eSpire Marketing

So you just set up a Facebook page for your company, now what? Just because you set it up doesn’t mean that anyone knows (or cares) that you are on Facebook. You need to promote your social media campaigns just as you would promote a new product for sale. Generally when you’re promoting a new product, to get it off to the right foot, you probably give them a bit of extra incentive at first to come and try it out right? Well your social media campaigns should be no different.

Step 1:
The first thing you’ll want to do is post some cool content on your page. If you invite anyone to be a fan of a page that doesn’t have anything posted, you’ll hardly get any fans at all. You need to give the people who visit your page something to look at. Whether that is video content, blog posts, or pictures it doesn’t matter. Make your page look interesting before you tell anyone that you even have a page at all.

Step 2:
The next thing that everyone needs in order to have a successful social media campaign is friends right? Well then your first step is going to have to be to acquire friends. The obvious first step is to ask your friends and family to become a fan of your Facebook Page. You will get a decent amount of people to become a fan of your page just because they know you. It will help to make your account look a bit more established before you announce it to the rest of the online world.

Step 3:
Now that you’ve got your feet wet it’s time to officially announce your new Facebook Page to the rest of the world. Your next step should be to write a blog article telling all of your fans that you have set up a New Facebook Page. This step is more for the search engines than anything else. It will also act as a reference page for the next step in this process.

Step 4:
Gather a list of people to email and announce the launch of your new Social media page. You may already have gathered an email list from your customers. Email them and let them know, but give them some incentive as to why they should become a fan of your new page. Maybe offer a lucrative discount to all the fans of your pages. It works trust me. I’ve seen it done with a lot of success on numerous occasions. Then, add the people who actually opened the email to a separate email list. These will be the people you will continually email about your new facebook or twitter page.

Step 5:
Once the initial momentum has stopped from the first email, create a contest of sorts, and make the prize opportunity something very nice. One of the best things to do is a “Become a fan for free stuff.” For instance, if you want to make it your initial goal to reach 1000 fans on Facebook, give prizes out to your fans for helping you get there. Customized Girl does a great job with this idea in that contest.

Step 6:
Keep things interesting. You want to continue to keep momentum rolling. Try different promos, contest, and just fun ideas with your new fans on these pages. You want to keep giving them a reason to come back to your page and continue to give them reasons to interact with you. That is how you create online social media buzz.

A lot of smaller businesses might find the amount of time and effort needed to be spent with these people creating new ideas, contest, and promotions to keep their fans coming back for more. I promise you, that the lifetime value of these people is going to FAR exceed the amount of money you spend keeping them entertained. Keep it fun, keep it fresh, keep it real.

One of my clients is about to make the switch from their current site and current web address to a completely updated website and a brand new URL as well. As their mentor in all things SEO and web marketing in general they are looking to me to get them ahead of the curve when the switch is finally made. There are a few things that anyone who is switching sites should consider, I will list them first and then go into greater detail later in this post.

Links- what do you do to get the links from your old site to your new one ( this is the most important part)

Search Trends- which URL is going to help you gain the most traffic through the search engines

.Com vs. .org?- believe it or not there is a difference and it helps a lot with credibility to your customers.

Okay let’s get back to the links. it is important to make sure that your new site retains as many of the links from the old site as possible. How do you know who is linking to your old site? Simple, just go to yahoo.com and enter this search query “linkdomain:www.oldsiteurl.com” from there you will have a full list of everyone who links to your old site. Contact each one of those people and ask them to link to your new site. You might not get all of the links back but the more you retain the better.

Okay now the search trends. It is important to get your next site off to the right start by establishing a strong URL. Using tools likes Google search trends you can determine which keyword is most important for you to use.
For instance, the client in question sells American Flags and I was curious as to whether we should use “America” in the url or “USA” I used Google’s search trends tool and determined that using USA was most favorable in their market. Not only will they show up easier for USA flags but they will for US flags as well. That is the difference in thousands of dollars in sales for them.
Lastly which should we use a .com website or a .org? While both types of URL’s carry the same wait for the search engines .org websites carry significantly more trust value than a .com. I chose a .org for this site for that exact reason.
All in all there are a lot of important factors when you are switching a site over to a new URL. These are some of the most important. I’m going to leave you with this last little gem. When planning on switching over url’s the earlier you can establish the domain the better. Search engines place a lot of weight on domains that have been around for the longest amount of time.