Our Geelong online marketing team has a few questions for you. They’re not hard, so don’t worry. Ready? Here they are:
- Who loves Facebook? No doubt a lot of metaphorical hands went straight up.
- What about Instagram? Even more hands.
- How about Snapchat? Everybody’s hands are up now!
And that’s fine. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are fabulous social media platforms, as are WhatsApp, 3-QQ, WeChat and the numerous and ever-growing number of other social networking platforms available today.
We get why people enjoy social media, but what we’re wondering is why some people put so much of their online marketing energy into social media but ignore their website and its phenomenal online marketing power.
Just this week we had to give a client a friendly reminder that although Facebook posts are a great way to spread the message, they are not necessarily the only, best or most enduring way to reach a new and widespread audience of people searching for his goods and services. “Preaching to the front row of the choir” might have been our perhaps-too-harsh appraisal of his Facebook efforts.
We understand why social media is popular and often the go-to option for online marketing efforts. It’s generally easy, gratification is quick and it satisfies those among us who love to view and join in whatever others are doing online. In other words, you can make out you’re working while cruising Facebook.
But the flip side of social media is that as quick and easy as social media posts are to create, they’re just as quick and easy to disappear from view. Try, for example, to find that post you enjoyed yesterday. Good luck with that – we’ll see you in an hour or two!
Blogging, on the other hand, endures. Write a blog on your website and it’ll still be there tomorrow, next week and next year. And that blog is always in contention to appear in a Google search for what the blog offers. We have clients who are still generating business from blogs they wrote years ago and which are still turning up in Google searches.
We’re not for a moment suggesting anybody should stop promoting their business on Facebook. Far from it! Rather, the advice from our digital marketing gurus in Geelong is to use both Facebook and your website blog to double your online marketing impact. Write a keyword-focused blog on your website and then write a brief Facebook post about the blog and link to it from Facebook. You’ll get the instant Facebook gratification and a long-term Google benefit.
There’s no single all-encompassing answer to successful online marketing. It requires a planned and tactical multi-faceted approach.
If you’d like to discuss your digital marketing, talk to the online marketing experts in Geelong – GOOP Digital.