Video Transcription:
Business owners ask me all the time what sort of marketing should they be doing? Unfortunately there’s no one right answer. Every business is a little different. However we do have a go-to list of digital marketing strategies that we’ve used to generate huge results for clients again and again. To find out my top marketing strategies for small business owners keep watching.
One of the biggest challenges with social media marketing is figuring out what to post. You probably feel like you constantly need to come up with new ideas so that you don’t run out of things to say. Then you end up posting randomly, without much planning or strategy.
When you create a social media calendar it actually makes it easier to figure out what to post and how to organize your content for posting strategically. To find out how to create a simple social media calendar for your business keep watching.
Hi, I’m Tom Malesic, founder and president of EZMarketing, and you’re watching AskEZ. This is where small business owners go to get real answers to their marketing questions.
Think of your social media calendar like TV programming. TV stations have regular consistent programming that’s designed to appeal to their viewers. Your social media calendar should be the same.
To do that you need to look at three basic things. You need:
First channels. Where are you publishing your content? Is it Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube? And how do you decide which platform is best? My rule on this is go where your customers are. Whatever social channels they use the most often that’s where you should be.
Once you know which channels you want to be on you can start planning what you want to post on each one of them. That’s where content comes in.
The goal of a social media calendar is to help you post content that’s relevant and consistent. To do this think of your content as shows on a TV station. What are the recurring topics or categories that you want to talk about?
As an example, AskEZ is one of our shows where we regularly post educational videos about marketing. We also have recurring topics like announcing website launches, inspirational quotes, and promoting our marketing services.
Here are a few tips to help you fill up your content calendar.
I want you to look at what you’ve posted in the past and what worked best, and then–obviously–do more of what worked best.
>>Related Video: How to Interpret Your Social Media Reports
You can also take an inventory of your content that you already have. These are things like blogs, videos, photos of your work, products, or even testimonials from happy customers. These things are great to post and even re-post so that you don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel.
Also keep in mind the rule of thirds. Your content should be balanced among three things:
Lastly, your social media calendar should help you plan how frequently you’re going to post. Each channel is going to be a little different. Facebook you might want to post every day, where Linkedin you might want to post only once or twice a week.
So how often should you post? You can look up general guidelines but here’s my golden rule: post only as often as you have something relevant to say.
Yes, you want to be consistent, but you shouldn’t just be posting for the sake of posting or because someone told you that you have to post on Instagram twice a day. If you don’t have something worthwhile to say it’s a waste of your time and money to say it.
So to create a social media calendar think about your channels, your content, and the frequency of your post.
We have a free social media calendar template that can help you do all this. It includes calendar pages for each channel, a calendar inventory page, and even a list of topics to help you get started. Click on the link below to download it for free.
And of course if you like this video, don’t forget to like and subscribe.
This Week’s Question: What should I send out in my email marketing?
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How much does SEO cost? If you’re thinking about hiring an SEO company, you’ve probably seen prices across the board.
When you Google search, there are tons of ads claiming to be the #1 SEO company with services starting at only two hundred dollars. Meanwhile, you know big businesses are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on SEO.
To find out what’s realistic and how much your small business should pay for SEO, keep watching.
Video Transcription:
What should I look for when hiring someone to handle my social media?
Nine out of ten businesses use social media for marketing and studies show that most businesses think social media is important or even critical. So who you have managing your social media should be equally important.
With so many social media platforms out there, how do you choose the best social media for your business? Learn the pros and cons of each social platform.
A question I get asked all the time is, “Why does SEO take so long?” Now imagine you’ve just hired a new SEO company. You’re excited. They’ve walked you through their strategy for how they’re going to get you found on Google and drive all this traffic to your website.
But you’re about two months in and nothing seems to be happening so what’s wrong? Well probably nothing, the truth is SEO takes time. Google actually says it takes 4 to 12 months to really start seeing results.
But why does it take so long? And what does that mean for you? If you want to learn more keep watching.
Hi, I’m Tom Malesic, Founder and President of EZMarketing, and you’re watching Ask EZ. This is where small business owners go to get real answers to their marketing questions.
One of the reasons we hear this question is people have an outdated perception of how SEO really works.
In the early days, it used to be a pretty simple formula right? You pick some high volume or really popular keywords, you put them on your website just a ton of times over and over again, and then you get lots of links back to your website, and bingo: now you have results.
If it were a math equation it would look like:
A+B+C=Success!
But now the equation looks a little more like this:
Today SEO is MORE complicated with MORE variables which means it just takes a lot more work to get through.
Great content takes time. Effective SEO relies on high-quality content that’s relevant for your customers. This is things like copy on your website, maybe blog posts, guides, infographics, or even videos like this one.
Look SEO takes time because great content doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time. It takes time to write it, to design it, to optimize it, to promote it. And certainly to get backlinks to it. The point is if you want results from your SEO you have to invest the time to create the best possible content.
Asking how long SEO will take really depends on a lot of things. One of the biggest factors is your competition.
So asking how long it will take to rank on Google is kind of like asking how fast do I need to run to win the race? Well it depends on how fast your competition’s running, right? If you’re running against a bunch of slowpokes you probably don’t have to work real hard to win. But if you’re running against very trained marathon runners you might be in trouble. So chances are, your competitors are doing SEO and winning is a moving target.
Also, some keywords in industries are naturally more competitive than others. So if you wanted to rank for “industrial powder coating service” that’s going to be relatively easy to rank for compared to if you wanted to rank for “auto insurance” which is insanely competitive.
If you’re outsourcing your SEO service, how long it takes also depends on your budget. Look there’s a lot that goes into SEO: we have things like site audits, writing content, optimizing your website, building backlinks.
Look it all takes time and if you’re only spending a couple hundred dollars a month, you’re not giving your SEO company very long to work, and it’s going to take them longer to get results.
Now that doesn’t mean that you should have to wait 4 to 12 months to understand what your SEO Company is doing for you. They should be able to explain what they’re doing and why and be able to show some level of progress.
SEO does take longer than other types of marketing, but the good news is it also lasts longer. Unlike Google Ads that disappear the second that you stop paying for them, SEO builds over time. You still need constant maintenance, but once you rank, you’re going to keep getting results and traffic will last longer.
If you want to get better results from Google I invite you to fill out the form below so that we can give you a FREE SEO Audit.
We’re going to give you a report and lots of suggestions on what improvements you need to make to your website to get better visibility on Google. And of course, if you like this video don’t forget to like and subscribe.
