Social media is the main thing you should leverage for your digital marketing strategies. CNN reports that teens use social media 9 hours a day.
With television and other media losing ground to the Internet, it’s no wonder marketers have turned to social media.
But what about other methods of digital marketing? Surely people can’t sit on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest for nine hours straight. It sounds unhealthy only from reading about it!
Fortunately, you have other methods of keeping your audience interested in your brand. That is, without spamming social media and waiting for results.
Here are a few that will interest you:
Virtually any business could include blogging as part of their digital marketing strategies. Having a blog for your website isn’t just about occupying space.
You can optimize your content to be found easier by search engines. After you’re found out, you can delight your audiences with informative content.
Your articles, infographics, and other media you include on your blog will establish you as a trustworthy authority figure. Wouldn’t you say that you can trust someone who knows the finer details of their field?
SEM includes a wide variety of factors that help your website gain visibility on search engines. On the other hand, it is also sometimes used interchangeably with paid advertising.
Services such as Google AdWords are used by businesses to get to the top of search results. SEM also includes SEO as part of a wider strategy. Pay-Per-Click advertising can only get you so far.
You also need the organic reach that SEO can offer you.
As I mentioned in the first point, your blog and website can be optimized so that people can find you on search engines.
There are various techniques you can use to get your content ready. Researching how popular your article keywords are is a must. You can do that with Google trends.
It’s also a good idea to interlink between blog posts and other parts of your website. That helps search engines index your page so it can be found easier.
You can read more about search engine optimization here, for more complicated techniques.
What you can include as part of your blogging strategy are podcasts. You don’t need to go to great lengths to create a professional podcast.
Simple things such as reading a short version of your blog posts can improve engagement. People nowadays prefer audio and video content over reading.
If you do create podcasts for more interesting topics, you will get more traffic. Besides, if people find part of your podcast interesting, they will need to re-visit your website.
More often than not, they will be looking for a snippet of your podcast so they can show it to their friends.
Right now, YouTube has 1.5 billion monthly active users, making it the second-most used search engine. I guess you already know who is at the top.
In any case, videos are one of the best digital marketing strategies you could think of. Sure, professional editing might reel in more traffic, but it’s not always necessary.
People are looking for quick ways to assimilate content. Videos give them that possibility. Even short vlogs (video blogs) are very useful to your audience.
Make videos showcasing a specific detail about your product or service. For example, if you are a realtor, you can create a video talking about an average day at work.
You know there’s no average day at work for a realtor, but your audience doesn’t. Have them know that there’s a human being behind your service.
The best part about this is that you can get a lot of traffic straight from YouTube. Their annotation system lets you put a link to your website anywhere in the video – besides being able to link it in the description, that is.
If you’re selling products on Amazon and Ebay, take the time out of your day to respond to any reviews – both positive and adverse. It will show your audience you know how to take criticism, while simultaneously showing them you appreciate their kind thoughts.
You can also respond to reviews on Yelp. Everybody is a critic, yes. But show them you care about their opinion, and that you are trying to improve.
It is also worth noting that search engines such as Yahoo and Bing consider Yelp reviews when listing search results.
Google also has its own review system. When people google your restaurant, store, or car shop, for instance, your rating will be the first thing they notice.
Having less than glowing reviews will avert your potential customers’ eyes towards someone else. As I was saying in the section about blogging, it all comes down to building trust.
The next logical step to building trust with your audience is creating an email list. When you use the points above efficiently, you can lead your crowds towards landing pages created by your business.
These landing pages offer you the possibility of creating the list. It’s not even that hard to get your audience to subscribe – especially if you’ve got the other points down.
You know what people love the most? Free stuff. As such, try to offer your potential subscribers something for which they need to enter their email. E-books, a useful spreadsheet, a free trial – something that they will absolutely need.
Don’t forget to go for a double opt-in email list, so you avoid spam. What that means is that the subscription needs to be confirmed in the email they receive. This way, you know the person is interested in what you have to offer.
Email lists are an excellent way of informing your customers about stuff that would interest them. Eventually, some of your audience will be ready to purchase your service or product.
Okay, this one might involve social media. But it’s only a small bit in the grand scheme of things. Affiliate marketing is all about creating profitable relationships between businesses. It’s obvious that social media would be used at some point.
All you need to do here is find some like-minded businesses that would be interested in an affiliate program. You divert traffic to each other’s websites and create cross-promotional adverts.
Sharing content among businesses is maybe the easiest way to gain a new audience.
People now use their mobile devices to view media more than they use PCs. In the US, for example, mobile device use is 51% compared to just 42% for desktops and laptops.
A few years ago you could get away with not optimizing your website and content for mobile. Nowadays, you have no excuse unless you want to lose more than half of your potential audience.
You can check if your website is mobile friendly by using this tool from Google.
Viral marketing involves people sharing your interesting marketing gimmick for free. That is mostly done through social media. But you don’t actually have to spend any time on social media for it to work.
If you already have an emailing list, send your engaging media to your subscribers. They will do the rest of the work for you.
Similarly, you can simply send your video or image to company associates through instant messaging. If your video is something eye-poppingly interesting, it will make the rounds itself.
Some of you might feel overwhelmed at the sheer number of digital marketing strategies available. How do people find the time to do all this and still manage their business?
And you have to remember the title of the article. These techniques don’t even involve social media! That’s just another thing to manage.
Writing content, optimizing it for SEO, updating your social media strategies, remembering to take a break once in a while. That’s a lot of hard work that some businesses don’t have the time for.
If you broke a sweat just from reading what needs to be done, we understand. But don’t worry. We got your back.
Contact us today and take advantage of our team of content writers, proofreaders, content analysts, and digital marketing strategists.
Free up time so you can concentrate on your business.
