With online marketing content, the reach is perhaps the easiest part of the strategy. But what good is reaching your intended audience if they don’t convert to customers? Simply reading an ad or a blog post does not necessarily equate to conversions. Conversions are the coveted objective of content marketing.

In today’s ever-accelerating pace of the global economy, many businesses are using video content marketing to market and sell their products on the internet. Video viewers are anywhere from 64-85% more likely to buy after watching a product video.

Why bother with video content marketing?

The ability to influence a consumer decision is a key component of good marketing strategy. Video content marketing helps clarify questions people have regarding product performance and real-world application. The ability to see a product demonstration adds a dimension of confidence, good or bad, to that decision-making process.

In a recent Cisco Systems, Inc. survey, 93% of respondents find video helpful in comparison- shopping. The survey also reports 87% of respondents find video helpful for researching additional items from the same brand. Video content marketing is also a useful post-purchase tool. In the same Cisco survey, 93% of respondents find video helpful for post-purchase instructions.

Quick show of hands: How many of us have bought a product and turned to YouTube for help figuring it out?

Think of how much your customers would appreciate not having to leave your website to find this helpful demonstration, not to mention how it can boost their opinions of your customer service!

Video Content Marketing Helps Your Branding

Video content marketing is engaging because it stimulates more of the senses; it adds dimension to content and makes it more relatable. People are more likely to respond and recall what is presented after watching a video presentation.

Video content is more likely to be shared on social media outlets. Using social influence to share brands people like is a marketing strategy that can pay for itself.

Video has become an integral part of the research process or ‘pre-shopping’. Consumers turn to video for demonstrations and product reviews when making purchase decisions. As a result, video is now driving demand for brands and products. Since video is the most shared form of content, companies are capitalizing on the opportunity to engage their audience.

Google Likes Video Content!

It’s true. According to Market Week, 70% of the top 100 search listings contain video content. Search Engine Optimization is a valuable, but time-consuming exercise for any company that wants to leverage the potential of the web. Adding video content is an easy way to boost performance. Pages containing video have a bonus: They gain greater prominence, with a video thumbnail, helping them stand out from the crowd. (For more on this, ask a Think Big Marketing consultant how this can work for your business).

What video production options do small to medium sized businesses have?

If you want to get in on the benefits of business videos for your organization, you have two basic options:

1. DIY production
2. Professional video production services

Cost and ROI are likely the most important factors in deciding which direction is best. We’ve already discovered the benefit and return on investment, so here is a synopsis of cost for both options.

DIY Production

If you’re thinking about investing in the equipment needed for in-house DIY video productions, this list will get you started with what you’ll need and approximate costs for mid-grade equipment (keep in mind, this does not include set-up or training your personnel on how to operate equipment):

• Camera 
$2000 – $10,000
• Teleprompter 
$900
• Microphone (studio quality) 
$200 – $400
• Green screens & lighting kit 
$180
• Soundproofing 
$700
• Editing software 
$200

Professional video production

The second option is to go professional. The benefits of a professional video production are many, but boil down to one key factor; cost. The caveat? Cost can be quite high. There is no bootstrapping option.

Below is a sample cost table for 3-minute motion graphic online marketing video:

• Project Management $2,000
• Script Development 
 $2,500
• Motion Graphic Development 
$4,500
• Voice Over Artist 
$750
• Audio Editing 
$750
• Stock Music 
 $500
• Stock Imagery 
$1,000

While the layman’s video camera is great for family holiday videos, business videos that will reflect on the brand should be produced using at least semi-professional equipment. Fortunately, the digital revolution has reduced the size, complexity, and cost of building your own in-house video studio.

Get Started on Video Content Marketing Today

If video content marketing is right for your business, whichever option you choose, talk to an SEO professional like Think Big Marketing to make this strategy work to propel your website traffic.

According to CognitiveSEO, in its report on how social signals affect SEO, strong presence on social networks correlated with better rankings in search engines. Brands placing emphasis on social media stand out above the fold on the search engine results page.

You want to get the word out on your product, without cutting into your business’ margin. However, digital advertising costs, according to a 2017 Adobe Digital Insights (ADI) report, have risen an average of “12% … across channels and is rising five times faster than inflation.”

Website traffic specialist, Neil Patel, says, “Monetary constraints need not stop your internet marketing campaign. You don’t need expensive email marketing software or to purchase the most expensive keyword phrases.” By understanding how social media helps SEO you can beat the competition and reduce costs over time.

How Social Media Helps SEO: Sheer Numbers

Learning about how social media helps SEO on your website can help you drive an affordable, sustainable marketing campaign. User-friendly and inexpensive, social media allows you to reach users worldwide.

Hootsuite, in its, “Digital in 2017 Global Overview,” reported that social media users around the globe number 2.789 billion people. That’s 37% of the world population. A large number of those users are also buyers, and YotPo’s survey in the U.K. showed that eCommerce customers often use social media to learn about products before buying online. You want to make sure that you are getting your piece of the pie.

How Social Media Helps SEO: Algorithms

Google treats Facebook posts and Twitter tweets like individual pages. According to Matt Cutts, on Google Webmasters, “Facebook and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages in our web index.” However, he also commented, “to the best of my knowledge we don’t currently have any [social media] signals in our web search ranking algorithms.” The sheer volume and dynamic nature of social media don’t allow the search media giant to crawl and index most social media content.

If search engines cannot thoroughly crawl, index, and rank social media, how does social media help SEO? Search engines, like Google, Bing, Baidu, and others work because someone writes code, or algorithms, telling the computer what to do. The Google search engine has goals distinct from the Yahoo search engine. That’s why each search engine gives different results.

In the case of Google’s search engine page ranks, somewhere around 200 ranking factors decide where your webpage ends up on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt. These ranking factors play a role in determining how social media helps SEO.

Search Engine Journal says,

“When other industry authorities read and link to your content, Google will read your backlink’s matching anchor text and consider your content more relevant. … When your content earns a lot of these high-quality backlinks, you hit three important ranking signals: number of backlinks, link authority, and link diversity.”

Search engine ranking algorithms, according to the journal, heavily weigh links and link quality. Social media boosts the opportunities for internet users to build those backlinks.

Search engine algorithms notice big numbers. Social media has them. You need them too.

Social Media Earns you Backlinks

Social media provides the perfect tool get your content in front of qualified viewers. In fact, if you organize and coordinate your website content and your social media content, you’ll find that with very little effort, you can take bits and pieces of your website content to generate an effective social media marketing stream.

By getting your content in front of engaging viewers, social media will earn you backlinks. These links, says Google, weigh heavily in search engine page ranks. Because social media helps get more visitors to your website, it will get you backlinks. If visitors from social media like your content, some of them will link to it. Some will link from their Facebook or Pinterest accounts, and others may have blogs or websites of their own and link there.

Social Media Brings You Qualified, Skilled Site Visitors

Social media gets you visitors who are accustomed to liking, sharing, and linking. With their pins, shares, and tweets they already know how to engage with content. That’s a characteristic that you want from your site visitors. If social media users end up on your domain, clicking, sharing, and pinning, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Gigablast will notice it.

Clickers, readers, likers, and tweeters in that end up in eCommerce store not only have effective engagement habits, but many will be highly qualified customers. Visitors who like to read news about the Amazon Rainforest on Facebook, for example, qualify as clients for a retailer specializing in herbs from that region, like Raintree Formulas, than many other internet users. Shareaholic reported that “collectively, the top 8 social networks drove 31.24% of overall traffic to sites in December 2014, up from 22.71% the same time last year.”

As your website receives more and more qualified visitors from social media, search engines will recognize that internet users from that niche look to your site for reliable information. In addition, most influencers, today, spend time on social media. When these social media users and influencers find and link to your content, your brand begins earning authority. Search engines take link authority seriously.

How Does Social Media Help SEO through Link Diversity?

Social media covers diversity that will also help get your web page ranked, once it starts generating backlinks. Take a look at diversity in social media, in general. First, social media networks provide diverse platforms appealing to groups that vary in their socio-economic situation and other variables. PracticalEcommerce lists “105 Leading Social Networks Worldwide.” Many others exist.

Social media reach most ethnicities, races, industries, organizations, domains, interest groups, socio-economic groups, language families, and other groups, providing diverse opportunities for engagement and linking to your website. These platforms provide you an excellent opportunity to boost diverse backlinks to improve your site’s SEO.

__________________________

It’s no surprise that CognitiveSEO’s 2016 Study of 30 Million Shares, on social media found that the best-ranking pages correlated with largest social networks for a particular brand. It makes sense that brands that spend time and effort interacting with social media users would also be good at engaging with visitors to their websites. You will also find that as you develop your social media marketing strategy and learn how social media helps SEO, your understanding and relationships with customers will take a change for the better.

13 Facebook Tips and Tricks

Despite it sounding complicated and confusing, Facebook marketing with ads and the Facebook Pixel can be quite simple. Essentially, what the Facebook retargeting pixel does is allow you to target people who have already visited your business’ website but made no purchases. The Facebook retargeting pixel will track them and allow you to place ads back in front of them to provide them with new opportunities to convert to buying customers. Also, by split testing opportunities, you’ll help your website evolve into a more productive, profitable tool for your enterprise.

Tip 1: Take Facebook Seriously

Social media has matched, and in some cases, surpassed search engines as a means to reach a large and relevant audience. Only Google Beats Facebook’s Number of Referrals. Parse.ly reported, in 2016, that 46% of their referral traffic came from social media, with Facebook accounting for 41.2% of that traffic. There are plenty of Facebook tips and tricks to help your business get its share of that traffic.

Tip 2: Keep on Top of Facebook Organic Reach Trends

On Facebook, organic reach refers to how many people see your post content without paying for it. That includes anyone who looks at one of your posts or your Facebook pages. The Facebook paid reach refers to everyone who sees your content because you paid Facebook to put it in front of them.

Organic reach, however, just became more difficult for businesses to get on Facebook. According to the New York Times,

“Facebook has introduced sweeping changes to the kinds of posts, videos, and photos that its more than two billion members will see most often, saying … that it would prioritize what their friends and family share and comment on while de-emphasizing content from publishers and brands.”

If you’re a business owner, you know that Facebook understands that you either pay to get your content in front of viewers or you’ll be sitting on the bench.

Tip 3: Start Using the Facebook Retargeting Pixel

As internet competition rises, your business needs to focus more on quality customer traffic. Facebook’s pixel allows you to track site visitors on your website. Even more importantly, it will enable you to build custom audiences based on the information it has about each of those users. Using that information, you can retarget them.

Since Facebook introduced its Pixel, it has gotten easier to install and use. They update it regularly, so your best bet to start using it is to go directly to Facebook’s “Getting Started with Facebook Pixel” page. That way you’ll have the most up-to-date instructions to create and install your Pixel.

Tip 4:  Balance Your Organic and Paid Posting

Just like Google, Facebook seeks relevant content for its users. Face it; if you use Facebook socially, like most people, you don’t want to see a bunch of ads. You want to look at your family and friends and what they’ve been up to.

If you follow the page for the Pittsburgh Steelers, for example, you do so to keep up with the Pittsburgh Steelers games, news, injury updates, press, and other things relevant to the team. You’re not looking for ads on car wax or laundry detergent. Neither are your clients.

Forbes calls social media a “pay to play environment,” where “Only about 4% of your Facebook followers are seeing your brand’s organic posts.” Even so, it says, “Despite organic reach having shrunk to single-digit proportions, your organic social presence is still a powerful ally when it’s being harnessed and supported.”

Organic and paid posts support each other. Using both will provide you with a more cost-effective way to reach more people. Implementing a mix of Facebook tips and tricks between posting engaging content to draw organic visitors and paid visitors will help your Facebook post gets shared.

Tip 5: Use Variations on a Theme

Although you do not want to re-post the same exact content multiple times, you may want to make slight variations on a theme to make it into several posts. Vary the format and wording of each and post them with different images. This is one of the best Facebook tips and tricks to never running out of content on your Facebook feed. It allows you to continue posting relevant content for your viewers and ensures your content gets seen by refreshing the content in front of your audience.

Tip 6: Reach out to Influencers

Until you have lots of great content that consistently shows up at the top of the search engine results page (SERP), you will not see many people linking your site to their content.  It’s a catch 22. You need people to link to your pages to get them to rank well, and until they rank well, people won’t find them and link to them.

Get a jump on the organic linkers, and ask influencers to link to your site. Dig through your network contacts, and contact those who have websites. Give them a call or drop by their local to ask them personally, and make sure that you have content online that’s worth their while to link to.

Tip 7: Post Off Your Own Site

Find Facebook pages and groups with content relevant to your own. Look for those that allow followers to post, and post there.

If you distribute traditional print materials, for example, follow the stores that sell your materials, and participate in their discussions, or post to their Facebook Page or share materials with them and ask them for a mention in their posts.

Tip 8: Use Facebook Ads

Although Facebook ads, in a sense, hit users like cold calls, if they’re well designed and contain exciting content, you can use them to get your page in front of a large, focused audience outside your regular network.

Try both official Facebook ads and boosted post campaigns. Facebook provides you easy-to-use feedback on the success of your campaigns, so use the data to improve your overall paid marketing strategy. Facebook has merged its Power Editor into Ads Manager, where you can now manage all of your ads and get full advantage of the Facebook retargeting pixel. You can also boost sponsored posts on your Facebook Business Page. These appear directly on your page, while ads do not. We will be covering a lot of Facebook tips and tricks specifically on Facebook ads in the future, so sign up for our email newsletter for updates on that.

Tip 9: Take Advantage of Custom Audiences

Facebook says that “Custom Audiences are built from customer data you already have on hand—or can easily get—making it easy to reconnect with the people who have already shown interest in your business.” The Facebook retargeting pixel allows you to build custom audiences using data that you provide from your existing customers. You simply feed it your contact list with email addresses or phone numbers or data from your website or app.

Facebook uses these data from the Facebook retargeting pixel to create a lookalike audience, that helps “your ads reach people who are similar to (or “look like”) those audiences that are already interested in your business.”

Tip 10: Make Retargeting an Important Part of Your Marketing Strategy

If you have visited a website and, then, shortly after, seen a Facebook ad from that website, you have participated in retargeting. It has become one of the online marketer’s most powerful tools.

Facebook makes retargeting easy via its Facebook retargeting Pixel. When you add the Facebook retargeting pixel to your website, it keeps track of who visits your site. It then adds their information to your custom audience. As part of that audience, they see, when they enter Facebook, your ads linking back to their site.

Facebook does all the work, and its process helps you target your ads to people who have already demonstrated an interest in your business. It’s an excellent tool for recapturing lost leads because it brings in visitors who have already engaged with your brand. Coming in once more, they already feel comfortable because they have been there before.

Have patience when you start a retargeting campaign. They take a while to get results. Make sure that you set a goal on a reasonable time frame and keep your ads running during that time frame.

Tip 11: Monitor, Test, and Optimize Your Campaigns

Not only does Facebook make it easy to get data from new your site visitors and put that data to use for marketing, but it also provides you with a whole set of metrics by which you can compare and contrast different posts or ads. That allows you to refine your marketing strategy as you move forward.

Some of the metrics that you can track include

• Link Click-Through Rate
• Cost per Result
• Conversion Rate
• Landing Page Views

Periodically use these data to compare the success of distinct campaigns that you run. Stick with those strategies that are giving you the results that you want, and dump or modify the losers.

Tip 12: Use Unpublished Page Posts

When you put together an Unpublished Page Post, it does not appear immediately on your Page or News Feed. As a result, you can deliver ad content to your audience filters, on a future publication date or via an ad set promotion.

Also known as, “dark posts,” Unpublished Page Posts keep excessive ads off your page, yet get them to your target personas audience. Search engines, including Facebook’s, rank web pages poorly if they have too many ads.

Tip 13: Learn to Split Test Ads and their Elements

Split testing means comparing the results of different ads, or variations of ads, to see which generates a better response. Once you know which ones have the highest impact, you can base your future campaigns on them.

Try these Facebook tips and tricks on your website. You’ll see more qualified traffic moving to your website, and you’ll enjoy seeing how the different elements of Facebook and your website begin to work together to boost your marketing strategy.