If you use Facebook for your business you’ll know they like to change things, often with little or no warning! You need to keep on top of these changes for your page to remain effective and engaging.  The most recent changes emerged from Facebook’s fMC 2012 Conference. The overall message was that Facebook is looking at pages as a “mission control” point (which is where the MC comes from in the conference title).

Here’s a review of one of the key changes and how you can take advantage of some of the new features.

The new timeline cover photo and profile image

Obviously one of the biggest changes that we all knew was coming was the cover photo. No more photo strip across the top. You now have one large image to showcase your page. This image must be a minimum of 399 pixels across to be used as the cover photo. But you can have a photo cover designed to take advantage of the extra space you get. The cover photo maximum dimensions are 850 pixels by 315 pixels.

One of the biggest restrictions is the fact that you can’t have any calls to action in your cover photo. You can’t tell people to like or share your page or have any contact information at all, including your web address, phone number or mailing address. Get the full details about cover photos here . These restrictions will require some creativity in drawing attention to your business without some of the methods that have been used in the profile pictures recently.

The profile picture size has been changed to 180 pixels by 180 pixels. It appears next to every post in the news feed as a 30 pixel by 30 pixel picture and this is best used for your logo or other eye-catching picture without a lot of words.

Tweet

Blogging for business, Social Media Marketing, Uncategorized cover photo, facebook, facebook image size, timeline photo

A new report from the research company Forester predicts that online sales in the UK will see a growth rate of 11%, growing from £30.1bn in 2011 to £51.0bn in 2016

Seasonal discounts on furniture and electrical goods, and early bookings of annual holidays have helped UK online retailers, as shoppers turn to the internet to find deals and offers to save money as technology becomes mainstream.

Among the report’s interesting findings:

• 53% of shoppers made an online purchase in 2011
• people believe they get the best deals when shopping online
• tablet devices like the iPad have spurred online impulse buying

If these stats don’t make you want to re-evaluate your e-commerce efforts – and perhaps a redesign – they should!

The opportunity for online retailers is huge but you’re not going to grab it with a DIY website. Cheap template driven websites look like what they are, and that devalues your brand and makes you look like you don’t take your marketing seriously.

If you want to be in business then you need to be online, but if you’re doing a bad job of it online, then you need to get help from a professional. At LexisClick Online Marketing we take website design and build seriously – click here to take a look at some of our work. We put a lot of time and effort into planning the websites we design. We start with your target audiences and what they are looking for, then we look at the key messages you want to communicate. Only when this is planned and agreed, do we let our creative web designers loose on making your website look fantastic.

If you’d like to find out more about our web design service, please contact our Bournemouth web design team.

Tweet

Design, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Web Design creative web design, ecommerce sites, Web Design

Tweet

Marketing General, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation internet marketing, local searches

While companies allocate a great deal of time and resource to drive visitors to their website, once there they’re often left to their own devices with much less attention paid to the landing page that needs to convert them to leads and then sales.

Here at LexisClick online marketing we believe that the following key ingredients are essential if you want to develop high performing landing pages.

1.   Headline: Your website needs to answer ‘what does this site offer?’ almost instantly so keep your headline clear and simple.

2.  Sub-headline: Your sub-headline should offer a brief description of what you do.  Avoid waffle and jargon, the content should inform the reader and add value – don’t just talk about yourself.

3.  Benefits. Prospects want to know what you do, the benefits and advantages, and what they mean to them.

4. Primary Calls-to-action. In order to drive conversions it’s important to include multiple calls-to-action above the fold. By offering two-to-three calls-to-action you will map the different stages of the buying cycle.

5. Navigation: Your visitors need a clear roadmap into your site from your homepage in order to keep your bounce rates low.  Make sure your navigation is visible at the top of the page and again at the bottom and remember to keep it simple.

6. Relevant imagery: Most people are visual. Make sure you use images that illustrates what you offer, try not to use stock images as people will recognise them as such. Short videos are great too.

7. Content offer: To generate even more leads from your homepage, feature really relevant content offers, such as a whitepaper, ebook or guide. As many of the visitors to your website are not ready to buy make sure you offer a link to resources where they can learn more, so you can develop the relationship by gathering their email addresses.

8. Multiple calls-to-action: When visitors end up at the bottom of your homepage, don’t forget to display calls-to-action there as well for even more lead generation opportunities. Calls to action are not just for the top of the page.

9. Testimonials: Customer validation is a powerful indicator of trust. Include a few of your best quotes on the homepage or clear links to them.

10. Social media: Include social sharing links to encourage visitors to spread the word

Tweet

B2B Online Marketing, B2C Online Marketing, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation calls to action, landing page, landing pages, lead conversion

Just when you thought you’d got on top of all the new social media, along comes another one…  Pinterest .  Pinterest, an online bulletin board for your favourite images, is stepping up as a valuable marketing tool for businesses.

Launched in 2010 Pinterest is already experiencing phenomenal growth with more than 7 million unique visitors in December, up from 1.6 million in September, and it’s driving more traffic to company websites and blogs than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined according to recent stats. To check out Pinterest for yourself click here

Hot tips for small business social media marketing

Check to see if your Vanity URL is available.

Before you launch your brand presence on social media here’s a handy little tool to check whether your vanity URL is available. Remember that it’s important to make sure that whatever you choose it’s simple and easy to remember. http://namevine.com/

Use a thirdy party platform to distribute content.

It avoids logging in and out of  multiple social media channels. Tools such as HootSuite or Crowdbooster allow you to publish once and to distribute everywhere. You can integrate your Facebook Page, Twitter account, Google+ page, LinkedIn profile and other social networks – and manage them from within one easy-to-use interface.

Find out when and what to post on Facebook.

Stay on top of the latest information in your industry by knowing what your fans engage with most, and when to post it on Facebook,  by utilising a service called Edgerank Checker.

Google Alerts.

Even though it’s been around for a while still one of the easiest tools for businesses to monitor their online reputation is Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts). Each time Google finds a mention  of your business, it will send you an email as it happens, daily or weekly – it’s a free and indenspensbile tool!

If you’d like help with managing your social media give us a call for a friendly no obligation chat on 01202 788333

Tweet

B2B Online Marketing, B2C Online Marketing, Blogging for business, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media Marketing Google alerts, managing social media, marketing tool, marketing tools, pinterest, social media, social media integration, vanit url, web traffic

One of the top two ways to drive traffic to your website and landing pages is through email marketing – the other is through search. Here the team at LexisClick provides some top tips to get the most from your email marketing. Stephen Bavister MD at LexisClick says ‘Although it may seem obvious, the first rule of email testing is to do it! And unless you’re highly experienced we suggest you keep it simple and just run one test at a time.’

Rule #1 Improve response rates by routinely testing: A recent survey found that 58% of marketers surveyed are not optimising their email conversion rates by testing. They just guess at which email opt-in forms, subject lines, creative and landing pages work best. On average email tests can help improve lead generation campaigns by 20%. Fortunately, email testing costs next to nothing, and you may not need to involve your IT team or a designer. Some of the most powerful tests are from wording changes alone.

Rule #2 Split your list randomly: Each test list must have as similar a group of names as possible. List sources, list type and length of time a name has been on a list are all factors that will cause large differences in response rates.

Rule #3 it’s critical you run all versions of your test at the same time: This means splitting your list and sending out all versions of the creative simultaneously.

Rule #4 Conduct landing page tests separately: Don’t run email tests at the same time as you’re testing landing pages otherwise you can cloud your results.

Rule #5 Measure results as far down the ‘funnel’ as possible: What is your goal for the campaign. Do you want forms completed, on-site engagement, phone calls or sales? Then make sure that you measure the goal against the email version that the respondent received.

If you’d like help with your online marketing give us a call on 01202 788333 .

Tweet

B2B Online Marketing, B2C Online Marketing, Email marketing, Online Marketing Email marketing, email metrics, increasing traffic to website, split testing, testing email marketing, top tips for measuring your email marketing

Perhaps it’s no surpise that YouTube is up there with the most visits, but that’s closely followed by three BBC websites,  the BBC, BBC mobile and BBC iPlayer. Sky Sports slips in at fifth place before BBC weather jumps in at number 6.

Tweet

B2B Online Marketing, B2C Online Marketing, Design, Online Marketing entertainment website rankigs, search engine rankings, search engines

SEO FAQ 1 - What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?

SEO are specialised techniques used to optimize your web site, to be Search engine friendly and achieve a good page ranking (PR).  Without proper optimization, the chances of placing highly in Search engine results (SERPs) for the keywords important to your business are low.

SEO FAQ 2 - Why is my site not showing up in the search engines, such as Google, BING, MSN, etc

There can be many reasons a web site doesn’t show up, or display well, in search engines results. Any of the following can affect on your web sites search engine positioning, and web traffic.

• You might not be using search engine optimized web design and copy
• Your site may not be readable by the search engines
• You may be missing information critical to properly index your webpage.
• Use of some scripts can prevent search engine spiders or bots from crawling your web site or reading its content.

SEO FAQ  3 -  “Organic  Seo” or “Natural SEO”

Organic SEO placement in search engine results (SERPs) means that the site displays well naturally in search results, with no need for paid inclusions such as PPC advertising. A site that has a good organic ranking is likely to be more stable in its long term search engine positions, with less likelihood of position changes due to new algorithms, frequently applied by Google and other search engines.

SEO FAQ4 -  Keyword research and SEO

Keyword research has a huge affect on web traffic, you need to know what your potential customers search for and which search phrases they use

At LexisClick we research the most important keywords (priority keyphrases) for each page you want to index and want to rank highly in search engines. From this we now know what keyword phrases are most searched for, and which are a waste of time.

SEO FAQ 5 -  What is search friendly design

Search friendly design means, to make a site that is easy for the search engines to read and index.

Search engines can’t read or index some of the following:

• Flash animation
• Java Scripts
• Many engines and directories hate Automated Submissions, many consider them SPAM and may ban your domain for their use.

If you’d like help with your digital marketing challenges from an agency that specialises in digital marketing get in touch.

We’re a full service digital marketing company based in Bournemouth, Dorset specialising in helping ambitious businesses achieve their objectives, through effective online marketing. Our services include web design, SEO services, advertising, email marketing and social media marketing.  If you’d like more information feel free to take a wander round our site, contact us or call 01202  788333.

Tweet

B2B Online Marketing, B2C Online Marketing, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation keyword research, priority keyphrases, Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, SEO FAQs

We saw this and thought it was an excellent example of social media explained!

Particularly as they were using donuts as an example – our favourite food group…

(Image courtesy of Instagram).

Tweet

Blogging for business, Fun Corner, Marketing General, Social Media Marketing, Uncategorized social marketing, social media, social media explained

Here are 10 interesting things you need to know about Facebook in the UK as they're on track to be one of the biggest US stock-market debuts of all time.

1. There are over 1.3 billion visits to Facebook a month from the UK Internet population – making Facebook the second most visited website in the UK after Google.

2. 1 in every 6 page views in the UK is to a Facebook page. The social network accounted for 15% of all UK Internet page views in December 2011.

3. 500 million hours are spent on Facebook in the UK every month. The average session time for a user visiting Facebook is 22 minutes.

4. Facebook is the most popular social network in the UK, accounting for over 50% of all visits to social networks. Facebook is twice the size of YouTube and 17 times bigger than Twitter in terms of visits from UK Internet users.

5. Facebook receives an average of 40 million UK Internet visits every single day.

6. Facebook is the most searched for website in UK. The term ‘facebook’ is the most popular search term typed into all search engines including Google, Yahoo! and Bing and three of the top 10 most popular search terms online are Facebook related (‘facebook’, ‘facebook login’ and ‘fb’).

7. Facebook is the second biggest source of traffic in the UK after Google. 7.5% of all visits to a website came from Facebook in December 2011.

8. 1 Facebook fan = 20 additional visits to your website over the course of a year. Using the top 100 retail websites as a sample group, Hitwise data shows that for each additional fan acquired on a branded Facebook page companies can expect to see 20 extra visits coming to their main website over a 12 month period.

9. 25% of all visits leaving Facebook go straight to an Entertainment website, showing the close affinity between Facebook and people’s interest in movies, TV, music and games.

10. Manchester is the new Facebook capital of the UK with Internet users from Manchester 9% more likely than the average person to visit Facebook in a given month.

Source:

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/james-murray/2012/02/10_things_you_need_to_know_abo_1.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hitwise%2Fuk+%28Hitwise+Intelligence+-+UK%29

Tweet

Marketing General, Social Media Marketing facebook, social media, Social Media Marketing, social networking