HVAC Contractors Can Take Advantage of Social Media
I sat down with Matt Nelson of Building X last week to talk about social media in the HVAC industry. You can listen to the interview here (or download it from iTunes).
SEO Checklist
SEO is as important as the messages you’re trying to deliver. Today, we have a guest post from John Miller, President of Salient Software who’s been developing websites and SEO programs for the B-to-B space since the mid 90s. SEO rules change all the time (thanks to Google) and you need to continually keep up on the latest ways to stay ahead of the curve. John outlines some typical areas you need address. Enjoy.
People have been increasingly turning to the Internet to find what they need ever since Al Gore fostered the creation of the “information superhighway” in the earlier 90s.
While newspapers, magazines and yellow pages are disappearing, the number of websites has been increasing. In the early 90s, there were just a handful of websites, however, that number has now grown to 266,848,493 sites at last count (Dec 2010).
People are now carrying handheld computers disguised as phones, they carry tablet PCs, have the Internet piped into their TVs and DVD players and have desktop computers sitting at home.
People find content using Search Engines, using one or more of the 2000 search engines that currently exist. Google and Bing are the top players in the market today, followed by a number of general and specialty search engines that cater to narrow topics and vertical markets.
What does this mean to a website owner?
Start by spending less advertising dollars on traditional media, and then look to the Internet. Most businesses have websites which is a big leap from even 5 years ago, however, if someone is searching for the products and services you offer, will they find you?
Google and other search engines are very good at returning your website if someone knows the name of your business. They have made a special effort to assure you top billing when searching for businesses by name. If that’s all you need, then you don’t need to pay much attention to search, it is already working for you.
However, if you want people to find YOUR website when searching for your products and services, then chances are that search isn’t helping you at all.
In fact, it’s deliberately working against you. Google has built an empire ($175B market cap) by charging companies for top billing on search results.
It’s also true that any given a search for a generic product or service is likely to return in excess of 10 million web pages.
Given this back-drop, how can you get noticed?
Well, you can pay Google $.50-1.00 or more (depending on the popularity of key words and phrases) per click and have an ongoing tab that will cost you thousands each month. If you take that road, you will get your top billing in Google, but what about Bing, Yahoo, Altavista and the like? You will need to pay them too!
Or, you can choose Search Engine Optimization which modifies your site so your products and services have a much more likely chance of showing up in Page 1 – 3 of the search results.
What is Search Engine Optimization and How Does it Help?
No doubt you have noticed that some company websites frequently show up at the top in the “free” (called organic) search results much more often than other websites. This is no accident, someone spent a good deal of time and effort to make their company’s site rank higher with the search engines. This process is called “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO).
SEO is the way to bring the traffic and new customers to your website. If your site is not optimized for Search Engines, then those customers will go to someone else’s website. It’s a simple as that.
Here are the areas typically addressed for SEO:
- Keywords and key phrases – based on your products and services and based on what people are actually searching for, create a list of keywords and phrases that will lead people to your site. This list becomes your “Trophy” keywords and is then used for evaluation and updating everything else related to your site.
- Site structure and content – a single website page can only rank well for 1 or 2 Trophy words, hence, check the structure of the site to see if it complies or alter the structure to comply.
- Domain name – if the domain name echoes the product or service you are selling, it will raise your rank in Google and other search engines. You can have multiple domain names for a single website.
- Other Websites Linking to Yours? – the more links to your site, the better. Check to see who is linking to you, perhaps you can work out a deal with other website owners.
- Wiki and Blogs – have you noticed that Wiki entries often appear at the top of the free listings? Find Wiki entries that relate to your products and services and edit them – make sure you mention your own special “twist” and/or trade name. That will bring people to your site.
- Social media – make sure you are taking full advantage of Social Media, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and the like. The more your website is mentioned “elsewhere,” the higher your Google rank.
- Sitemap? – does your site have a sitemap? There are two kinds, an internal sitemap for search engines and one for “people.” Make sure you have both.
- Search Engine Submission – once changes have been made to your site, use a reliable submission service to submit your site to as many of the 2000 search engines as possible.
SEO is an expense, but costs less than the Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc., ads in the long run. A website is like a “garden,” you look at it frequently and “tend” it to remove weeds or replant crops. With SEO, you run reports to see how your site is ranking with respect to your Trophy words. Then, make adjustments to the site to enhance your ranking.
When was the last time you looked at your SEO?
Social Media: Is Your Marketing Team on Board?
Social media, if used correctly, can be an untapped treasure for marketers. All too often though, marketing departments treat social media just like any other channel they use to PUSH their marketing message. What they don’t seem to understand about social is that it’s about engagement and interacting with real people!
I recently read a post by Heidi Cohen, titled How Marketers Miss the Boat with Social Media Relationships that outlined 7 things not to do if you want to succeed with social media. Here are some highlights:
- Don’t talk about you – Talk with them, not to them. Be social and listen. Ask them questions and engage them in a conversation.
- Don’t speak in “marketese”– Marketing lingo is selling lingo and it turns people off big time. Talk like a human being. Pretend you’re at a cocktail party. Be funny, inquisitive, be human.
- Don’t force YOUR point of view – Listen to what people are saying through brand monitoring and respond accordingly.
- Don’t think you can buy customer trust – In the social arena, trust is earned. Pay attention to what customers are saying and if something needs fixed, fix it. There’s no better way of building credibility.
- Don’t knock your competion – It doesn’t work in the real world and it certainly isn’t going to work in this one. Focus instead on ways you can help your customer.
- Don’t think a social media relationship will result in a sale – Social prospects are not unlike a regular prospect. Not all folks you meet are ready to buy right now. You need to identify where they are in the selling cycle and give them the type of info they need to go to the next step.
- Don’t assume that social media relationships are limited to social media networks – Appreciate the fact that people have a life outside social media and have real life relationships. In those relationships, what they’ve learned in social media circles may come out in conversations. Wouldn’t you like it if they were telling their business associates about this great product they found or a solution to a problem they had and they were talking about your brand?
The bottom line is the marketing team needs to be on the same page and treat social media differently.
Do you have any other suggestions on what not to do?
Are You Using Social Media to Keep Track of Your Competitors?
We all like to know what our competitors are doing, and more importantly, what customers are saying about them. Until the advent of social media, it was hard to track conversations from customers. There are several platforms, tools and tactics that you can implement to help you keep ahead of the competition.
Adam Holden-Bache in a recent article in Social Media B2B outlines 6 Ways to Beat Your Competition Using Social Media. Here are some highlights:
- Do your research – Set up tools and key words/phrases to monitor both the competition as well as the industry.
- Identify opportunities – If you see a topic or trend gaining traction, promote your capabilities.
- Produce more educational content – Decision makers are doing more research online. The more relevant content you can provide, the better the chances of you being considered.
- Showcase your service and support – B2B companies that excel in providing prompt customer service should promote it as it will influence a purchasing decision.
- Ask for feedback, then use it – Customers can be a good resource for honest feedback.
- Engage your customers – If your customers like you, they will tell their friends and business associates. They are what we call brand advocates and they turn out to be one of your best resources.
Free Monitoring Tools to Track Your Competition (or Yourself)
www.Topsy.com is a real-time social search that lets you see what people are saying about a topic across social platforms which provides qualitative feedback.
www.socialmention.com is another real-time search that analyzes strength, sentiment, passion and reach, as well as provides averages, keywords, top users and other metrics that all show impact and reach of social activity.
www.google.com/trends analyzes search and news reference volumes for topics and produces the top regions and cities allowing you to see how popular a topic or brand is as well as where it is popular.
www.howsociable.com measures social visibility of brands allowing you to see how active brands are on 20 different platforms.
These are some ideas on how to monitor the competition. What are you doing using social media?
Are You Considering Mobile Media as a Strategy to Reach the Professional Tradesman?
Contractors are busy people and they rely more and more on devices that they can use in the field. Between smartphones, tablets and even internet cards for your laptop, you had better have a mobile strategy either in place or on the drawing board or you will be missing opportunities to communicate and connect with your audience.
No one could sum it up any better than Noah Elkin, eMarketer principal analyst for mobile, “The rapid expanding smartphone and mobile internet user populations raise the stakes for marketers and make mobile web more of an imperative than ever.”
Here are some facts you need to consider:
- Almost 100 million consumers will be on the mobile web this year
- Smartphones represent 38% of mobile users this year
- In 2010, 96% of all tablets were iPads (15 million)
According to Bill Siwicki, managing editor of Mobile Commerce, The up-and-coming web programming language HTML5 enables developers to create mobile web sites that are more like apps, and to create apps that require little modification to operate on a variety of mobile operating systems. However, an HTML5-based app can’t do everything an app written specifically for Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android can, he adds.
So the question is, what’s your plan? Don’t miss out on an opportunity to touch and engage your audience.
Here are some other posts that might be relevant:
Mobile Marketing to the Professional Tradesman: What Are You Waiting For?
Manufacturers: How to Succeed in Social Media Using Content Curation
One long-term strategy that folks sometimes overlook is that of leveraging content curation as a way of building followers and “expertise standing ” in your field. Content curation for those of you who may not know what I’m talking about is the art and science of finding and sharing quality content on a specific subject.
Most of our clients are manufacturers, and when they get into the social media scene, they are usually focused on original content so they can show the world how much they know and why their product is better than the other brands. While this content info may be good, most people who might follow you don’t always want to hear about you or get a sales pitch. What you may want to consider isbecoming a trusted and reliable source of info on a specific subject or market. The “go to” guy.
Manufacturers, for example who make several product lines, say for the plumbing market, could become the reliable source for industry info. Info that would be from the associations, wholesalers or contractors. I recently read a guest post from Neicole Crepeau on Convince and Convert site that outlines things to help you be successful at content curation. Highlights include:
- Identify your audience – for most of you that shouldn’t be hard to do. You can’t be a ” jack of all trades.”
- Focus on content sharing – share relevant content as 70% of people will only ever click on a topical category. 56% of all retweets contain links so it’s important that your followers are spreading the word (and links) to their contacts.
- Make sure content is impeccable – promote the gems so readers don’t have to sift through lots of content that may not be meaningful.
- Be consistent – you need to do this on a regular basis to build followers.
So if you’re looking for another way of becoming a credible source in your field, you may want to consider Content Curation.