informational like how-to results (blogs and tutorials) with no ads on the result page.

Navigational search queries – The user in such queriesare looking for a specific type of content to firm up his or her option, but they are still some distance away from buying the product or service. For example, the query “what is the best way to choose a CRM” is a navigational search query. The result Google throws up for such queries will have blog posts with a comparative analysis that helps the user firm up his or her decision to buy. The result might give you a hint on how to buy the best CRM for your business, but no one is going all out to sell their product.

Transactional search queries – The user in such queries areall set to buy the product or service. For example, the query “where can I get good CRM for my business” is a transactional search query. Most of the results that Google throws up will be product pages from where you can buy a CRM.

Once you are aware of the different stages of user intent, it should become easy for you to create appropriate content with specific key phrases to target your audiences in each stage.

Next, make sure your existing content centres around user intent. You can do this by going to Google Analytics and checking your top-performing keywords. In case your top-performing keywords/ phrases are not matching the user intent, then you need to revisit your content strategy. What you need to do is create content for each different stage of user intent so that you can target your audience properly. You need to understand that when people are in the informational stage, they don’t plan to buy; hence you need to target them with informational content. But if your user is ready to buy, and your content is only informational, then you are missing out on opportunities. What you need is transactional content at this stage. Hence, it is important to produce content that caters to the user intent of your audiences in each stage.

That is why it is important to create content for user intent. Don’t just concentrate on keywords when you formulate a user-intent SEO strategy. What you need to do is create your content with user intent.  And, because Google understands intent well, it will become difficult for you to rank for content that does not match your keyword.

For instance, if you are targeting for a long-tail keyword like “how to make chicken curry”, but in your blog post, you write more about how to rear a chicken, then you will not rank for search results related to chicken curry; instead, your post will show up in chicken rearing. What this means is you need to create content with user intent in mind. If you don’t keep user intent in mind, you will not get the relevant traffic.

Also, if you want to target your audience through each stage of their journey, then you must create content that caters to each type of user intent. The best way is to guide your audience through each stage and take them to the buying stage finally so that you don’t lose on opportunities.

If you keep user intent in mind while creating content for your website, your SEO strategy is sure to take you places.

If you have any difficulty in keyword research or formulating an effective keyword strategy, you can get in touch with vStacks Software Solutionsnow. We are a full-service digital marketing company, and we can help you out in doing keyword research and in formulating an effective keyword strategy.