Use SEO and Social Media Marketing to Boost Website Visitors and Sales

We at Patterson Digital Marketing are big believers in using SEO AND Social Media Marketing to increase website visitors and sales.

What is Social Media Marketing and Why is it Successful?

Social Media Marketing is marketing your products and business by posting unique and valuable content in the various Social Media channels.

Posts should be placed in all the social media channels:
•Your blog should be linked to your Facebook page so Facebook readers can be directed to your website offers
•Your blog and YouTube channels should be optimised so they are found in search
•Your YouTube videos should be embedded in your Facebook posts, LinkedIn posts, Google + and blogs
•Send links in each of these channels to your white papers, videos and articles
•You should share your posts in Twitter and use it to keep up with news and posts (tweets) of other influencers
•Join and participate in LinkedIn groups where your clients reside and even set up your own group, especially if you’re a leader and influencer
•Share information about your products in these channels
•If you build trust and leadership, you will be followed in each of these channels and at the right time, followers will go to your website and become your client
•The result will be that you will attract a lot more decision-makers, senior managers of clients and other visitors to your website
•You will receive messages and material from followers that you can re-cycle through these channels again, creating a circle of internet traffic and continually building your followers who will convert to clients.

As part of our SEO, we establish accounts for all these social media channels. But while most people don’t use these fully, you should actively and regularly market through these channels using valuable material in posts, links, shares. THIS IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING.

And the best part is that Patterson Digital Marketing can do it for you for the whole year creating unique and entertaining content on a monthly basis that is used to expand your website’s total indexed pages as well as sharing that content via social media and blogging outlets so that even more visitors are attracted to your website. We focus on ensuring that each page of your website can significantly improve site visitors.

But I’m too busy to bother with Social Media Marketing (SMM), some people say. Well if you have competitors and you’re not using SMM, then you’re losing the battle. Do you think because you may be a little busy, like Rod Drury, head of 800 staff at Xero, you don’t have time for Social Media Marketing? Well Rod Drury uses it throughout his day to build his business and keep an eye on competitors, trends and news.

But this couldn’t work for Engineering or similar Businesses?

We’ve been told that we’re crazy because Social Media Marketing could NEVER increase sales for engineering businesses.

Engineers Don’t Use Social Media? …Says Who? Well…read on and see for yourself.

You will see that it works well for ALL types of business and you need to be doing Social Media Marketing in your business – note the Marketing part!

Let the numbers do the talking

The 2012 Engineering Social Media Survey by Calgavin shows:
•61% of all engineers use social media in business
•Most popular social media sites visited by engineers are – Facebook 67%, LinkedIn 43%, YouTube 43%, Google + 33% – fast growing, Twitter 22%
•Engineers use social media for – News 50%, Finding products 60% (of which 53% will purchase), Learning 76%, Product recommendations 40%, White papers 53%.
•Most Engineers are on LinkedIn
•If you sell products that are purchased, then engineers can find them, download them and buy them online
•Favourite types of content viewed by engineers – videos, articles, white papers (create trust), webinars, images, forums
•Social Media is set to continue in growth which means throughout 2015 you should be investing time and effort into putting your company and products in front of the relevant engineers and decision-makers of clients – and watch your sales boom..

Read more: http://www.calgavin.com/2013/01/engineering-social-media-survey/#ixzz3K37Op97R

Advice from Workflow – www.workflow.com/blog

Social networking is changing the way engineers can work. You can use a network of experts to help you solve challenges, improve efficiencies or share advice. Pick one or two platforms and use them well.

LinkedIn
Join subject-specific and location-specific groups to connect with industry professionals. After a while, you can start your own group. It puts you right under the nose of decision makers and new leads. It offers a great opportunity to initiate discussions, provide opinions and get yourself noticed as an expert in your field. Groups include – Engineers Looking for Stuff, Civil Engineering Australia/New Zealand, Civil/structural Engineering network, Electrical Engineers World.

Twitter
Twitter is a micro-blogging platform. Use it to pick up the latest engineering headlines and news, follow influencers, be an influencer, keep up with product design trends and industry updates, share your own links and articles to those in your field. Groups include – @DesignWorld, @engineeringcom, @chemicalengnow, @IEEEorg. Use # to search and filter topics, ie #mechanical engineering.

Quora is another useful social community.

How to get the most out of networking through social media:
•Find influencers – that is people with clout in the industry, and follow their posts. Get in touch with them and make them a part of your online network.
•Join groups and discussion boards and actively participate.
•Share – or retweet – posts from others. Link back to them and they’ll see you are sharing their posts.
•Approach your target customers – go straight to the top! Connect with decision makers, project managers and marketing folk.
•Research popular #hashtags in your industry and incorporate them into your posts to help you get your content found.
•Encourage your employees or colleagues to share your posts with their own networks, and vice-versa.
•Provide useful, shareable information in your posts (not what you had for lunch).

EE Journal Proves its Success

EEJournal.com tracks the origins of its traffic and reports that 66% comes from search engines through good SEO, emails and direct sources. And the remaining third comes from social media sources (only 1% two years ago). EEJ established a significant presence in all of the popular social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube – and a few other places they found that were strategic hangouts for engineers. As a result, EEJ had knock-on effects like higher SEO rankings, more page views per visit, and more comments and engagement with their content across the board.

EEJ says you too can achieve these results – but it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and commitment to build an audience for your social media program. Consistent, strategic posting and nurturing of content is essential. After 2 years of focused effort, EE Journal can finally boast over 230,000 followers on 2 Facebook pages (EEJournal and FreshBytes) as well as a strong presence and excellent referral results with LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.

SAE International reports from a study of Mobility Engineers

Mobility engineers are technically adept, have a need to share information and data, and work in heavily globalized industries — automotive, aerospace, and commercial vehicle. As a result, they show relatively high levels of engagement with social media for both business and personal purposes.

1. While 61% of mobility engineers are using social media, a surprising 55% are using it for business purposes, with over 50% allowed access while at work
2. LinkedIn outpaces Facebook as the social network of choice for mobility engineers but younger engineers and those outside North America show a much greater usage of Facebook and YouTube than North Americans.
3. Engineer’s employers are also using social media, with well over half maintaining a corporate presence – Facebook is used at nearly twice the rate of the next closest platform, LinkedIn.
4. Age was not a strong determinant of social media usage. However, there are marked differences in preference among age groups.
5. While connecting with friends is the most common reason for using social media, connecting with professional colleagues is at near parity, with researching business issues and exchanging technical information all showing major patterns of usage.

Arena Solutions recommends 6 engineering networking sites:

The Engineering Exchange
Engineering.com
LinkedIn – Engineers Looking for Stuff, Electrical Engineers World, Engineers Collaboration for PLM
Twitter – @DesignWorld, @ArenaSolutions, @ENGINEERINGcom, @DangerousPrototypes., @Eng_Exchange, @cadcam3d
Open source platforms like Arduino and Codeplex (by Microsoft)
Quora – focused Quora boards to follow – Engineering Board, Electrical Engineering Board, Mechanical Engineering Board.

Mechanical Engineering Magazine

Networking site – Engineers Looking for Stuff – is on LinkedIn and Facebook.
IndustryPidgeon is a free social trade network for industry and manufacturing to meet, share and transact. It is designed so that people within a specific business niche can meet online, collaborate in real time and transact business.
Users of NineSights, part of NineSigma, can post a project or design and receive feedback from other users. Users can be engineers and manufacturers.
ASME is launching a social networking group for knowledgeable mechanical engineering professionals at www.asme.org.

So ACT FAST to catch up ….. invest time and effort into putting your company and products in front of relevant engineers, architects and decision-makers of clients using social media and watch your sales boom.

CALL Patterson Digital Marketing NOW to set up a meeting to see how Social Media Marketing will Boost Your Sales.

Chris Kirkham