Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [27]
Facebook provides a safe method of reaching fans and allowing them to take part in your marketing. Volkswagen, for example, allows fans to upload pictures of their VW vehicles, and there is a strong subgroup of classic Beetle fans. The conversation on VW’s main Facebook page is primarily fan-driven, and at the time of this writing, there are more than 175,000 fans. The photo gallery contains more than 1,700 pictures, again, mostly uploaded from fans. Volkswagen is able to utilize Facebook’s fan interactions, which plays to its strength of creating a loyal customer base that reaches back for decades.
Your company does not have to spread efforts among all the social-media services if it doesn’t make sense. Find what works and what spreads your message the most effectively, and focus on that channel. However, developing a strategy that works for your company requires that your business goals be clear and concise and that social media will assist those goals, rather than becoming a goal in itself. If a business is clear in its message before delving into social media, then that business is most likely able to retain that message and adapt it to the media. Otherwise, as is so common, businesses try social media and are not able to adapt their strategies to it, and the masses end up controlling their message and draining their time.
I appreciate the companies that know enough to slow down and ask questions. Be aware of the time invested, and develop a strategy. Make sure that strategy fulfills the goals of the business. Without taking the time to coordinate your message across a variety of media, your efforts will be disjointed and discouraging. Again, it all comes down to the basic principles of clearly defining your goals. What do you want to accomplish, how will you accomplish it, and what do you expect visitors to do? When the goals are established, measurement becomes clear, and a clear strategy will emerge.
Search Rankings Are Not a Goal
Leads, sales, and subscriptions are goals. Rankings are one of many means to those goals. They are an influence but not the measurement of success. Too many businesses think that as soon as they have a few keywords ranking number one in Google, they will be successful. In reality, there is much more to being successful, such as designing what customers will see on the other side of the search results. If your website doesn’t reflect the quality implied by your rankings, then visitors won’t stick around to contribute to your success.
Great rankings won’t support a bad business model. Gaining rankings for your website is a goal to have, but it is not the immediate path to success. There are many websites that are having great success without ranking for one or two “winning” terms. This is where I like to refer to visibility rather than rankings. I would rather have hundreds or thousands of terms ranking well than a single term in the top spot. When evaluating the traffic patterns of visitors, the broad search terms (such as cars, cameras, and computers tend to bring in a lot of visitors but not conversions, which is more of a factor in success than rankings).
Rankings Do Not Equal Sales
In the same way that more visitors do not equal more business higher rankings do not necessarily provide better visitors. The key is to measure the factors that directly contribute to success. Of course, rankings and visitor numbers are good factors, but they are not the only contributions. Unless there is also a factor of quality or accomplishment tied to those visitors, then you have succeeded in only