Smart Online Marketing Beyond Social Media

Getting likes on your Facebook or other social media page and relying on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are not enough if you’re looking to grow your business online. Beyond likes and page views, you need to always  connect with and gain the trust of the right people who value the content that you are sharing.

The following are a few guidelines for smarter, more efficient online marketing strategies:

1. Quality Over Quantity

Instead of counting the number of domains that display the link to your website, consider building one compelling, relevant and sensible content. It’s all about starting from the bottom and slowly (but surely) climbing your way higher.

What happens then?

Well, with great content comes great credibility that influential people such as the media, bloggers, marketplace giants and more will notice. Great content will have something significant that the target audience needs. In other words, your target influencers, should see you as a credible and trusted source.

2. OPA- Other People’s Audience

This basically means getting yourself out there- interacting with people, exposing yourself in different places, and working on lots of other ways to have people recognize you. This is a fantastic way of discreetly getting attention for yourself through the light of someone else. One concrete way of doing this is making sure that you are indeed approachable and recognizable for media outfits. Reach out to local newsletters, show them that you are a business worth knowing, and you can provide insight on information that they need.

You can do the opposite: Interview key people whose fans appreciate the values you share with their idol. Provide them with excellent content that is both timely and relevant to them.

3. Build Relationships

When we say build relationships, this doesn’t just pertain to a one-hit wonder for you. This means loyalty from you to their site and vice versa. Like what we mentioned in Quality over Quantity, the same principle applies here. Get yourself quality top sites to backlink your website, it’s definitely far better than having 50 unpopular and maybe even shifty-looking sites advertise your content.

This may sound difficult as top sites are not the easiest to reach. However, simple actions like following their social media accounts and actively consuming and sharing important stories from them will get them to notice you and the things you’re offering.

Build relationships with influencers. When we say influencers, we are referring to media people — either from social media or traditional  media. Get them to publish articles for you, share your content; you may even make a collaborative project together. Interaction and trust with them is key. Publicity from them may appear as evidence of credibility and trust to your target market.

4. Keep The Connection

Now, after working so hard to get all the hype about what you’re offering, you aren’t just going to let your customers walk away, are you? Of course not! Keep them coming back to you by having them sign up to your newsletters or e-mail subscriptions. Get them to download your application if you have one, or even a simple bookmark on your website. Do everything in your power not to lose the connection you already made.

5. A Little Investment

As much as organic social media strategies last longer, it doesn’t hurt to bring out a few bucks to get your business going. These paid ads have been tried and tested and trust when it says that it is indeed cost-effective. Facebook being one of the leading online advertising giants, is incredibly helpful in equipping you with the accurate consumer demographics that you need in order for you to reach the appropriate audience. Note that time is also a factor that you are expected to invest in. After all, nothing absolutely exemplary was reached without proper pacing.

Attention to detail is the principle to being a smart online marketer. From building your content, to carefully picking out how you will reach people, and who you will trust with your content, think of VALUE and present it in the details of your social media efforts.