No matter the vertical, all business owners want their company to be noticed by more and more people. If you run one of eight liquor stores in town, you want the visitor who doesn’t live nearby to choose your store if that person finds themselves in need of a bottle of wine to bring to a dinner party.
Gone are the days of the phone book. In today’s Internet-connected age where more than half of all American adults own smartphones, it’s likely that if a dinner guest finds himself in an unfamiliar town and need of wine, he’ll turn to his smartphone to find nearby stores that can help satisfy his requirement.
Bringing in Business
So how can a liquor store owner make sure that the shop location will move to the top of search engine results?
It’s not as hard as you might think. Recent research shows that businesses that establish social media presences and regularly update blogs stand to increase their web traffic significantly. If continuing the example, the liquor store owner decides to launch a digital offensive, taking to social media and starting a blog, it then follows that more potential customers will find out about the store.
In the very worst case scenario, at least one of those potential customers will decide to open his or her wallet and buy a bottle of Malbec.
In the very worst case scenario, at least one of those potential customers will choose to open his or her wallet and purchase a bottle of Malbec.
Why? Recent research indicates that 57% of businesses with a blog has on-boarded at least one new customer because of it. That’s due at least partially to the fact that keywords embedded in those blogs get found by Search Engine Spiders that then rank those pages higher or lower according to the SEO and content.
If business owners are committed to blogging, why not leverage the multiple social media avenues available to promote those blog posts? In doing so, even more, traffic will be directed toward your website, which again likely translates into the real world in some proportion.
Search Engine Optimization
Let’s imagine for the moment that you run an all-girls school in Virginia and are trying to attract new students to register for the fall semester. In your mind, families that have decided to send their daughters to such schools, assuming there are no legacy ties to particular institutions, are looking for high-quality education and experience at an affordable price.
How do you stand out ahead of the other schools offering the same product you are?
An easy way to do that is by launching a blog that targets specific keywords you imagine prospective families will be typing into search engines to locate information on schools like yours. You might want to include phrases like “girls boarding schools” and “Virginia female schools” in your blog posts that can then subsequently be promoted on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to spread the word even further.
Targeting specific keywords is a process known as search engine optimisation, which increases a website’s organic search results because the content contained on such sites is what readers are looking for.
The Takeaway
If you’re a business owner, increasing your customer base should be one of your top priorities. The good news is that in today’s digital world, customers are actively searching for businesses like yours. All you have to do is meet them halfway — providing customised, original content that adds value.
By establishing a blog and a social media presence, business owners can help their customers find what they are looking for while generating interest in their endeavours. It’s important to remember that launching a blog doesn’t take much time. All you have to do is make a commitment and stick to it.
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