Articles – Vibe Creative News & Articles

An Introduction to Social Media Marketing

May 22nd, 2013

Social media is fast becoming an integrated part of company marketing strategies. Many now rely on social media to assist them with key aspects of their businesses such as customer service, promotions, and market research.

Social media provides a relatively inexpensive way for you to keep new and existing customers interested in your business, drive more traffic to your website, promote new products, and add some personality to your brand.

Many smaller businesses in the UK are finding new customers by engaging in relevant conversations on Twitter and some companies have built up huge communities on Facebook by simply posting creative images and exclusive offers.

What is Social Media?

Social media is the term used to describe websites and on-line tools which allow people to interact with each other by sharing information, opinions, knowledge and interests. These sites include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and emerging platforms like Pinterest and Google Plus. Social media involves the building of these communities or networks, encouraging participation and engagement.

There are over 33 million Facebook users in the UK, meaning over 50% of people in the UK have a Facebook profile. And social media isn’t just for young people – the over 55 demographic is now the fastest growing in the UK. Social media is a great tool for attracting a much wider audience to your business, and there isn’t a better time to start using it.

The Key to Successful Social Media Management

Successful social media channels must be kept regularly updated with engaging and relevant content. Follow our simple guidelines below to find out more about managing successful social media channels for your business:

Social Media Channels: Choosing the right social media channels can be tricky. It’s best to start small with the main channels like Facebook and Twitter, and then only sign up to new social media accounts on other platforms if you feel the need. Facebook is a very visual platform so you need to be able to upload plenty of relevant images, and Twitter is great if you have time to keep it updated more than once a day.

Appearance: Social media channels, like Facebook and Twitter, should be treated with the same respect as your website. By using professional company logos and images in the setup of your channels, you are extending your brand across these new channels in a reputable manner.

Tone of Voice: This is true of the way you post, and what you say in social media. You want to create a similar tone of voice to how you would speak to your customers on the phone, or in emails. Keep your posting friendly but respectable, and keep an eye on spelling and grammar, as that can be instantly off-putting to potential customers.

Content: The content you post to social media is going to help your on-line community grow. Posting things that are likely to be shared in social media will help to spread your business name on-line, as you will be referenced when that post is shared. Useful content such as interesting blog posts, tips and advice, and competitions are likely to be shared as well as humorous and creative posts.

Amount of Updates: Nothing looks worse in social media than a channel that hasn’t been updated for months. This gives the impression that your business gave up too easily, or is even too lazy to check the channels. Only commit to social media if you know you are going to be able to post regularly, and if you are going to be able to check for new comments and messages from your on-line community.

What Will It Do & Why It Works

There are many benefits to using social media, some of which we have mentioned in this blog. Well managed social media channels should begin to drive traffic to your website, get more people talking about you on-line and open up your business to a whole new audience.

We offer social media management at Vibe Creative to those who don’t have time to manage it, or need help with setting up their channels.

If you would like to know more about social media and how it could help your business, contact us on 01743 272609 or email studio@vibecreative.co.uk.

Posted in Articles, Business, On-line Marketing, Social Media | Comments Off

Better Returns with National SEO

April 22nd, 2013

For any company, their website’s objective is to generate new leads and sales.

You may be a business with a website, located anywhere in the UK, with goods and services that you want to sell across the whole country.

However, you simply aren’t getting the sales that you need. When you try searching for your website on Google for keywords that describe what you sell, you find that you’re on page 456; nobody’s ever going to find you there.

Your solution is a Search Engine Optimisation campaign targeting customers nationwide.

What is National SEO?

National SEO is a form of online marketing which enables more people to find your website when using search engines such as Google. Customers are able to find your website regardless of their location, and at the exact time when they are already actively searching for your products or services.

The result? High quality, pre-qualified leads or potential customers from all over the UK visiting your website.

The Key to a Successful SEO Campaign

The purpose of an SEO campaign is to raise the visibility of your business and in turn drive traffic to your website. Vibe Creative achieves this by analysing your website, its products and services, and then carrying out research into the keywords that potential customers may type into a search engine to find you. We then make your website more visible to the world for those keywords.

A successful SEO campaign will employ several key strategies and techniques, and the initial research stages can be the difference between success and failure. Below are some tips on what to consider at the beginning of any SEO campaign:

Objective –This is more than merely highlighting that we need to increase website traffic or sales. It must detail the user process, what the website is selling, and what happens throughout this process.
Is it selling online via e-commerce or lead generation?
What is the product/service? How is it purchased? What is the market?
What is the average sale value?
Answers to these questions will help us identify what the likely return on investment is going to be, and how to deliver a campaign that will achieve this.
Keyword Research – An SEO campaign needs to be implemented around keywords, and these need to be thought about and researched. This involves building a list of keywords that potential customers will use when looking for your product or service online. Part of this work includes evaluating the search volume for these keywords to ensure a significant number of people are using them when searching.
Competitor Research – It’s important to know who you’re up against in the online world. Big players like Amazon or John Lewis are going to be difficult to compete with, and this needs to be considered when estimating the potential return a campaign may deliver. We will carry out this research and use this vital information to plan an SEO campaign that would take this possible competition into account.

Once the research stages have been completed, a strategy can be formulated that will:

Use keywords that are relevant to your product/service, and to potential customers who are researching or ready to buy
Use keywords that have a significant number of people already using them in their searches
Be realistically achievable given the other websites competing for these keywords in the search engines
Provide a return on the investment in terms of time and/or finance

What Will It Do & Why it Works

A well-thought-out SEO campaign will drive people to your website who are intending to enquire and or make a purchase. The result will be more traffic to your website, with users finding you at the right time in their purchase process, resulting in higher quality leads and higher conversion rates for online sales.

SEO can remove the guesswork found in other marketing methods, unlike direct mail or placing a display advert on the chance of somebody seeing it. Instead, SEO reaches those customers at the time they are researching or wanting to buy regardless of whether they are local, in another part of the UK or the world.

If you would like to know more about national SEO and how it could help your business, contact us on 01743 272609 or email studio@vibecreative.co.uk.

Posted in On-line Marketing, SEO | Comments Off

Grow Your Business with Local SEO

March 10th, 2013

If you have a bricks and mortar business, or one that operates around a physical location, it’s likely you’ll get some or most of your customers from within your local area. If your business is based in a town or city, servicing customers within a fixed area, then you should be marketing it with Local Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

What is Local SEO

Local SEO is a process of optimising a website to appear in the search engines for key words that are relevant to the products and/or services it offers within a fixed location. This enables customers to find these products and services offered by local businesses via the Search Engines. Google is becoming very good at tailoring search results based on a users location, which presents a great opportunity for local businesses to advertise on-line. This makes Local SEO a highly effective form of local advertising, targeting potential customers at the precise time they are looking for businesses like yours within their local area.

Why Local SEO Works

Local SEO can remove the guesswork from traditional marketing, unlike direct mail or placing an advert in local newspapers which works on the chance of somebody seeing it and being interested. Instead, local SEO reaches local customers when they are looking to buy your products or services. Customers that are actively searching for your products or services on the search engines are most likely to be researching or ready to buy. This results in a higher quality lead that is pre-qualified, and is much more likely to convert into a sale. The reasons why Local SEO can be so effective are outlined below;

On-line is the place customers are looking for businesses -
Local customers are using the internet to find local business. “97% of consumers search for local businesses on-line” – According to Google.
Targeting and Timing -
Local SEO is highly targeted, reaching customers at the right time based on their search terms. So you will reach them at the time they are either researching or ready to buy your product or service.
Higher quality leads have better conversion rates -
This is a further point relating to Targeting and Timing above. A huge advantage over traditional advertising that only appeals to a small proportion of its audience based on the chance they see it at the time they want your services.
Local SEO opportunities are free (for now) -
Local SEO will get your business listed in localised search Engine Results, with Places pages available for free from Google.

What Can You Do to Help Your Local SEO

There are some things website owners can do to help with Local SEO, and these basics will be a step in the right direction. Applying for a Google Places page is an essential step in improving your local listings within Google. This will help your business stand out, with the ability to add Photos, update your address and hours of business. The Places platform also allows you to connect with your customers, as it enables them to rate and recommend your business on-line. You can see what customers are saying and respond to their reviews. Reviews are also another signal in getting your business listed more prominently than the competition.

If you would like to know more about Local SEO and how it could help your business, contact us on 01743 272609 or email studio@vibecreative.co.uk.

Posted in Articles, Business, On-line Marketing, SEO | Comments Off

Writing Meta Descriptions

August 7th, 2012

Most website owners have Content Management Systems powering their website, providing the ability to update web page content easily, maintaining a fresh and engaging website. Many Content Management Systems have the facility for updating of Meta Data, which are some HTML tags on each and every web page that are used by the search engines. In the early days of the internet, these were very important and were used by the search engines to formulate their results pages. Today however, the search engines don’t rely on these so much, but they are still important to get right and here we’ll highlight the importance of the ‘Meta Description’, and how it should be used.

Very briefly, we’ll go over some of the other common meta tags below;

Title Tag – This is very important for Search Engine Optimisation in respect of Keyword Ranking and Relevance. This provides the Search Engines with the title of your document (your web page) and will tell the search engines what that page is about. So, it needs to be relevant to the pages content.

Description Tag – This is important for users and it is used by them before they click through to your site, we’ll talk about this in detail below.

Meta Keyword – Said to have no importance any longer, and the Search Engines pay no attention to this. We say it’s good practice to include keywords here that are present within your page content though.

So, what part does the Meta Description play? Well, it is used by the Search Engines, but these will not improve your rankings. This tag is used by search engines ‘in’ the Search Engines Results Pages (SERPs), and is applied as the little snippet of content that appears below the title of each search result in the list. Example below;

This is the first snippet of content users will see before they click through to your website, so this needs to be written to entice users in. The more enticing the description, the more users will want to click through to your site, and so will improve your ‘click through rate’. When searching the internet via Search Engines, you probably read these snippets of content without even realising it, and you click-through to a website based on this small amount of text.

So, what makes a good Meta description?
You have about 3 sentences to get users to click through to your site, so your core service, selling points or headline offer would be a good start. Meta Descriptions are configured for each and every page on a website, so keep them relevant to the content of each page. For example, the home page of a website is essentially an overview of the products or service you offer, but inner pages are much more focussed on specific subjects or products groups, so bear this in mind when creating them. It’s good practice to include keywords that are relevant to the service or products your web site/web page is about, as if these keywords form part of the users search, the Search Engines will highlight these words in bold. As you can see in the sample image above, the key words used in the example being ‘web’ and ‘design’ are made bold and more visible. If you rely on telephone enquiries, perhaps if your business primarily offers services, include you telephone number. Keep it short and to the point, around 200 characters that describes what your website offers and include your brand name, as some users may be searching for your company specifically. It’s good practice to avoid the use of ALL UPPER-CASE and lots of exclamation marks !!!!! – tempting to include when highlighting offers and sales.

Posted in Articles, Content Management, On-line Marketing, SEO | Comments Off

A Guide to the Website Cookie Law

July 23rd, 2012

Some clients have been asking us about the Cookie Law, what it is and how it affects their business. There hasn’t been too much talk about this, and information first published by the ICO was confusing and offered little guidance on how website owners should comply.

What is a ‘Cookie’

So, first things first, what is a Cookie? Well, where websites are concerned, a Cookie is a small file consisting of letters and numbers that are written by a website and stored on the device of a user accessing it. There are many different types of cookies, some are deleted as soon as the user leaves the website, yet some remain on the device for set period of time, others remain until they are deleted manually by the user. The purpose of these small files is to monitor user behaviour, commonly used for analytics to improve website performance, or for delivering targeted advertising. Others are essential to the operation fo a website, for example, an e-commerce website uses cookies to remember what a user has placed in their shopping basket as they move from page to page on the site.

What is the ‘Cookie Law’

The ‘Cookie Law’ is a new privacy legislation that requires websites to get consent from a user prior to any files being written to or retrieved from their device. In this case a users device being used to browse the internet such as a PC, Laptop, Tablet or Mobile Phone. This new legislation was passed in the EU to make users aware about how information is collected about them by websites. The UK has now updated its Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations to bring this EU directive into law.

Good and Bad Cookies

First, you would need to identify the cookies your website uses, and weather these are first party or third party cookies. First party cookies are those used by your own website and pose the least risk in terms of privacy. These are very often essential to the operation of a website, such as remembering the contents of a shopping basket on e-commerce sites. The other type is a third party cookie, which are the main reasons the new legislation was introduced. Examples of bad third party cookies are those that track user behaviour once they leave a site, monitoring the websites they visit and gather data which is then used to deliver targeted advertising based on this data. The second thing to consider is how long a Cookie remains on a users device once it’s been written. Some contain the instruction to delete themselves when a user leaves the website, where others will remain on a device for weeks, months or even years in some cases. With all this in mind, it’s a good idea to break down Cookies into categories which helps to clarify the risk they pose;

Category 1 – Strictly Necessary Cookies
These Cookies are first-party and are Zero Compliance Risk. These are Cookies that are essential to enable users to move around the website and use it’s features. Another Cookie of this type would be a ‘Session Cookie’, used for the operation of shopping baskets on e-commerce websites. Without these Cookies, key website features could not be provided.

Category 2 – Low Compliance Risk Cookies
These are again first-party Cookies and used to improve/aid the websites operation and perhaps for collecting website analytics data. So, essentially these are Performance Cookies, which are low risk as they remain on a users device once they leave a website, but cannot personally identify a user. In the case of analytics, this would be for gathering anonymous data for statics of the website usage and what pages are visited.

Category 3 – Medium Compliance Risk
These are usually first-party Cookies that remain on a users device once they leave the site. These are used to identify the user returning to the site and used to deliver personalised content based on their behaviour at their last visit or perhaps choices they have made on the site. Examples of this may be selection of their preferred language or delivering weather reports based on their location. These Cookies are not used to track user behaviour on other websites.

Category 4 – High Risk Compliance
These are usually third-party Cookies and are those which remain on a users device once written. These are used to track and record visitors interests, gathering data used to deliver adverts that are relevant to the users browsing. These Cookies are usually applied by third-party applications that have code embedded on a website. An example of this is Google Ads, Google Maps and YouTube Videos. When users watch videos, other ‘related’ videos are delivered based on the subject of the one that has been watched.

How to Comply

It is the website owners responsibility to ensure that their website complies with UK law and it is recommended that a Website Cookie Audit is carried out to identify what’s required to make a website compliant. Your Web Design Services provider would usually carry out this as a service, and can make recommendations on what should be implemented. Once your audit is complete, there are two methods to compliance;

Explicit Opt-in / Opt-out

This would be applied if there is heavy use of third-party Cookies on a site, with lots of advertising and social media connectors. In this case, users would need to be provided with the option of opting in or opting-out of receiving cookies. This would be a notice that is made prominent to users and providing them with access to your Cookie Statement. Users are able to opt-out and prevent Cookies from being written to their device. This will prevent the collection of analytic data too, even though users are still accessing your website.

Implied Consent

If a site uses Cookies that are used to improve functionality, for example, Facebook Like Buttons, and performance monitoring such as Google Analytics, then a site may be compliant providing a clear notice is available for users to access. This would provide information on the Cookies used, why they are there and what data they collect. The statement would advise users that they must only use the website if they agree to have the identified Cookies placed on their device.

It’s vital that websites must take steps to comply with this law and there has been a degree of flexibility built in to accommodate the level of risk each Cookie type may pose to a users privacy. If you would like to ensure your website is compliant, contact your Web Design Company and ask for advice on the steps you would need to take.

Posted in Articles, Business, E-Commerce, Web Design | Comments Off

Categories

Archives

Blogroll