Most of our customers are small to medium businesses where each employee (sometimes there’s only the owner) wears many hats.
In the “new normal” economic climate, our customers often seek to the best ways to be frugal, getting the absolute most value for any time or money invested.
Let me share with you some steps you can take on a shoestring budget that will increase the exposure you get on your web site over time.
First – Blog on a consistent basis.
Write about subjects for which you have passion, a level of experience, and tie into the goals of your web site.
If you are using WordPress, I recommend the AuthorSure plugin which helps you take advantage of how Google ranks verified authors.
The more you publish, the more you are tied to what you publish (by appropriately using rel=author, rel=publisher, and so on), your web site, your articles, and your blog will gain in popularly over time.
I strongly recommend the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin to make it easier for you to create an editorial calendar to help you keep an appropriate blogging pace (consistency over time matters more than trying to do it all at once).
Second – Tweet what you blog
Once you are happy with what you’ve blogged, then tweet about it including a link to the blog article.
Make sure that you use appropriate twitter hashtags to make it easy for what you tweet to be found.
Prior to using a hashtag, I recommend you search on the hashtag to see if your article will be a fit. You can use multiple hashtags with each tweet. However, do be careful not to overuse hashtags; typically one to three is enough.
Third – Facebook what you blog
If you are wearing multiple hats as an owner or employee of a small to medium business, then take advantage of easily publishing from your blog to FaceBook using RSS Graffiti.
Once you set it up, you walk away knowing that as you publish your blogging articles, RSS Graffiti is automatically publishing those articles on the Facebook page(s).
Fourth – Google+ what you blog
If you find an way to automate publishing your blog to Google+, especially a WordPress blog, please let me know. For now, post about your blog article on your personal and company Google+ pages.
Fifth – Post about what you blog in an appropriate LinkedIn group and other forums for which you consistently participate
Consistency matters always without exceptions is one of the phrases and practices we shared with our daughter and other family members. It applies to all areas of life.
Find groups on LinkedIn and elsewhere where you can actively participate with on a consistent basis. Consistency and the quality of your participation matters more than the quantity (volume) of groups or forums.
Share what you blog about with the group(s) and forums being careful to avoid turning a given post into a blatant advertisement.
Over the years, I’ve found the more often you do your best to serve and help people, over time those same people will come to respect you, trust you, and seek to do business with you as they are able. Focus on being a servant, and being helpful.
Lastly, almost all forums — and do this as well for your emails — allow you to have a signature line; while the number of lines you can use vary, the average tends to be around four to five lines.
Use those lines wisely including a link to your website and blog.
Take the above steps, consistently, within a frequency where you can be consistent in your quality, and over time your web site exposure will increase as well as your search engine rankings.
Contact us if you have any questions.