With so many different advertising platforms available, it’s easy to not consider your everyday social media network as an efficient method of generating revenue. After all, Facebook is just for funny dog videos, right?

If you thought that you would be wrong. In fact, just this month, Facebook’s advert revenue topped $10.3 billion with their revenue per user reaching more than $5 for the first time. These figures are especially impressive when you consider Facebook also marked 2.07 billion monthly active users in their third quarter of 2017.

With Facebook publicly hitting milestone after milestone this year, many businesses are considering the prospect of adding Facebook advertising to their marketing strategy, but is it right for your business? To help you make that decision, we’ve put together a few things to consider.

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So, you have a new website. It looks good, it’s quick and user-friendly. There’s just one small problem. No one can find it.

If this is the problem you’re currently facing, you may have found yourself scouring the internet to find a solution. If you have, you’ve most likely been thrown into the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This method of digital marketing works to put your website on the front page of Google for search terms that relate to your business.

If you’ve delved a little further, you may have also come across a term called Social Media Optimisation (SMO). SMO refers to optimising your social media platforms to bring more traffic to your website. SEO has been around since the introduction of search engines back in the 90’s. SMO, however, is a relatively new method of driving traffic to your website and only came about in 2006 when it was first mentioned in Rohbi Bhargava’s article 5 rules of social media optimisation.

Though their abbreviations differ by just one letter, SEO and SMO are vastly different. This article will explore the differences between SEO vs SMO.

What are SEO and SMO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation uses a variety of different methods to make your website rank highly on the search engine results pages (SERPs). These methods include: 

• Keyword Planning

Keyword Planning is the process of choosing a specific keyword(s) to target on each page of the website. This is vital to SEO as a clear keyword strategy means pages will not compete with one another for the same search terms. Each page will have a specific purpose. 

• Good Quality Optimised Copy

Each page on the website needs to have unique, optimised copy that focuses on specific keywords in order to rank highly on google. The copy needs to be well-written and easy to understand.

• Meta Title & Description

Ensuring each of your web pages has a unique meta title (the title of the page which tells Google what the page is about) and a meta description (the snippet of text that appears below the title in the SERPs) is another important part of SEO.  

• Link Building

Link building is a part of SEO which aims to gain links from other websites. Each link to your website from a reputable source is a good sign to Google, as these links are effectively ‘votes’ for your website. Combined, this alludes to the popularity of the website. The aim of link building is, therefore, to gain high-quality links in order to improve the ranking position of the website.  

• User-Friendly Website

The user-friendliness of your website is relevant to SEO. If your website is unresponsive, slow and difficult to use – it’s not going to get a good ranking on google. 

Social Media Optimisation (SMO)

Social Media Optimisation is a digital marketing method which focuses on making your social media platforms engaging enough to bring traffic to the website. 

• Create Shareable Content

Increasing social links through SMO involves developing content that people want to share and link to. Creating a blog on your website, for example, is ideal for this method of SMO as it is easy to link to. 

• Make Sharing Content Easy 

This method of SMO involves adding share and social link buttons to your website and blog in order to encourage sharing, recommending or bookmarking. 

• Providing Value to Users

This includes adding outbound links into your content even if it doesn’t help drive traffic to your website. This helps your website as you will gain a loyal follower base who will see you as a fountain of knowledge. Valuable content also helps with SEO as Google’s rank brain algorithm decides that useful resources should be at the top of the SERPs.  

• Rewarding Loyal Followers

This type of Social Media Optimisation involves rewarding your loyal followers with the occasional ‘thank you’, follow back, or even competition prize. By letting them know you value their support, you will gain a loyal follower for life.  

Do SEO and SMO help one another? 

Whereas SEO mainly focuses on improving your websites ranking and the ability to drive visitors through the likes of Google - SMO focuses on driving traffic via social media platforms. Both SEO and SMO operate in different spheres, but they do impact one another.

The main priority of both SEO and SMO is to drive traffic to your website. It makes sense that they should work together to bring as much traffic in as possible.

Though no one truly knows precisely how much different factors affect the Google ranking position of a website, it has become clear that social signals do affect SEO rankings indirectly. In fact, in 2010 retweets on Twitter were even described as a ‘new form of link building’. More recently, another study was conducted which concluded that a larger presence on social media does gain a higher place on the SERPs.

In fact, to see SMO impacting SEO, just search the name of a popular brand on Google. It’s more than likely their Twitter account will be listed within the first 5 results.

This is clear evidence that Social Media does have an impact on SERP’s.

Likewise, if you’re spending time and money on SMO, directing people to your website from social media, or trying to gain links from other businesses via social media, then it is important that you have a high-quality website with a good user experience.

Driving visitors to a website with a poor user experience will just result in a high bounce rate (single page visits). The user-friendliness of a website is part of SEO. Therefore, it is clear to see that SMO can also be impacted by SEO.

Why SEO and SMO Should Work Together

 SEO is a fundamental part of digitally marketing your business and SMO is gaining importance as social media becomes a larger part of everyday life. If you do one without the other, it is likely that your business will be left behind.

Google changes their ranking factors frequently, so it is important that your social media platforms are fully optimised. The value of social signals could change in the future, so SMO will ensure you’re prepared if their value increases. Furthermore, SMO is a good way to drive traffic and increase brand awareness.
However, you also need to ensure your website is fully optimised as this is where your conversions will happen. This is why SEO is essential and should be used in conjunction with SMO.

Depending on the business, the benefits from SMO can sometimes be seen quicker than the benefits of SEO. However, if you stop updating and optimising your social media platforms, the traffic can bottom out quickly.

SEO, on the other hand, is more long-term. If you achieve a high-ranking position for your website through SEO, it is less likely that you will lose mass amounts of traffic if you pause SEO efforts for a day or two.

Therefore, though they have different methods of driving traffic, every business marketing strategy should ensure SEO and SMO work together in harmony to drive as many unique visitors to your website as possible.

There’s a lot to take into consideration when trying to find the balance between maintaining your SEO and SMO; fortunately, there are agencies like Designer Websites who can take care of that for you. Our SEO specialists can manage your SEO and social media accounts, regularly updating and monitoring your progress to ensure that your content is fully optimised and is reaching as many people as possible.

SEO Services     Social Media Management

Designer Websites offer a range of different services that can keep you actively engaged with customers and ensure that you’re providing a top-quality user experience. If you’re interested in finding out a bit more about how we can help you out, reach out today for a FREE no-obligation quote. A member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible to let you know how we can help.

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Read More: What Happens When You Stop Doing SEO?

Last Updated: 26th April 2022

In this modern day, the influence of social media is becoming increasingly important. Your friends are on it, your family is on it, your dog might even be on it - but more importantly, businesses are on it. With 42% of marketers reporting that Facebook is critical or important to their business, it's clear to see why so many companies invest time in their social media content strategy. 

However, though using social media for your business may seem like the right thing to do, it may be time to consider whether it is actually right for your business. We’ve looked into reasons why social media might be right for your business and reasons why it might not.

Social media is right for your business if: 

• Social media is right for your business if you’re looking to engage with your consumers on a more personal basis.

  Social media is one of the best ways of gaining an almost friendship like relationship with your customers. By providing your customers with content they will appreciate, such as useful information, discounts, and insider info, this will create a loyal following of consumers from your social media channels.

• Social media is right for your business if you want to show the human side of your company.

  Social media is an effective way to show the people behind the business. Photos of the office eating cake for someone’s birthday or a recent company achievement really displays the human aspect of the business. Consumers react well to stories, so by telling your businesses story through social media, you will be able to gain their trust.

• Social media is right for your business if you have a limited marketing budget.

  One of the best aspects of social media is that it is 100% free. For a small business, the kind of exposure free social media platforms bring is invaluable. Paid for social media advertising is a fantastic way of gaining more conversions, but not every business has the budget for this kind of marketing. This is why social media is right for any business looking to gain exposure without spending too much money.

Social media is not right for your business if:

• Social media is not right for your business if you’re only going to promote your products.

  People mainly use social media to get the latest news and to be entertained, and it seems constant product promotion is quite simply not interesting. The typical rule of thumb is to post 3 informative and helpful posts for every product promotion post.

• Social media should not be placed on your website if you do not want customers to get distracted by it.

  If your social media buttons are at the very top of your website and are big enough to be distracting, there’s a chance a possible customer may decide to look through your social media rather than your products. If your social media is active and well maintained, this could be a good thing for your business. However, if it is littered with infrequent posts and possible bad reviews, it may be best to remove these click through buttons from your website.

• Social media is not right for your business if you do not know how to use it.

  Leading on from the last point, social media is not right for any business which does not know how to use it correctly. For example, if you do not have the knowledge that links do not work in an Instagram post; Instagram is perhaps not right for your business. Furthermore, if you do not know what kind of content to post on your social media or how you can benefit your customers with it, it may be best to take a step away from the platforms or hand them over to someone who does have a good understanding of social media.

• Social media is not right for your business if you spend too much time on it and do not gain enough feedback.

  Finally, social media is not right for your business if you find yourself spending hours upon hours on it but gaining little to none feedback. Especially if you are creating original content, such as images and videos made solely for social media, it may be best to put that valuable time into something that can provide you with solid feedback such as paid advertising. Paid advertising will be able to provide you with clear data on what works and what doesn’t for your business, so this could be more beneficial in the long run.

In Summary

Social media is great for connecting with people, but social media posts are not the best organic marketing strategy for sales or driving in enquiries. If you have a genuine desire to communicate with consumers, alongside providing informative, entertaining and advisory information, then social media platforms can be great for this. However, posts are not an effective way to promote products or services, so if this is your main aim them we would advise that you focus your efforts elsewhere, such as advertising on social media, which can be very beneficial if done properly. We will take a look at this in our future article about how you can get the most out of advertising on social media platforms.

If you think social media might be right for your business or you would like someone else to do it for you, our social media experts can help. Get in touch with us today to request a quote! 

Snapchat has always been ahead of the game when coming up with new ways to allow marketers to take advantage of social media. Not only can you take a selfie that makes you look like a dog (the future is really here it seems), but advertisers can get closer to their customers than ever before.

Following the success of Snapchat stories, which in the following years was copied by Instagram and Facebook, it can only be assumed that the same may be the case for Snapchat’s new mapping system. Snapchat continues to evolve the way businesses can use social media to promote their brand, so here’s a look at its newest feature.

What is the mapping system?

(https://www.snap.com/en-US/news/)

Snapchat’s mapping system (created by Zenly, then bought out by Snapchat) allows your friends to see your current location, letting you to see if they are near enough to hang out with in person. The feature also heat maps places where people are most actively posting stories, such as festivals or sporting events. Although it does seem quite like Big Brother is always watching, you do have the option to hide your location in Ghost Mode. Basically, the future looks a lot like more dog filters and letting everyone know your every move.

On their blog, Snapchat explains how this feature allows users to “See what’s happening, find your friends, and get inspired to go on an adventure”.

What does this mean for Advertisers?

Snapchat is rolling out this feature initially for the users (and a few sponsored celebrity accounts, such as Ed Sheeran), but it wouldn’t be surprising if advertisements soon reach the UK. Snapchat has had a clever history of easing in their customers so that ads seem less intrusive. This was true of its snapchat stories which allow the user to take or leave their sponsored posts.

However, with this new mapping feature it is possible that brand-related location will play a part, creating a new method of advertising via the app. It would potentially enable advertisers to target customers who are in their area, letting them know if they have a sale or an event on near them. Brands could pay snapchat to promote their event within the snap map, gaining attention from users that are in close enough proximity to take advantage.

This seems like an opportunity to advertise local deals that would actually pique customer’s interests. As the new feature has only just launched we are unlikely to see this development in the next few weeks, but it seems like a natural progression for the app.

Social media continues to change the way businesses communicate with their customers so it’s important to be on top of your game. If need help using social media to benefit your business, we are here to help! Contact our social media experts today.

In this day and age, it's a good idea to ensure your business is reaching potential customers on every platform possible. We've already discussed the importance of social media on this blog, but today we'd like to get a little more specific and focus on how to use Snapchat for business. 

Image and video messaging platform Snapchat has been mentioned in a lot of news stories lately due to Facebook and Instagram's newest features, which some argue bear a lot of similarities to the Snapchat app. Of course, Snapchat is hardly new - it was first introduced in 2011 - but it still has a huge user base, and it should probably be your first choice when it comes to building your social media following through video.

If you're wondering how to effectively use Snapchat for business purposes, don't worry - we've put together some simple yet very useful tips for you to follow. It may seem daunting, but video content is the future of content marketing, so it's definitely worth getting a handle on the likes of Snapchat sooner rather than later.

Here are our 5 simple tips for Snapchat success:

1) Offer Sneak Peeks and Discounts

One great way of gaining engagement and revenue through Snapchat is to offer special discounts and sneak peeks of your latest products via your business's Snapchat account. As you can see above, WeRateDogs has taken advantage of this feature by promoting their new range of merchandise. Snapchat is a superb social media platform for this kind of promotion because it allows users a literal 'peek' at forthcoming releases. If you were to post on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram instead, the post would be much more permanent, thus undermining the 'sneak peek' element.

Many businesses also use their accounts to provide 'secret' discounts to those who follow them on Snapchat. This is a great way to gain more followers on the platform - if you tell people about the exclusive discounts available through your Snapchat account, people will inevitably follow you in the hope of bagging a bargain.

2) Snap Contests

Snap contests are one of the most engaging ways in which you can use Snapchat for business. The beauty of Snapchat is that as well as using the story feature (which allows everyone to see what you post), consumers are also able to send you snaps directly. This feature makes snap contests a great way of utilising the platform.

Back in 2014, GrubHub displayed a great example of how to use snap contests to promote one's business. They created a week-long campaign called a "snap hunt". Every day of that week, GrubHub posted a new challenge for their followers to complete and send back to them. Whoever they chose as winners would gain a $50 voucher to spend on takeaway food. This competition was a big success, and Grubhub found that over 30% of their followers engaged in the contest, with their account gaining a 20% increase in followers in just one week. This proves that a well-thought-out contest (and the promise of freebies) works wonders when using Snapchat for business.

3) Inside Looks at Your Company

In any business, it is easy for consumers to forget about the human aspect of the company. This is why an inside look at your office, products, and workers is a great way to use Snapchat for your business. Many studies have found that people buy stories before they buy products, which is why displaying your company's story through a modern platform like Snapchat is one of the best ways to encourage customer engagement. 

Take Justin Kan, for example - he is an American entrepreneur and co-founder of Justin.tv, Twitch.tv and Socialcam. Kan uses Snapchat frequently to take his customers on a guided tour through his companies and the new venues he visits. He also shows snippets of himself mentoring young entrepreneurs, which really displays the human side of his businesses. Taking your consumers on a backstage tour has never been easier, so take advantage of this when using Snapchat for your business. 

4) Utilise Influencers

Social media influencers are popular accounts that have a substantial amount of influence over their followers. Gaining the approval of one of these influencers can benefit your business greatly. A valuable way to use Snapchat for business is by asking influencers to promote your business on their own account - you can ask them to rate, review or even try out a freebie from your company.

Above is an example of how Beth Norton, a popular lifestyle blogger, has promoted Zoe Griffin Photography through Snapchat. Promoting the use of this photographer through her Snapchat not only displays her approval but also encourages others to use this particular photographer.

5) Keep it short and snappy!

With some studies stating that the average human attention span is only 7 seconds long, you'll want to ensure that your story is kept short and snappy. Snapchat limits videos to just 10 seconds, and it's not a good idea to post too many of these onto your story in one day. Snapchat works in seconds, not minutes - so always ensure that the entirety of your story clocks in under the minute mark.

Snapchat users can flick through your story with just a movement of the finger, so make sure you get all of your good content into the first few seconds of the video. Spending 5 seconds setting the scene could cause users to flick onto the next snap before they even see the main point of your story. If you take one thing away from this blog, remember that on Snapchat, every second is important!

Need help harnessing the power of social media to benefit your business? Our social media experts can help!