When it comes to running a small business, everyone needs more. More traffic, more eyeballs on the website, more business, more cash. More.

People often say that marketing a small business can be like a trip to Vegas. You have to carefully weigh out all marketing decisions in terms of return on investment. Recently, we had a client work with us on developing an adwords campaign, and the payoff was awesome!

Southern Rubbish hired us back at the end of August to set up and manage their Adwords campaign. They had been running their own campaigns previously, but decided to outsource this aspect of their marketing to see if they would see some improvements. While meeting with the client, we determined that it would be best to set up an entire new campaign.

The natural starting point was to discuss the details of what their campaign needed to include such as the services they were looking to advertise, geographical area they were looking to advertise, and what their ideal budget should be.

We started the new campaign for Southern Rubbish on September 1st, 2016 and we saw some exciting trends occur early out of the gate! During the next two months the client and MIL stayed in touch to track results from ads making adjustments where needed to add money or ads where needed and refine current ads to bring up the better performing ads.

At the end of the two months of work on the campaign, we got a very exciting email from the client after having emailed them a recap of current results:

“Wow! That's pretty sweet. I should also let you know that we'll be having a record sales month for November thanks to Make It Loud! I'm looking to purchase a second truck in order to keep up with the increased volume in work load.”

It was definitely a cause to celebrate around the office. We won’t go into exactly who did the “happy dance” the day we got that email.

For the past 12 years, the staff at Make It Loud has put heart and soul into helping small to mid-sized businesses grow. When we work with our clients, their business becomes our business. This means we take such ownership in the progress that each time our customers do well, it’s a celebration for us too.

This is our story today. Doesn’t your business deserve more? Call Make It Loud today and let’s talk about how we can build your next success story.

It's not often that this happens, but yesterday, Cliff got a call from Mike Sammonds, the owner of Gwinnett Business Radio X, who asked if he could do the show in a couple of hours. (Ok, yes, the scheduled guest had to bail!). After a brief shove from John, Cliff agreed to do it. 

The show is sponsored by Embassy National Bank and Joe Moss is the president. He's also the show moderator and just a wonderful man. It was only a 40 minute show, but it flew by! As you can see by the picture, Cliff has a natural face for radio. 

They discussed various mistakes small business owners make with their digital marketing, search engine optimization and a few other things. It really is a quick show!

Recognizing that it's a little weird, you can watch the video of the radio show here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiZmPtUc0Bw

Is Instagram a Social Platform for Business?

There seems to be a question on everyones mind when it comes to the social media platform Instagram and that is “How does it help a business?” Although there can be argument made that this question exists for all social media still, for those that have proven other social channels such as LinkedIn and Facebook as profitable sources of leads and sales there still seems to be a larger lingering tone of insecurities for businesses when using Instagram.

This undertone almost certainly exists firstly because the target audience started out as a primarily teen and young adult centered platform but has since grown to expand its target age range into the 30’s. Instagram also is light years behind Facebook in their advertising mediums BUT has recently started breaching into the paid advertising market working towards a goal of becoming similar to facebook’s boosting and ad performance.

So what makes Instagram different?

Instagram allows you the opportunity to create visual appealing art and photos to share on all your social media platforms. You can easily change the filter on an image and add text or create a fun collage with multiple photos. So many ads these days center around visually appealing images to the point that the competition to grab a users attention has steadily risen.

Since Facebook only allows 20% or less text on an image the ability to edit the photos on instagram can be a huge time saver to use on both platforms for advertising. 

Instagram also allows videos as of August 2013 and the use of videos in peoples news feed has become very prevalent and useful. Business owners can post how to videos for their products and even answer frequently asked questions via this platform to be sure to impress all potential and current customers.

As of very recently Hootsuite, the popular and free scheduling platform, has started integrating with Instagram profiles to allow for all the benefits of scheduling posts ahead of time.

How Well Do You Know Google/
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising?

Several local business owners are taking part in this quick and easy to track advertising platform and have doubled their business in a matter of months! Pay per click allows businesses the chance to get to the top of Google and gain clicks while they are pursuing their organic SEO, as long as the math makes sense.

The discovery process for this platform is half the battle.  To start of the process Business owners or marketing managers will need to complete four easy steps:

1.    Identify Top Performing Keywords

2.    Use Keyword Data to identify monthly budget

3.    Determine what an avg. new client is worth to them

4.    Calculate ROI

After the business owner determines that this makes sense for them, they can choose to either set up using the Adwords Express outlet or the full Adwords account.

I will tell you benefits and drawbacks to each and let you decide.

Adwords Express benefits include an easy to use interface that automatically adds keywords for you based on the landing page and website information you enter and the primary keywords you enter at the beginning of setup.

The dashboard shows how much of your budget has been spent, how many conversions so far, and your list of keywords.

A few key drawbacks and major problems with adwords express would be that the keywords can not be edited and are very broad and a lot of times unrelated to what your company does.

I have used this previously for one of our clients and quickly realized that it was not the most efficient or accurate method. Adwords express had the keyword “plumber Chicago” listed even though I had specified the company only services the Atlanta, GA area. This presented a serious problem paying and bidding for keywords that had absolutely no use whatsoever to my client.

            A full Adwords account has a wealth of information right at your fingertips and the ability to change nearly anything you would like to in the interface and draw data you did not even know was available. The drawback to this powerful tool is that it is not intuitive. If you are interested in using Adwords it is going to take you some time to get up to speed with using the interface, but this aspect of marketing can be very lucrative for your business, but we also understand that learning how to manage it all can feel like you're drinking from the fire hose. Give us a call to explore whether or not Adwords is right for marketing your business.

When it comes to marketing your business online, it’s important to think about what your customers are typing into the search box to find what you do. It’s important to realize that your business is the solution to someone’s problem, but what exactly do they type to find you? That’s where keyword research can move your digital front door right in front of the searching masses. But how’s all that work?

It’s not as difficult as you might imagine. Mostly, it takes a shift in thinking and the ability to think like the customers you serve. And, how can you use keywords exactly? Easy. A good keyword strategy is what all search engine optimization (SEO) is based on as well as any pay per click campaign (PPC). Also, whenever you write a blog post, the more you use keywords in what you write, the better your SEO will be.

So, what exactly IS a keyword? They’re words or phrases that describe the core of your business. Think of keywords as the way people search to find what you do. This is important because when it comes to marketing your website, Google can’t read the pretty pictures. The algorithm can only figure out what your site’s about by reading the content, and if you’re light on content, your site will leave Google scratching their head. You never want to confuse the most powerful search engine about where your website should rank. Bad juju.

There are basically two types of keywords. Short tail keywords are usually brief (as in one or two words) and are very general. If you’re a dentist, “dentist” & “dentistry” are the main short tail keywords that you have to focus your SEO on. Short tail keywords usually have high search volume and lots of competition. A long tail keyword is a longer, more specific phrase that captures what you do in more detail. If you happen to be a dentist that specializes in sleep apnea dental appliances, that’s a great phrase to focus on because, while it may not have a ton of people searching for it, those that are searching are ready to buy.

So, which types of keywords are the best to focus on? Both actually, but if you’re wondering where to spend all your energy, we’d say lean heavily toward long tail keywords. The simple fact is that long tail keywords have a couple of perks. First, they’re usually easier to rank for. Just how many people are gunning for page one for “sleep apnea dental appliances” or the “price of sleep apnea dental appliances”? We have no idea, but we can tell you that it’s a whole lot less than “Dentist”. Second, long tail keywords have a higher conversion rate which means…mo money.

Once you develop a working list of your best keywords, you want to use them in all your content marketing. This is a fancy way of saying use keywords in all the written messages you craft for your business- your social media, your content on your website, your emails, etc. Everything. Once you define the purpose of each piece of content, it’s smart to define a buyer persona. Think of an exact type of person in your target market that you can craft your message for by using keywords relevant to your business. Doing this helps you ring the right bell to help your prospects salivate over what you do.

Tools For Keyword Research

So, how do you find the right keywords for your target audience? With this, there’s more art than science, but a little science is never a bad thing. Here are some starting places:

Google Keyword Planner- when looking for the right keywords, it’s always a good idea to try to find some search traffic numbers. The more the better, but keep in mind, the higher the number, the more competition you’ll have as well (usually). With keyword research, you always have to think about the geographical region you’d like to rank for. You can use this tool to get an idea of how much people search for your stuff in your city, your county, your state or a wide combination thereof.

Google Trends- which keyword is more popular “plumber” or “plumbers”? Google trends can help you decide which one is more popular in your geographic region. It’s also fairly useful to help you come up with other ideas

Keywordtool.io- just type in a short tail keyword to get a list of long tail keyword ideas. Now, sometimes, this list will make zero sense, but there are certainly enough times it gives up some jewels to make it worth it.

These tools are enough to get a newbie started. They’ll help you figure out just what words and phrases will help convert the lookie loos on your site or blog to actual paying customers.

For more training on how to find the right keywords for your website or blog posts, contact us at 678.325.4007 and schedule a one on one consultation. 

Because of their size, Google sometimes gets a bad rap, but the truth is, when it comes to figuring out how well your website is doing, installing Google Analytics is a great way to get started. In fact, you could insert the obligatory “drinking from the firehose” analogy here when you consider exactly how much data Google Analytics actually gives you. It’s easy to get lost in all that and give up because it isn’t always clear what data is helpful and what’s too advanced for where you are now.

We recently held a boot camp where we walked some business owners through some of the basics and takeaways of Google Analytics (GA) so we thought we’d share some of the lesson here.

First, if you’ve never installed GA on your site, contact your friendly neighborhood web designer and get that done. Here’s why:  without some analytics program, you really have no way of knowing how your website’s doing. It’s like having an employee work for you that you never see, never hear anything from and have no way of knowing if he or she is actually being productive. You need to have an idea of how much traffic your website’s getting as well as some other handy information.

So, that’s where we can dive right in. Once you log into GA, you can click on the “all web data” line and that’s where the fun begins (or in some cases, the confusion). Right away Google hits you with a chart of all the traffic your site’s been getting. You can slice and dice that any way you want. Want to see how much traffic you’ve had all year? No problem. Just change the start and end dates in the left corner and your chart will adjust along with the numbers below.

From there, the numbers below the chart are very important to consider. In the old days of SEO, you could take a website that, well, let’s just say wasn’t pleasing to the eye (read heinously ugly) and rank it well. Well, along came the Panda update and changed all that. An engineer at Google made the argument that while they were tracking information like Time On Site, Pages Read and Bounce Rate, they really weren’t doing anything with it. He convinced his bosses that these three metrics indicated how well designed the site. His argument was that people don’t stay on ugly, useless sites and they sure don’t read many pages of them. That’s when they started taking these numbers seriously. In fact, you could say these three metrics are now the most important ones to consider after how much traffic your site is getting.

So, what are good numbers? It really can depend on what you want people to do on your site. Take the time on your site for example. I like that metric to be around a minute and thirty seconds, but if you have a contact form on your homepage (or on every page), that time could be less. You’d want to measure that with the Pages Read metric to try to develop a story as to what the data means. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of people that come to your site and immediately “bounce” off again. I like the bounce rate to be under 50% for most sites. If it creeps too high above that, then you need to look at your keyword strategy. People bounce off sites that don’t meet their needs which means they may be finding it with keywords that aren’t on target.

Imagine being able to look over the shoulder and see where people that come to your site click around. There are two ways to do this with GA. One is with the Behavior Flow which lays out where people are going in a flow chart presentation. The beautiful thing here is that you can see where people go on their first, second, third interactions with your site along with drop off rates. You can tell where the majority of your traffic is leaving which gives you data you can use to make some design changes or add content to lower the drop off rates. Also, you can load In Page Analytics and get exact percentages of where your traffic is clicking (and where they’re not). You can even click on the colors and get a heat map of where people are clicking on your pages and elements they’re outright ignoring. Naturally, this is handy information to have because you can begin to make changes on where people are clicking on your site.

Wouldn’t it be great to know where your traffic is coming from? Act now and you can! Under the Acquisition tab, you can hit Overview and see exactly where your traffic is coming through. Click on each category and you’ll learn specifics like which social media site is bringing the most traffic to your site.

This is only the beginning of some of the practical information you can get from Google Analytics. If you’d like to learn more, contact the staff at Make It Loud.  

Make it Loud is a digital marketing firm located just outside of Atlanta Georgia that specializes in great website design, search engine optimization, pay per click management, social media management and so much more. We have at least 2 free boot camps every month where we teach local business owners about various digital marketing topics. 

When it comes to business, we all need to think of strategies to get more business through the front door. Considering some companies have a bricks and mortars front door, some have only a website as a front door and some have both. Clearly, if you have a website, it’s important to figure out how to get more traffic and search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most prominent ways known.

Not that SEO is the only way. There’s also pay per click (PPC) to increase your site’s visibility as well. But, the math may not always work out for PPC. For instance, if you sell a product that is less than $100, a $500/month budget means you have to sell at least 5 “things” to break even- not that breaking even is a good goal to shoot for. Considering that it can take about 5 ad clicks (people clicking on your ad) before one person calls you, then you need a fair amount of impressions and clicks to get the sales you need. If you have an average client sale of, say, $2000, then a monthly budget of $2000 means you only need 2 sales a month to make money with PPC. The odds of getting that with a strong ad campaign are really good.

But, with SEO, the numbers aren’t that simple and clearly outlined. It can take weeks to month to get on page one- which is clearly one of the goals or key performance indicators (KPI). Many SEO experts joke about hiding Jimmy Hoffa’s body on page two of Google’s search results. There’s a lot involved in getting your website to page one. There’s what you can do to the site itself (on-page optimization) and the stuff you do to get the site noticed externally (off-page optimization)

Keep in mind, the list of on page optimization stuff is not inclusive (but it’s pretty good). If you knocked out everything on the list, it doesn’t guarantee page one ranking because A) there are no guarantees in SEO and B) a lot depends upon your search engine competition (i.e. what comes up when you type in your primary keywords). It isn’t all about your actual industry competition. Sometimes, your biggest competitor isn’t even on page one.

But, speaking of keywords, it’s important to think like your target market and consider what the searching masses might type in the search box to find what you do. There are some tools you can play with to discover traffic patterns for specific keywords. If you go through the motions to set up a PPC account with Google, you’ll have access to the Google keyword planner. Keyword Eye also has a pretty user friendly tool and Google Trends has a nice tool to find out the regional interests of certain keywords or phrases.

Once you have determined the keyword strategy, here’s what you need to do on each page for SEO:

• Use a keyword in your page titles, but write them for conversion rather than SEO
• Use a keyword in your meta descriptions but write those to get the clicks as well
• Whether you’re writing a blog post or landing page, use keywords in:
  • Early on in the content
  • Last sentence of the content
  • Use variations throughout the text, but use them naturally
• Use keywords to label each image on the pages (called alt tags)
• Link related pages together on your website
• Link to authoritative sites occasionally
• Have a blog post on your site & add posts at least weekly
• Always have at least one image on each page with alt tags
• Check the size of your images and watch your page load speeds

For off page optimization, there are really two primary strategies- increasing social signal and getting backlinks. With backlinks, it’s definitely quality over quantity. There is no magic number, but it’s a pretty good idea to try to get industry specific sites to link back to you. There are a variety of strategies you can use to get that to happen, but avoid reciprocal links (where they link to you if you link to them). These types of backlinks can actually hurt you these days. Another type of backlink which can be useful involves directory listings. This is where you list your site in directory sites like yelp, merchant circle, hotfrog, etc. These links just sit there and point back to you.

Social signal is all about how often your business gets mentioned on social media sites or social bookmarking sites. Google is able to see these mentions and while they say they don’t use them as a ranking factor presently, it is a sign of credibility for your site.

Doing most or all of these basic SEO tasks will help get your site moving in the right direction. Every business owner needs to consider whether or not it’s worth their time to try SEO on their own or leave it to the professionals. We’ll be happy to help.

For the past 10 years, Make It Loud has been working with small to mid-sized business owners to establish and maintain a professional web presence. We help design great websites, social media marketing campaigns, SEO and more. Call us today or visit our retail storefront for a free consultation today.

LinkedIn: Marketing Yourself & Your Business

LinkedIn remains one of the most powerful social media channels for B2B marketers and its importance continues to grow.  Organic reach on LinkedIn remains unthrottled and the majority of LinkedIn users are the decision makers in their respective businesses.

LinkedIn offers two account options:  1) Personal Profile and 2) Company Page.

PERSONAL PROFILE:

Your Personal Profile is the foundation of your LinkedIn presence and it serves as the storefront for your personal brand throughout your entire professional career.   Please use a professional profile photo and complete your profile using well written text and multimedia elements when available. (Spellcheck!)

You will use your Personal Profile Page to share helpful information with others. This in turn validates you as an authority in your particular industry.  Don’t use your Personal Profile for selling!  That’s reserved for your Company Page but your Personal Profile Page will be used in tandem to gain wider exposure for your Company Page updates.  (This will be explained in more detail when we discuss Company Pages.)

Your Personal Profile Page Is For Helping Others

You have several ways of interacting on your Personal Profile Page.  You can share an update or you can like, share, or comment on one of your connection’s updates.  The later shows you to be a caring business partner.  In addition, your name and profile photo are now attached to that update which is visible to both your and your connection’s network.  When posting an update, remember to include an image which will help draw attention to your update.

Always Use An Image When Posting An Update

Stay focused on growing your LinkedIn network by continually sending invitations to connect and responding promptly to any requests you receive.  (Sending a personal note to the connection during this process is a nice touch.)

Welcome To LinkedIn’s New Long-Form Posts

The newest way to share on LinkedIn is via the Long-Form Post.  Think of it as a mini-blog (but no selling!)  This is where you will share personal/professional insight that would be helpful to someone dealing with issues that you’ve faced. You can also share industry knowledge that would expedite the reader’s learning curve.  Persons reading your Long-Form Post can elect to “follow you” which alerts them to all your future posts.  These followers can be LinkedIn users with whom you are not currently connected.  (Your Long-Form Post becomes part of your Personal Profile and your Long-Form Post is searchable both on and off of LinkedIn.)

COMPANY PAGE:

In order to create a Company page, you first must have a completed Personal Profile.  You will also need a “domain based” email address for the Company Page you’re creating.  (Example: john@yourcompany.com)  Make sure too that your company is listed under the ‘Experience’ section on your Personal Profile.

Your Company Page is where you will share information about your company’s current promotions or upcoming special events and promote what makes you different or better than your competition. Your Company Page should be professionally branded with the consistent look and feel of your website and other social media channels.

Your Company Page Is For Promoting Your Business

You’ll want to encourage LinkedIn users to ‘follow’ your company page.  This is done by promoting your page via newsletters, printed materials, other social media channels or good old-fashioned email. 

To gain wider exposure for your Company Page posts, you can ‘like’ the update when it shows up on your Personal Profile Page’s newsfeed. This is a non-selling/humble way of getting this update in front of your 1^st level connections and it allows them the opportunity to share it with their connections.

Use Your Personal Profile To Expand Your Company Page’s Reach

You don’t want to ‘like’ every Company Update you post on your Personal Profile Page as this can get a little annoying and predictable.  Be selective on the updates you choose to bring into your personal LinkedIn pipeline.

JOIN A GROUP:

A great way to expose your brand beyond your current LinkedIn connections is to Join A Group.  There are groups for most every industry and interest so finding one to join should be easy.  Once a member, you gain immediate contact access to group members and a portal to share your knowledge with professionals outside your current network.

BEST TIMES TO POST:

Best times to post on LinkedIn:  Tuesdays & Thursdays:  7:00 AM to 9:00 AM (and 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM)

*** Worst times to post on LinkedIn:  Monday-Friday:  9:00 AM to 5:00 PM (and 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM)

When It Comes To Posting, Too Much Is Not Better

If you are currently not very active on LinkedIn but want to be, start slow.  On your Personal Profile Page, begin with maybe posting one update per week and one like/share/comment per day.  After a month or so, you can ramp up to a more normal schedule.  Of course, what’s normal is unique to everyone but my suggestion is posting an update no more than once a day to your Personal Profile Page and like/share/comment on someone else’s update no more than two or three times a day.  As for your Company Page, start with maybe one post per week and after 30 days expand to two or three posts per week.

SUMMARY:

The secret to building a solid LinkedIn reputation for you and your company is to be helpful, humble and consistent (and not become an irritant because you’re posting too often or sales pitching too much).  Your LinkedIn connections can choose to block your updates, or even worse, remove you as a connection.  You don’t want either!

Please ‘follow’ our Make It Loud company page https://www.linkedin.com/company/make-it-loud-web-design and I’ll see you on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/greggburkhalter  Happy New Year!

5 Top Best Ways To Market Your Business

For many small to mid-sized business owners, marketing is a mystery. Some have a plan while others have a more “Field Of Dreams” approach (If I build it, they will come). The reality is that once you have a “Wow!” website, your marketing doesn’t end there. You have to work it, but that’s where some folks just shrug and hope for the best.

We’d like to make it simple because there’s elegance in simplicity. We talk about this stuff all the time, so we thought we’d blog about it. The question is, “How do I market my website (which is really marketing your business)?” We’ll give you our top 5 best ways to market your business to bring your target market to your digital front door. (The order of these just depends upon your business and industry):

1.       Search Engine Optimization (SEO):  marketing is all about getting your business in front of as many eyeballs as possible (within your target market). SEO is all about getting your website seen by putting it on page one of the search engines. It’s not an overnight process, but it puts your business where it needs to be seen the most.

2.       Pay Per Click (PPC):  Many people are afraid of PPC because they don’t understand it. It works like this- what is your average customer worth to you? $100? $500? More? Now, how much are you willing to spend to bring in one customer? For example, if your average customer brings in $500, then you only need one new customer a month from PPC to break even if you spend $500/month. With 2 new clients, you’re making money and so on. We recently saw a client double his monthly business through PPC!

3.       Social Media Marketing:  This is using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc to market what you do. We advise people to define their target market and work on establishing a presence on the social media channels where those people spend time. This approach to marketing is more about starting conversations with your people rather than hard selling. There’s a lot to be said about establishing yourself as an industry expert or helpful resource to draw people into what you do.

4.       Email Marketing:  We are still surprised at how many business owners don’t collect customer emails or do collect them and don’t do anything with them. Email marketing is based around this thought, “Would you rather do business with someone you know and already trust or do business with a stranger?” This isn’t about spamming people as much as it is about getting customers to opt in for deals, specials and news about what you do. This drives traffic to your site and through your front door.

5.       Networking:  Yes, this means getting out there and shaking a lot of hands. The more people see you and get to know you, the more they can help you be successful. There are plenty of networking groups and opportunities through the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce and other groups. You can visit most closed networking groups twice before you have to decide on joining, but this gives you a great chance to get to know a lot of helpful people out there. It’s been the key to our success here at Make It Loud.

When you’re a small to mid-sized business owner, you wear a lot of hats. It’s easy to spend so much time working in your business that you don’t leave time to work on your business. Balancing it all often requires some outsourcing. We manage most of these resources for our customers who often pick and choose what resources they want and which ones they can budget for. Most importantly, it’s critical to keep an eye on what resources are available for your success and stay focused on what works. We can help. Call Make It Loud to talk to one of our consultants today!

It’s commonly accepted that you should review your overall marketing strategy at least once a year.  When it comes to the digital portion of your marketing, we recommend a review every 60 to 90 days.  The ever-changing Google algorithms and the frequent updating of social media’s “terms of service” necessitates this constant reevaluation. 

Below are a few key points to consider when setting your digital marketing resolutions (goals) for the first quarter of 2015.

WEBSITE:

Your customer expects your website to be graphically appealing, easily browsed (on all devices) and filled with quality content establishing you as an authority capable of filling their needs.  Google is looking for much of the same.  However, you must first satisfy Google’s spiders (site scanners) if you want your website to show up high enough in the search rankings for customers to find you.

Just last month, Google began putting a “mobile friendly” notation (on mobile search results) next to websites that are easily viewed on a cell phone.  At the same time, Google let it be known that they’re preparing to rank websites denoted “mobile friendly” more favorably.

Is your website “mobile friendly” in Google’s eyes?  See the image below at http://goo.gl/vSXl5S and find out.

Keep in mind, the average lifespan of a business website is 2 to 3 years before the site begins to look dated. If you website fails the “mobile friendly” test, please reach out to Make It Loud.  We give you our honest feedback and direction.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

How effective is your current social media strategy?  Are you using the platforms your target market uses?  Does what you’re doing seem effective?  Should you restructure your social media mix or possibly expand the channels you’re using?  These are all valid questions and ones that must be objectively answered when evaluating the effectiveness of your on-going social media efforts.

Dramatic changes occurred in social media this past year and these changes will continue and only increase in frequency.  One easily recognized recent trend is the push by all the social media towards monetization or what is often referred to as “pay to play”. 

Facebook recently told marketers not to expect their posts to organically appear on their follower’s news feed and suggested they should plan to spend some greenbacks to gain the broader exposure.  (That’s paraphrased but you get the jist.) 

In 2015, we suggest allocating marketing funds towards “boosting your posts” on Facebook and promoting accordingly on your other social media channels.  At least give it a try and gauge for yourself.

DIGITAL MARKETING ASSESSMENT:

As a way of helping small to mid-sized business owners gauge their digital marketing efforts, Make It Loud is offering a FREE Digital Marketing Assessment.  If you will go to http://digital.makeitloud.net and answer a few multiple-choice questions, one of our Digital Marketing Consultants will reach out to you with a full review of your current marketing (including suggestions for improvement) and assist you in prioritizing your action items.  Please enter promo code 2015 to receive your free assessment.

THANK YOU for your friendship and business.  Have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!