You’re not blogging.
People have an insatiable appetite for content. Don’t believe me? Hang out in an airport, a doctor’s office, a restaurant, or even a church and watch people stare at their phones all day. They are reading, replying, re-Tweeting, sharing… content. If you are not providing content, you are not feeding the masses — and guess who your customers are? That’s right, the masses.
The most popular and most visited sites on the web have the most frequent and fresh content. Take Facebook for instance. You know one of the things people love the most about it? They hit the “refresh” button and there’s something new to read, a new picture to see, or a new video to watch. Content drives traffic, traffic creates content consumers, content consumers become customers, and customers make you money. It all starts with content.
It doesn’t matter if you write deep insightful things, technical “how to’s”, whimsical thoughts, or create goofy videos. Just create good content and people will flock to your website. Obviously the better the content, the better your results will be. But the subject of your content really only depends on your targeted audience. And once you have them there, you can sell them on your product or service. If you don’t have a product or service, you can use tools like Google AdSense to make money off of advertising.
You aren’t taking advantage of social media properly.
As a business owner, or someone who wishes to use the web as a medium to make money, social media is one of the greatest tools we have available to us — and we can use it for free! It’s great to have a ton of followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… etc. But, most companies cannot directly make sales or generate advertising income from those outlets alone. Most of your money making power online is derived from your website and you need to use social media to get people there so you can convert them to customers.
So, why are you wasting quality content by publishing it on social media first? Every single original piece of content that you are posting on social media, on behalf of your business, should originate from your website so that it can drive traffic back to your website. Write your post on your blog, then link to the post back to your website via social media.
Handled properly, content shared on social media will drive traffic to your website, traffic to your website will drive sales, sales earn you money. Writing things on social media first is the digital equivalent of giving away the house. If you never give anyone a reason to visit your website, you are wasting your social media power. You can’t pay the bills with “likes” (unless the “likes” are on posts that link back to your website).
In a future article, we’ll show you how to automate the process of sharing your website content on social media.
You are not responding fast enough.
We live in a “gotta have it now” world. If you are competing with hundreds of other people for a segment of the marketplace, you need to be one of the first ones to respond. There’s no excuse for not responding to a customer inquiry in short order. We have smart phones, tablets, PC’s… we are never separated from the web anymore. You can set these tools to alert you of any type of incoming customer inquiry. Reply to them as soon as humanly possible and you will see your sales increase. Even if you do not know the answer to a question, reply with, “Thank you for contacting us, we’ll find an answer for you about this shortly and be in touch very soon”. Then, follow through by finding the answer and replying. You’ll be amazed at how responding to potential customers quickly will increase sales.
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If you are creating quality content, using social media the right way to drive traffic to your website, and you are responsive to clients, then you are probably doing pretty well right now. If not, follow this check list and see if things don’t improve.
- Have a blog and use it often by creating original, quality, content on your blog that people will want to consume.
- Put links on social media back to where your content is (your website/blog).
- Have your website setup in a way that people will learn about your product/service once there.
- Be the first to respond to website based inquiries.
- Close the deal.
- Make money.
If you have a website that you don’t know how to use, you don’t have a blog, your website is outdated, or you’re confused about where to start… contact us today. We can help. bebold@getaudacious.com