So how do we get people fired up about your restaurant?

Well if we can get them into your restaurant we can let the food do the talking. However, getting them through the door is often the hard part. Always finding new customers is difficult, so focusing on retaining the ones you already and getting them to spread the word may be more effective.

Whatever stage your restaurant is at we have you covered. This guide is broken down based on where you need the most help with your marketing.

• Restaurant Experience
• Finding more customers
• Managing Your Restaurants Reputation
• Getting More Repeat Customer

Restaurant Experience

Photography – Visual

Showing a hungry person photos of tasty food is like throwing petrol on a fire. It is the easiest way to get someone excited about your food short of placing the dish right in front of their noses.

Hopefully people will love the taste and look of your food enough to want to share pictures of it on social media (more on that later!) but photos taken by amateurs will never be as good as ones that you can take yourself or get taken professionally.

Tips on getting your food photography just right:

• Put your photos on all the most popular restaurant directory website such as zomato and be sure to use captions with the names of the dishes
• Don’t over-sell it in the photos – they need to be accurate representations of what people will be able to eat. There is nothing worse than leaving people disappointed because it wasn’t what they were expecting – leave that to the real estate agents.
• Work on the presentation of your food
• Post the pictures on social media. A good way to do this is to drip feed the images with a new dish featured every few days.
• Hire a professional photographer. In an hour or so you can have them take photos of the interior and all the dishes which you can use again and again for your website and marketing materials
• If you are unsure of what to post on social media you can just post a photo every few days of each of your dishes

Atmosphere – Auditory

The atmosphere can greatly impact a customer’s experience in a restaurant. A few tips to positively influence the atmosphere of the restaurant:

• Put thought into your choice of background music, particularly the volume level.
• Try to space people apart so that they are not uncomfortable or overwhelmed by noise coming from other tables.
• Also make sure your interior and fit out is strong enough that people find it visually appealing by itself.

People want to show themselves living their best life on social media. By creating an atmosphere that people enjoy and is visually attractive you will make it easier for people to take photos and share on social media.

Food – Taste

For a restaurant to be successful you need returning customers. The food is what is going to bring people back. When people make a decision about where to eat the food is almost always the decisive factor.

In terms of what you offer:

• Establish winning dishes across your menu. These are the signature dishes that people come back from time and time again. Try to find 5-6 menu items that are rock solid and always in demand.
• Have rotating specials to be able to try new things and get feedback. Introduce them to the menu if they are popular.
• Try not to change the menu too much. People get frustrated with change, particularly if their favourite dish is no longer on offer. Having that balance between established dishes and rotating specials
• Cater to different types of audiences. While you don’t necessarily need to sacrifice the theme of your menu to keep everyone happy (you certainly shouldn’t) it is important to be aware of dietary requirements and create vegetarian or gluten free options to keep the peace.
• Have a strong identity to your menu that people remember.

Food – Smell

The delicious taste of your food is only a marketing weapon when people have actually tried your food. However the delicious smell can drive local foot traffic through your door if utilised. Having fantastic ventilation in your kitchen will not only keep the kitchen staff happy but may also help to connect your kitchen with passers by. If your food has a great smell try to find ways to use it.

People

This may sound like a cop out to someone who is trying to get more customers but having a busy restaurant full of people draws more people. I’m sure you have had that experience where one restaurant has a line out the door and the two restaurants either side are almost empty. It is the best form of social proof – if other people are willing to wait in line for something it must be good.

Some ways you can make your restaurant seem busier than it actually is:

• Close areas of the restaurant including back or upstairs rooms
• Fill the tables closest to the windows first
• Place seats or a sign outside that asks people to wait here. Even if there are no people waiting it indicates that the restaurant does get busy enough to warrant a queue.

Point of Sale

This is your biggest opportunity to leave a great impression and potentially a repeat visit. During the brief opportunity your staff have to chat with customers while they are paying think about what kind of impression you want to leave them with. If you want to try and encourage a repeat visit then consider:

• Loyalty cards
• Giving a coupon for their next visit
• Suggesting a different dish – If you liked that then next time you should try ….

Get More Customers

Create enticing offers

There are different types of offers you can design depending upon what your goals are. Are you a new restaurant that just wants to get people through the door? Or do you want to get people to return?

Here are some of the most common restaurant marketing offers based on different goals:

Find New Customers

• Percentage off offer (e.g. 20% off your
• Buy one get one free (e.g. free entree with every main). Great for encouraging people to bring their friends
• Free delivery

Returning Customers

• Loyalty card – Free meal after a certain number of visits
• Buy one get one free (e.g. free main with another main purchase)

Increase order value

• Discounted when meals are purchased as a set (e.g. an entree, a main and dessert)
• Percentage off over a certain amount (e.g. 10% off orders over $100)

Increase customers during quiet hours

• Whatever offers you decide upon you should try and match these to quietest times in your week.
• There is no point attracting more people when you are already at full capacity.

Here are some examples of time based offers that work well:

• Happy hour (reduced price drinks during non-peak hours)
• Discounted Lunch meals (lunch menu is cheaper than dinner menu)
• Higher prices for sit in compared to takeaway during peak hours (While not exactly This encourages people to takeaway while freeing up more tables in store during peak times)

Other tips for using offers:

Pro Tips

• Try to match offers to different audiences. e.g. If you serve lunches you may have more of an elderly audience or mothers groups. If the time between lunch and dinner is quiet perhaps you can have a special offer or even a separate menu to cater to these audiences.
• Ask for something in return for the offer. Rather than just cutting your profit margins you can make the deal conditional based upon the customer doing something valuable for your business. e.g.
  • Reviews (This is particularly good for new businesses)
  • Social media follows or shares
  • Photos

Partnerships

Networking with other businesses near your restaurant can be uncover some great mutually beneficial relationships. What else do people do before or after visiting a restaurant? They might go to the cinema, head to a bar or a stage show. If you share customers in common with other local, non-competing businesses you can design an offer to benefit both parties. An example would be a discounted movie ticket with every meal purchase at your restaurant. Get creative and see what you can come up with.

Events

Throughout the year there are many events and special occassions which you can use to pack out your restaurant. You may be busy on evenings such as Valentines day regardless of what you do but making a special effort to be the place to go for certain events can pay off in the long run.
Firstly you need to create an event calendar and be aware of the different events that are upcoming.

• For example:
• Mothers day
• Fathers Day
• Christmas
• Valentines Day
• Spring Racing Carnival
• Grand final

For some events such as Grand Final Day or the races you could promote pre-event lunches and book out with big groups.

For other events you may create a special promotion to make the event a little bit more special and memorable. For example on Valentines day you may hire musicians to add to the mood or maybe on Mother’s day ever mother gets a free glass of champagne.

While these events may pack out anyway you can generate extra buzz around the restaurant and hopefully extra social media shares which give your restaurant more exposure for the following weeks.

Influencer Marketing

Influencers are people with large numbers of followers typically on social media who post about a particular topic. Influencers that talk about food and their favourite restaurants are everywhere. If you can get on their radar and have them come eat at your restaurant their experience will be shared with their thousands of followers.

Influencer marketing is becoming more common as businesses can see the huge benefits of tapping into these established audiences. So as you can imagine these influencers are getting hundreds of requests a day and some can even demand thousands of dollars for a single mention of a brand. So if you have a budget for influencer marketing you may be able to partner with well known influencers to promote your restaurant.

However with a bit research you may be able to find less established influencers with smaller followings that may be happy to come visit for a free meal. Either way, finding influencers with the audience that best matches your target audience is the most likely to result in return on your investment.

Media Outreach

Aside from social media influencers there are also many magazines, websites and individual journalists and bloggers that write about new and trending restaurants. Getting in touch with these writers and publications can be difficult and you need to be prepared for ‘no’ or no answer at all. However, if your restaurant is as good as you say it is and has unique angle or story that people can connect with you may also be surprised with the results. It probably doesn’t hurt either if you offer them a free meal.

Also search for lists where people have listed the best restaurants in an area of best restaurants of a particular style. For example if you Google ‘Japanese Restaurants Melbourne CBD’ you will find many of the top 10 results are lists of the best Japanese restaurants from Trip Advisor, Broadsheet, Urban List and other well know online publications.

If you own a Japanese restaurant it may be worth your while to contact the writers of these lists to notify them of the one glaring omission from the list – your restaurant!

Paid Ads

Google Ads allows you to post ads at the top of Google search results and banner advertisements on specific websites.

The reason why Google Ads has become the market leader in paid advertising is the level of targeting and flexibility it offers business owners. With Google Ads you can specify your target locations or radius around your business. You can also switch ads on when you are quiet and switch them off during busy times. Just make sure you have a way to quantify the number of visitors as a result of paid ads – such as tracking booking forms of using a special code.

Aside from Google Ads there are many other websites or apps which allow you to place ads. You can pay for:
Priority sponsored listings on apps like Zomato & Menulog
Banner ads on websites like Broadsheet

Videos

Nothing gets you more worked up about a meal than high quality videos of delicious food. Video sharing on platforms like Facebook and Instagram is growing faster than images and we already know how popular images of food are on social media.

Taking videos of your food being prepared, served, eaten and enjoyed can be used and reused over and over again for great effect. They can easily be shared on social media, youtube and your website.

Pro-tip – Turn your videos into Youtube ads.
All you need is a Google Ads account and Youtube channel and you can start showing your ads on Youtube. Surprisingly ad views are very cheap compared to say Google Ads and if someone skips your ad, you don’t pay for it at all – Free advertising! Combined with Google Ads powerful targeting options you can laser focus on your ideal customer in terms of their location, behaviour, types of content they are watching and much more.

SEO

For the majority of people a Google search is the place they start when searching for businesses online and restaurants are no different. If you are running an Pizza restaurant in Carlton your business could gain an additional 880 eyeballs a month if it appeared on the first page of Google for ‘pizza st kilda’.

Local SEO

Now that mobile internet usage has exceeded desktop usage most of the time when people search they are seeing search results that are customised for them – in particular their location.

Previously you would need to search the type of restaurant you were looking for plus the location to get accurate results. Using the example above that would be ‘Pizza st kilda’

Nowadays you can just search ‘Pizza’ or ‘Pizza near me’ and Google will show a list of restaurants that offer Pizza in your vicinity.

So how do you get your business to show up on the map or featured just below it?

• Setup a Google my business account
• Encourage customers to leave you positive reviews
• Have a local SEO strategy

Delivery services

The demand for tables at restaurants on any given night is limited and will fluctuate greatly depending upon the time and day. The demand for takeaway or home delivery is much more consistent throughout the week. Home delivery is a completely different market that you can tap into and some restaurant businesses can thrive by focusing on this market.

By tapping into the home delivery market you can not only greatly expand the size of your target market but also generate more consistent revenue during days that are typically quiet in the restaurant.

The quickest way to reach this audience is to sign up for the popular home delivery programs such as:

• Uber eats
• Menulog
• Deliveroo

They are often the first place potential customers will look when considering takeaway. So by not being listed in many cases your business will not be considered for takeaway.

The downside is that they will take a percentage of your order value or a flat fee for handling the meal delivery. You will also lose control over the presentation of the food upon delivery. Some restaurant owners may prefer to have customers order takeaway from them directly but to do so you will need to factor in the logistics of hiring staff to do deliveries and controlling the quality of food when it arrives at the customers door. If it does make sense then perhaps consider having an offer for delivery that is only available if takeaway is ordered directly through the restaurant.

Catering

As with offering delivery services offering catering services can greatly expand the potential customer base of your business. It is a different market with its own unique opportunities. If you are having trouble competing with other local restaurants you may be able to grow your revenue by focusing on providing catering services.

There is less demand for catering services but it can be highly profitable if you are able to win the jobs that are available. Also as the catering service is delivered off site you don’t need to sacrifice table space during peak hours so you can offer catering without it affecting your core business.

As with anything if you want to succeed you can’t just tack this on and expect it to work. You will need to consider the market and put thought into your catering offer and how to market it.

Functions

Offering function rooms or facilities is just another way to expand your possible market reach and target audience. It is a great way to generate recurring revenue for the business as there are many small or medium groups that meet on a regular basis such as mothers groups or networking groups.

Managing Your Restaurants Reputation

Generate Positive Reviews

People are far more likely to trust a business that has a positive reputation and the most easily quantifiable measure of a business reputation is online reviews. Many people won’t set foot in a restaurant unless it has a rating of 3.5 out of 5 or above – I am certainly guilty of this.

One attitude towards online reviews is that your food will do the talking and people will want to rate your restaurant because of the quality of food and experience you offer. Unfortunately it is usually unsatisfied customers that lead the charge when it comes to online reviews so you may be in for a shock if you take this approach.

So you can leave it up to chance or you can take action:

• Set up Google My Business
• Get on third party review sites such as Zomato
• Invite all of your family and friends around to try all of your dishes. At the end ask them all for a review and family you should get off to a great start
• Set a goal for a number of reviews you want to generate.

When a business is new and just trying to get it’s foot in the market is the best time to ask for reviews. Australians are known for rooting for the underdog, the battler. If you tell them your story.

Manage negative feedback

Negative feedback or reviews can be hard to take as a business owner but even the best businesses receive them. Often it is more about them than it is about you so be measured in your response and don’t take it personally. For the legitimate feedback where people have had a bad experience, don’t ignore it, use it to improve.

You can also win a lot of brownie points with potential customers by how you respond to criticism so try to respond to all negative feedback but don’t continue to engage if someone is clearly trolling. You will just be throwing more fuel on the fire.

The best way to manage negative reviews?
Generate a tonne of positive reviews to drown them out!
If you can generate 30-40 5 star reviews in the first 6 months of being open you will also be minimising the impact of any negative reviews that may come in the future.

Monitor your mentions

Earlier we spoke about reaching out to influencers, journalists and publications. It is possible that people are already visiting and writing about your restaurant without you knowing about it. Hopefully what they are writing is positive but it is a good idea to keep track of what is being said and shared about your business.

The easiest way to do this is to use Google Alerts (https://www.google.com.au/alerts) to notify you when someone mentions your business name online. All you need to do is enter your business name, create the alert and you will receive an email when your business is mentioned.

If it is positive exposure such as a positive review from a food critic you may wish to share it the article on social media. If negative you may be able to reach out to the writer and see if they will consider dropping by and giving their feedback on your new menu.

Getting More Repeat Customers

Never Stop Learning About Your Customers

Learn as much as you can about your customers. Adapting what you are offering over time so that you can continue to appeal to your loyal customers. A loyal customer is worth their weight in gold so make them your best friends and spend the time getting to know them.

You also have to be wary of your true customers as opposed to transient crowds who will often come once because they have a voucher or just want to check it out but may not return. Don’t make changes based on one-off feedback but on recurring themes.

Be aware of the things that may cause visitors to have a negative experience – wait times, staff, incorrect orders, noise etc. For every potential issue have a contingency or standard operating procedure in place.

Social media Marketing

Some people may be surprised to see that social media fall under generating repeat business rather than finding new customers. It can be used for both but where Social Media excels is creating a community around your business.

Sharing images of your food or related content works best when you are sharing it with people who are already fans of your restaurant and they are far more likely to share with people they know and so on.

Remarketing

Repeat exposure is a essential for any business. There is a reason why McDonalds, Hungry Jacks and other fast food restaurants are constantly running TV and radio ads. Even though they are expensive they reminding you of the company and next time you get hungry their business is more likely to be at the top of your list of places to eat.

Remarketing works by showing targeted ads to people who have been to your website or social media pages before. So rather than showing ads to everyone you can focus on those who are most likely to visit your restaurant because they are:

• Already aware of your restaurant
• Shown interest in your restaurant

The other reason these ads work so well is that you can maximise their exposure to your ads over a short period of time.

Remarketing can be set up through Google Ads or through social media channels such as Facebook.

Takeaway menus

The takeaway menu is like the trojan horse. If you can successfully get it into someones residence it can pay off big time. However most will not make it past the front door.

Try combining the takeaway menu with a deal or offer such as % off or buy one get one free to convince the homeowner that the menu is worth keeping. If your takeaway menu can reach the fridge you will have hit the jackpot!

Pro-Tip – Offices & Commercial Estates
While residential flier and menu drops are commonplace what many restaurants forget is to target office and commercial buildings. If you serve lunch these buildings should be your priority. Many office buildings have hundreds of staff who may not have a chance to leave the building during lunch or have a lot of time to think about where they want to eat. However if you can build a relationship with other local businesses by allowing them to place an order directly from their office. As with above, if you can get a takeaway menu into the staff break room or kitchen you can profit big.

Get your lunch staff to talk to customers, ask where they work and give them a “special” offer for staff of that company only along with free delivery to their office if they quote the special code written on the takeaway menu.

Website

Surprisingly many restaurants do not have a proper website. They try and get by with a facebook page or half measure going with a sitebuilder such as the ones available through Go Daddy, Crazy Domains, Menulog etc.

While these can help you to get up and running quickly, they should only ever be an interim solution until you develop a proper web presence. A full website can offer many things that these cannot, such as:

• Full control over your web presence and branding
• Integrations with booking services
• Ability to collect email addresses
• Ability to rank well in Google
• Showcase galleries of your food
• Keep an up to date menu
• Highlight other services that you offer such as:
• Catering
• Function rooms
• Takeaway / Delivery
• Show customer reviews
• Show current offers or promotions

Think of your website as an online salesperson that works 24/7. It can tell potential customers everything they need to know about your restaurant, answer any questions and even manage bookings for you.

Booking Services

Booking services are a fantastic way to plan or lunch or dinner by knowing in advance what groups are coming and any requirements they have.

If you know what kind of groups are coming you can tailor the experience to them. If it is a mothers group coming for lunch you can ensure they are in a space with plenty of room for pushas and with kids seating close at hand.

You can set this up as a form on your website or alternatively you can use third party apps such as Dimmi or Zomato to manage bookings for you.

You can also use the form to collect data about your audience which you can then feed back into your marketing. Think of this as a form of customer research. Things that you can learn with a few simple questions in a form:

• Purpose
• Dietary requirements
• Booking times
• Group types
• Postcode

Over time you will be able to gain a greater understanding of your audience and adapt based on them.

Pro-tip – You can integrate your booking form with email marketing system that can send automated follow ups after their visit to request reviews or offering something for a second visit.

Email

It always surprises me how few restaurant owners are building a list of all their best customers. Email is the easiest way to keep your customers informed about what is happening in the restaurant. If you have a new menu, invite them in try try it out. If you are hosting an event, let them know where to buy tickets. If you have an offer tell them how they can redeem it.

Email marketing is powerful because it provides a near instant impact when executed right.

So how do you build your email list?

• Run a competition
• Setup a booking form on your website
• Have a physical list of emails at point of sale
• Have an email opt-in on your website

Manage Your Web Presence

If you have followed all the recommendations above you are likely to have your business listed on multiple websites. Different people will find you through different platforms whether it be your website, an app or an article so it is important to ensure that the information about your business is up to date and correct.

There is nothing more disappointing as a customer to take a look at menu online, decide what you want only to show up and find out that item is no longer available. By keeping up to date photos, menus and other business information you will be

Here is a checklist of things that you

• Places to check:
• Website
• Booking apps
• Articles
• Google My Business
• Social Media Profiles

Here is what you need to check:

• Opening hours
• Reviews
• Enquiries
• Images
• Menus
• Deals/offers

So how does this promote repeat visits? Well returning customers are the ones who will already have an idea of what they want when they visit and are most likely to be disappointed if what they want is no longer on offer. So keep your customers happy by keeping everything up to date.

The post Restaurant Marketing appeared first on Better Small Business.

One of the major changes is the astronomical rise in people searching for businesses ‘near me’. It shows that people are for more trusting of search engines to deliver what they are looking for even without specifying it exactly. A few years ago it was ‘best’ business.

This is just another step towards voice search and context based search results. It is also frequently suggested by Google suggest/autocomplete when people are searching for businesses on mobile.

When comparing regular searches to ‘near me’ searches there are a few interesting things to consider:

• Almost all of these searches are performed on mobile
• They are highly commercial searches as people are looking to make a purchase right now
• They are not fussy about who they do business with as long as the offer is right.

These customers are far more likely

So how do you get front and centre when someone is searching for a business like yours with a ‘near me’ search?

First we will start with what doesn’t necessarily work.

Business Location

You can be forgiven for thinking that Google will just select and show the businesses that are closest to the person performing the search. This is not always the case. So, if you were contemplating setting up new business locations just to get a premium position in local search, you can stop right now. In fact of the factors which contribute to rankings for ‘near me’ searches, location is quite low on the list. As long as you are in the same city or region as the person searching you are in with a shot to rank for a ‘near me’ search.

What has the most impact on ‘near me’ search rankings?

Local SEO Guide conducted a study across hundreds of local businesses (which you can find here) and combined with our own data, these are the factors with the greatest correlation to performance.

Google My Business

Google My Business is essentially the new yellow pages. When people are searching for local businesses it displays a handful of businesses that are most relevant to the person searching based on location, reputation and other information about the business found in the listing, on the businesses website and found elsewhere online.

To be eligible to have your business shown you need to first create a listing. Luckily it is free and can be setup in 15 minutes or less. More often than not a pack of local business results are shown at the top of the search results page when a ‘near me’ search is performed:

• Setup a Google My Business listing (https://www.google.com/business)
• Fill in your business details
• Be sure to include your logo, a cover picture and interior/exterior pictures if relevant
• Verify the listing
• For our full guide on optimising your listing check out our Google My Business guide here

Reviews

Reviews are an essential part of building business reputation online. A vast majority of consumers use online reviews and recommendations to decide which businesses to deal with and as such they are also weighted heavily when deciding which businesses to show for ‘near me’ searches. Here are a few practical steps to gather more positive reviews:

• Get as many positive reviews as possible through your Google business listing
• Google does also consider third party review site such as Yelp, but these are
• Rather than generating 50 or 100 reviews over a short period of time it is better to create a review acquisition strategy that will generate a consistent stream of new reviews over time.
• Responding to reviews is also another positive sign that you are actively listening and reacting to customer feedback.

Business Details

Consistency in name, address and phone number across all website where your business is listed has always been essential to performing well in local search results and this is no different. Whatever is written on your contact page should be the exact same contact details used in every business listing, including your Google My Business listing. Making your business contact details available on every page of the website either in your header or footer is also recommended for improving local and ‘near me’ search performance.

Business Listings

There are many websites out there that provide directories of different business types. While it may be tempting to try and list your business in every business directory out there, I would recommend that you ask yourself “would my customers ever use this directory to find me?”. If the answer is no, then don’t waste your time. Many business directories exist only to create spammy SEO backlinks – avoid these like the plague. List your business in all the places where you customers will look and avoid the rest.

Photos

Local optimisation also extends to

Ensure your website is mobile friendly

With the majority of ‘near me’ searches being performed on mobile it makes sense to have a mobile friendly website. Over the past few years Google has shown a strong preference for websites that function well on mobile devices.

Local Links

If other local websites and businesses are linking to you it is good indication that you have a strong presence in your local area. These types of links hold a lot of sway for local searches including ‘near me’. There are lots of ways to acquire local links: reach out to local news sites, host events and list on local event listings, start a partnership with a non-competing business. Read our local links post here for more ideas.

Links that include the location in anchor text

(http://www.localseoguide.com/guides/local-seo-ranking-factors/)

Near Me text

It is certainly awkward to incorporate the words ‘near me’ in your on page copy. However it could also help appear higher in ‘near me’ search results. It is difficult to say whether having the text on the page is the reason, or whether the increase click through rates as a result of having the text in titles or descriptions is the reason. Either way, Trip advisor is one company that has gone all in on optimising page content for ‘near me’ searches. Just take a look as the bottom of this page (https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Restaurants) and see all the links created to optimise for ‘near me’ searches. They even rank highly for the ‘near me’ itself.

Location Pages

Adwords

To wrap up

Many of the suggestions above overlap with our local SEO optimisation tips and strategies and having a well planned and executed SEO strategy will also make it easier to rank for ‘near me’ keywords.

To learn more about local SEO and Search Engine Optimisation check out our guides.

The post How To Optimise For ‘Near Me’ Searches appeared first on Better Small Business.

Reply to all emails

Google Analytics custom segments

Comments

Surveys

Search Stats

Live Chat

The post Turn your best customers into your best advisors by setting up feedback loops in your business appeared first on Better Small Business.

This guide assumes that you already have a blog on your website and the ability to post to it.

However, it is important to note that a blog by itself is not going to make the difference; it is how you use it.

The following checklist has been put together so that you can get the most out of your blog.

If you do not yet have a blog set up, get in touch with your web developer, ask them to create a blog and incorporate the following elements. Copy and paste the above into an email and send it to them, even if you are not quite sure what it all means. It will save time and money later.

Navigation

The ability to easily navigate through blog content

• Search feature
• The ability to create custom categories for your posts
• Sidebars containing popular posts,

SEO Friendly

• The ability to create customised post titles
• The ability to create customised post descriptions

Social Media and Commenting

• Social media integration
• Disqus is a great tool for wordpress that helps manage comments

Mobile

When you create a blog post you will most likely be creating this content on a desktop or laptop.

However, your blog readers and subscribers are more likely than ever to

Call to Action

“Download,” “Get,” and “Learn” t

The post Setting up a blog appeared first on Better Small Business.

Create a List of Content Ideas

Create an extensive list of all of the possible phrases that are typed into search engines (Google, YouTube, Bing etc.) that are related to your business.

Existing Content

Make a list of your existing content (blog posts, videos, Facebook posts etc.) and evaluate how it performed.

As a starting point you can judge the success based on metrics like: likes, shares, views, time on site etc. but over time try to judge success based on how well the content assists or leads to a conversion – sales, sign ups, quote requests, etc.

What are the main differences between those posts that worked and those that didn’t?

Don’t just write off a piece of content that didn’t perform because it could be any number of things that that affect its performance – such as: the headline, content length, images/videos used or even the timing.

Change a few things around with non performing content and then if there is still no improvement, then maybe you can cross that topic off your list.

Take what you learn and do more of what is working and less of what is not working.

Site Search

If you have a search feature on your website and have Google analytics set up you may be able to gather data on what people are searching for when they land on your site.

Content based on experience

As a business owner you interact with your clients on a daily basis and are as well positioned as anyone to create compelling content that addresses their needs.

Start by making a list of your most frequently asked questions.

Create an extensive list of all of the possible phrases that are typed into search engines that are related to your business.

For more ideas on the informational needs of your targeted audience check out:

• https://au.answers.yahoo.com/
• https://www.quora.com/
• http://wiki.answers.com/
• http://stackexchange.com/
• http://formspring.com/

New content Ideas

If you have done the above 2 things and don’t already have a long enough list of content ideas to last you for at least the next 3 months,  then there are some keyword research tools that can be used

Tools to use when creating your seed list:

• http://ubersuggest.org/
• http://keywordtool.io/
• http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/
• http://yippy.com/
• http://longtailgenerator.com/
• http://www.keywordlizard.com/
• https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner

Content Ideas from Social Media

Twitter Search

Content Ideas that are generally applicable to all business types

• Top 5, Top 10, Top 100
• Tools
• …. Calculator
• …. Cheatsheet
• …. Checklist
• How to …
• Case Studies
• Blue Prints
• PDF Guide
• eBook
• Tutorial
• Product/Service Demonstration
• Reviews
• Interviews
• FAQs
• Trend Report
• Industry News

Refine the List

Depending on how detailed your initial research was you could end up with a list of many thousands of keywords / content ideas.

Remove Duplicates

Any keywords that are essentially the same can be merged.

However it is a good idea to take note of the different ways that people search for information and writing down synonyms and other words that they typically use. This will become important when writing your content.

Remove phrases with too much competition

Any key phrases that are 3 words or less should be removed from the list. These are typically the most competitive phrases and should be targeted to your homepage or a handful or your main product/service pages rather than a blog post.

It can also be detrimental for your rankings if you create additional pages of content for your site targeting the same keywords.

However it is a good idea to test your phrases list for competition levels, as your time is valuable and better not spent on writing content that will never reach page 1.

The following 2 toolbars can be added to your web browser and will help you to evaluate the websites that are already ranking for your key phrases:

• http://www.seoquake.com/
• http://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar

Estimate Key phrase value

If you see the same search phrases / topics / questions appearing in many of the tools above it is a good indication that these are important pieces of information for your target audience.

You could use the Google keyword planner (https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner) to get an estimate of search volume, but it is far from accurate.

Having an average monthly searches of 0 does not mean that people are not searching this phrase, it means that people are not clicking on AdWords ads when searching these phrases

Another thing to keep in mind is user intent.

If someone is searching for information about a product you offer this is a far more valuable key phrase than someone searching for jobs in your field.

Keyword Trends

http://www.google.com/trends/

http://buzz.yahoo.com/overall/

http://www.technorati.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/

Prioritise

The next step is to organise your content ideas in order of priority.

A good way to do this is to order them in based on the perceived value and also the difficulty of ranking or achieving visibility for that piece of content  as established above.

As you build momentum, Google will trust your content more and

Create a content schedule

Now that you have a list of content ideas in order of priority, start to plan out when you or your team will be creating and publishing this content, as well as what forms it is going to take.

Repurposing your content is the easiest way to get your content in front of the most people with the least amount of effort – so plan this in advance

Publish blogs regularly – once a week is good. By publishing regularly you can help to boost your site’s authority.

The fields that I include in my content schedule and that are applicable to the rest of this guide are as follows:

• Blog Post Title
• Author
• Publish Date
• Keywords
  • Main Targeted Phrase
  • Related Phrases
• Related Content
  • Images
  • Video
  • Info graphic
  • Audio
• Social Activities
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linked in
• Review Date
• Results
  • Likes
  • Shares
  • Comments
• Changes
• Review Date

At a very simple level:

You should now have a long list of content ideas

Page Design:

Monitor content views – Youtube / GA

Set a date to review published content – every 2-3 months

Check to ensure that content is still relevant and update accordingly

Repost to social media if it is an important post that your more recent subscribers/readers may not have seen

Also sets a timeframe to evaluate content performance – write down how many likes, shares …

If it performed below par try testing something different:

Title

Feature image etc.

The post Keyword research appeared first on Better Small Business.

Pre Post Considerations:

Timing is everything – Find a time where you are least likely to get distracted and shut everything else off.

Keep a mental note of the times you are most productive and update your content calendar accordingly.

Using your content calendar select the next topic on the list.

Write the post:

Aim for 400-500 words, but 100 words either side is also fine. Just make sure for longer posts that the content is very compelling as attention spans are short.

When you start writing the post, do not even consider search engines or optimisation – your only focus should be to create compelling content for your audience.

Dedicate 30 minutes for a brain dump on the topic.

Spend another 30 minutes prettying it up.

Optimise the Post:

Content Checks

Duplication

• Do not post duplicate content – blogs need to be unique, do not copy content from elsewhere.
• Try not to overlap content – make each blog as unique as possible.

Keyword Density

• Try and include a few keywords you are looking to target (1-3% density is ideal) – although the main focus of the content should be user experience.

Synonyms and other related keywords / phrases

• Try and include ‘buzz’ words relevant to your industry.
• Try to include synonyms and other words/phrases that are relevant to the main targeted keywords in the article
• Google trusts articles that use related phrases as they broaden the topic more than a post that just focuses on 1 keyword/phrase

In text Links

• Include in-text links to other website for ‘further information’, but make sure they are authoritative sites/industry resources
  • http://factbrowser.com/
• Include 2-3 links to other pages on your website where relevant
• Have external links open in a new browser window

Multimedia

Images

• Use a feature image on every post
• Use original images where possible
• If you do not have any original images you can use royalty free images from a number of sources
• Use multimedia such as videos and picture in blog posts. A very simple thing to do and very effective.

• https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
• http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/
• http://photopin.com/
• http://www.stockfreeimages.com/

• Make sure that any images used are properly credited in line with licensing
• Use alt tags
• Change the image file names (before uploading to your site) so that they are also relevant to the targeted keywords
  • Facebook-likes.jpg instead of image42.jpg

Video

Embedding YouTube videos and adding 1-2 pictures per post is strongly advised.

Meta Data

Titles

• Keep the title to less than 55 characters – Anything more and it will be truncated in search results.
• There are 2 different types of page titles:
  • Meta Title
  • H1 Title – Stands for Heading 1 and appears in the on page content
• Have custom urls that include the main search query you are targeting with hypens separating the words:
  • Hyphens are judged by search engines as spaces
  • Try to keep it to 3-4 words in length and still makes sense
    • Eg. mysite.com/increase-facebook-likes instead of mysite.com/how-to-increase-your-facebook-likes
• Do not over-use headings – only include them within the content where necessary for the reader.
  • Use H2’s and H3’s where is improves readability of the content
  • Only use 1 H1 per post

• Create similar content

Description

Meta Description

• Keep the meta description between 135 and 160 characters. Descriptions longer than 160 characters will be cut short
• Mention your main keyword once in the description.
• Include a call to action
• Think of this like an advertisement for your post – its main purpose is to entice people to click through from the search results.
• If you do not set a description Google will make it up for you – and more often than not you will not be please with the result

Final Checks

Readability

One final check after you have optimised the post to ensure that

Mobile Devices

Always check how your post looks on mobile devices.

Call to Action

Always include a call to action at the end of a post to tell people what to do next.

Some good examples

• Check out other related posts
• Share your experiences in the comment section below
• For more information download our free eBook
• For exclusive offers join our mail list

Date and Author Check

This one is very important and often overlooked:

Decide upon who will be the author of your posts and stick to it.

• Will it be published under the brand name?
• Will it be published by a spokesperson?
• Or will there be multiple contributors?

One thing I see happen with new blogs far too often is that small business owners start publishing on their new blog without considering authorship and end up with a bunch of posts published by:

• Admin
• Insert Web Developer’s name

If you are the spokesperson, it is also good best practice to include a link to your blog in the signature of any email communications.

The post Writing Blog Posts appeared first on Better Small Business.

For this section of the guide we assume that Google Analytics is setup

Landing Page Report

This report within Google Analytics will tell you how well each of your posts has performed as a landing page.

Campaigns Report

If you have been using trackable URLs

The post Reviewing performance of your blog posts appeared first on Better Small Business.

This section of the guide assumes that you already have these social media pages setup for your business.

I also hope that you read the first section on blog setup and have integrated the ability for people to share, like, tweet, +1 your content without having to leave your blog post.

You do not necessarily need to use every social media channel, but I would certainly recommend using between 3-4 of them particularly where it is easy enough to do.

You have already done the hard work writing a full blog post – what is a an extra 50-100 words to get it out in the social space?

Repurpose your content

Written Content

Before you post anything to your social media channels it is a good idea to extract the key points / features / benefits of your blog post to make it easier when repurposing for social media.

This can be done in a few steps:

• Create an summary of the post (100 words or less)
• Write down the core benefit of the post (1-2 sentences)
• Make a list of the main points (5-10)
• Make a list of any quotes or statistics

These will become helpful when posting to social media and also in ensuring that you are not saying the same thing on each channel.

Visual Content

Create Social Media Optimised Images

• https://www.canva.com/
• http://pic-collage.com/
• http://www.liveluvcreate.com/
• http://www.picmonkey.com/

Create a slideshow

Create an infographic

Create a video

• Read out you post as a talking head
• Read out your post with a slideshow

Create Trackable Links

This is advanced stuff but highly recommended for being able to track your social media traffic and quantify the benefits of your social media and blogging efforts down the track.

For this to work, you need to have Google Analytics setup and working on your site.

Create your trackable URLs

Click the link below and use the URL builder to create a trackable URL.

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867

For the purposes of tracking your social media traffic for repurposed blog posts you can fill in the fields as follows:

Website URL: The page of the blog post you want to send your social media traffic to

Campaign Source: The Social Media platform on which you will place the link (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc.)

Campaign Medium: Social Media

Campaign Term / Campaign Content: These can be left blank

Campaign Name: Blog Content

Then click the submit button and it will give you a long url like this:

http://www.mysite.com/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=social%20media&utm_campaign=blog%20content

Shorten the URL

Take the long tracbkable url and paste it into one of the tools below:

https://bitly.com/

http://goo.gl/

This will give you a shortened url that doesn’t clutter your social media posts and is trackable in Google Analytics. It should look something like this:

http://bit.ly/1z8NHU6

We will cover performance measurement later in the guide.

Post to your Social Media Pages

Google+

When starting out sharing your blog posts on Google+, try posting the following:

• A link to the blog post
  • Make sure that the featured image and snapshot of the page is appearing
• A summary of the post including the core benefits
• A call to action. Ones that typically work well:
  • Check out this new post
  • If you like it please share, comment

Facebook

When starting out sharing your blog posts on Facebook, try posting the following:

• A link to the blog post
  • Make sure that the featured image and snapshot of the page is appearing
• A summary of the post including the core benefits
• A call to action. Ones that typically work well on Facebook:
  • Check out this new post for [insert core benefit]
  • If you like it please share, comment and let us know your thoughts

Twitter

When starting out sharing your blog posts on Twitter, try posting the following:

• A link to the blog post
• The core benefit of reading the post
• A call to action
• You will also have to include all of the above in 140 characters or less

Linked In

Youtube

Pinterest

Works best for image based content, particularly if you are creating your own unique images.

You can take a quote from your post , the title itself and

For longer how to posts you could use the main points, plus any associated statistics and

Slide Share

Submit to Social Share Communities

Reddit

StumbleUpon

Tumblr

The post Spreading your blog posts to social media appeared first on Better Small Business.

– Google Analytics
– Web Master Tools
– Set canonical
– Set country
– Robots.txt
– Sitemap
– Check for duplication
– SEO Plugin

Social Media

– Claim your properties
– Facebook
– twitter
– pinterest
– instagram
–

Register business directories

Setup Email Contact Forms

The post Moving Your Business Online – Step by Step Checklist appeared first on Better Small Business.

Click here for our content review spreadsheet

See Post – Types of ever green content you should create

Related:
Repurpose and reuse

Types of ever green content you should create

The post Ever Green Content appeared first on Better Small Business.