With so much to do in your business, it can be hard to figure out how digital marketing can help your business without adding too much extra work to your already overflowing plate. Which is why we’re sharing a few digital marketing tips for Brisbane businesses.
As a Brissy business ourselves, we know how daunting it can be to try and find your place amongst all of the online noise. We might come from a small corner of the world, but we have the skills, knowledge and quality to make a big impact – if only we can figure out how to get our message in front of the right people.
Digital marketing can be a big help with that – it is a cheaper, easier and faster vessel than traditional marketing methods. The term ‘digital marketing’ is a catch-all term that covers everything from content marketing, paid ads, SEO, social media, websites, email marketing and community management.
Social Media
Most businesses are on social media, but not all businesses are using it to its fullest potential. Social media is a great way to share your products and services while engaging in two-way conversations with your audience. When used correctly, social media can help drive your business by increasing brand awareness, customer retention as well as increase sales and conversions.
Immerse Yourself In Social Media
Honestly, it’s really hard to create content for social media if you’re not spending time on that platform. If you’re not participating in the social media communities you’re posting to, it’s hard to build an engaged audience, drive connections with your audience, or make them care about your brand and your business.
You also need to be on these platforms to know what topics are trending, and the formats that are – and aren’t – appropriate for the platform. User behaviour and expectations vary wildly depending on the platform you’re using. TikTok users and creators are so completely different from those on LinkedIn.
You need to be able to differentiate what content works best on which platform, and how your audience behaves on that platform. If your target is 25-35 year old females with creative mindsets, your target is definitely going to be on LinkedIn – but if you’re looking to sell a skin care range, LinkedIn is totally not the platform for you.
Knowing which platform your users are on, and what they do on those platforms, is key to finding the best way to reach them. If you want to figure out which social media platform is best for reaching your audience, take a look at Bek’s blog “Social Media Marketing in 2022: Where Are Your Users?”.
Find Ways To Generate Ideas When You’re All Out of Them
One of the biggest pains of content marketing is actually generating the ideas that form the content. At BeKonstructive we use a number of ways to generate our content ideas – from monthly meetings with our clients to plucking ideas from online communities, our team has developed a process that combines our journalistic skill set with marketing strategy and editing to generate endless ideas.
But if you’re struggling with finding ideas for your content, there are a number of ways you can get those ideas flowing!
FAQs
Think about FAQs from customers or clients. If you’re being asked these questions frequently, then there is a gap in the information you have and what your audience is consuming. Content generated from FAQs are also great to have on hand so you can easily pass on the information next time you’re asked without having to take the time to explain it over and over again.
Consuming Content
If you’re wondering what content can be created, get on out there and consume some! Take some time scrolling through TikTik, Instagram, or LinkedIn (pick your poison) and see what content is out there that you can use as inspiration!
Check out what your competitors are creating and think about how you could create something similar (but better and true to your own brand), look to see if there are any glaring gaps in the content that is being presented online, see if there are any pieces of content you want to create a reaction piece to, find a trend that you want to jump on with your own brand – all of these are perfectly valid (and easy) ways to spark some ideas!
If you’re stuck for ways on how to generate content, check out our blog “10 Ways to Generate Content Marketing Ideas”. We also have a blog on “4 Tips for Any Content Marketing Budget” that looks at ways to generate ideas and maximise your content.
Nurture Your Content Marketing Mindset
If you’re a B2B business, some of the best content to support your social media strategy happens when you’re out at work events, or visiting another business. Photos and posts from your events calendar are great pieces of content because you are able to tag others into your posts; which, on some social media platforms, can really help the reach of your content.
Likewise, a B2C business can very effectively use behind the scenes content to create posts that speak more personally to the audience of that content. Finishing up a project, reaching a milestone within your business, or just capturing the day to day working of your business are all great ways to generate new content!
It isn’t always easy to remember to grab photos of yourself and / or others when you’re out and about, but there are ways you can help yourself with this! To help get yourself into the mindset of taking photos for later content creation, you can:
- set up calendar alerts on your phone to remind you to take a photo with whoever you are talking to at the time, or of what you are working on at the time.
- have a game plan before you go to the event or meeting of who you want to take photos with, and take a look at it before you enter your event.
- take a moment before your event (or throughout your workday) to remind yourself why gathering content is important, and how it works with your business strategy.
Getting into the mindset of creating content can be a difficult one – particularly if you are people or camera shy. Content marketing mindsets don’t just grow overnight – you have to practice whenever you think about the opportunities you have of capturing those day to day experiences.
SEO
SEO is a useful – if often overlooked – tool to help bring your website to new, relevant audiences. A successful SEO campaign can help you capture audiences that are interested in your products and services, but may not necessarily know you. Capturing these audiences is only achievable with a consistent, slow-burn approach, which can take a couple of months to see results. (If you want to know a bit more about SEO, and the BeKonstructive approach to SEO, I highly recommend “Getting Started With SEO: The BeKonstructive Approach”.)
Metadata Matters
Metadata is incredibly important as part of your SEO strategy. Your metadata sums up the contents and purpose of your page to help audiences (and Google) determine whether your blog or landing page is relevant.
A page’s metadata is randomly generated by search engines, but tools like Yoast SEO can help you create unique metadata that sums up why someone should read your content.
But there are a few rules you should follow when looking to edit your metadata – you need to be aware of the proper length your page description and title should be, and how to incorporate your keyword into each.
There is a great blog on our site, “Metadata Rules”, that steps you through these rules, and goes into why having incorrect, missing, or non-optimised metadata can affect your SEO scores. It’s a must-read, particularly if you’re looking at DIYing your own SEO.
Blog Often & Regularly
Regular blogging can help to keep your SEO ranking stable. Here at BeKonstructive we take a content approach to SEO, which basically means we create content that is both useful to our clients’ audience, and supports our SEO strategy.
Blogging regularly and often helps search engines to see that the website is still very much active, and is supplying up to date information to its audience. And, with Google’s recent algorithm change, making sure that you are supplying relevant and up to date information is going to be more important than ever.
Continually creating blogs that support your SEO strategy can help to improve the rankings of other key pages on your site, as well. Our article “You Still Need to Write Blogs for Your Business” goes through a few ways that regular blogging can help your digital marketing as a whole. One of the biggest ways it helps your SEO strategy, however, is by adding credibility to your key landing pages. Having multiple pieces of content on your website that links to your landing pages tells Google that these pages are a good source of information on that topic – plus, the new Google Algorithm update really favors the ‘content first’ approach.
Live Local
A really easy way to focus your digital marketing Brisbane-wide is to look at local SEO. Local SEO really relies on optimising your Google Business listing (or your Bing Maps Listing). Optimising these profiles helps audiences who are searching for local listings like “Brisbane copywriting” or “dining near me” see and analyse your business using apps with location data.
Apps that utilise location data for searches include your phone’s internet browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox) or map application (Google Maps or Apple Maps). Keeping profiles like your Google Business listing up to date helps audiences searching for local business access your profile more easily, and will help your visibility when someone searches using a “local” term (ie coffee shop near me, Brisbane copywriters, Spring Hill real estate agent).
We have a recent article that looks more into how Brisbane businesses can leverage local SEO, which also talks more about why local SEO is so important for your SEO strategy.
Ask For Google Reviews
To continue to leverage local SEO, having regular (and honest) Google reviews can really help your larger SEO efforts. Positive Google reviews tied to your business lets Google know that your services are legitimate, and that you have customers that find your products or services useful.
In addition to helping your SEO efforts, Google reviews really do work as digital word of mouth. As the Brisbane business community is so small, it really sparks the notice of a potential customer if someone they know has had a positive experience with your business.
Even though we are talking about digital marketing, Brisbane businesses should think about ways to generate those reviews offline.
A quick call or face to face chat with a happy customer can help you generate a positive Google review in a matter of minutes – which is what makes Google reviews an easy to generate part of SEO.
Community Management & Audience Building
Community management and audience building play a huge role in a successful digital marketing strategy. Creating great content and having a well-crafted SEO strategy can fall flat if you aren’t actively nurturing your audience. These activities can help you build a loyal and engaged audience, kickstarting the engagement you need to help your business take off.
Use Email Marketing To Stay in Touch With Your Community
Email marketing is a tool that can often be overlooked by businesses. Most of us are sending and receiving emails everyday, and hate the thought of cluttering up people’s emails with more junk. When used thoughtfully, however, email marketing can be such a great tool for both B2B and B2C businesses.
In addition to the usual marketing emails about new products or services, emails are a great way to share behind the scenes content to your audience. New team members, exciting updates about upcoming products, and even updates on your business as a whole are a great way to foster a community and form a connection with your audience. Sharing your brand values and insights into how your business exemplifies them can be applied across other channels – like social media – but there is something particularly special about getting an email update being sent directly to your inbox.
Connect On LinkedIn – Straight Away
If you meet a new Brisbane business owner, or a great potential new supplier, connect with them on LinkedIn as soon as possible!
While business cards are a great way to have the contact details of your new connections, if you’re meeting 20 new people in a night it is incredibly easy to forget which names and faces spoke to you about their exciting new business venture.
Be like us overly-attached Zillenials: take out your phone and search for your new contact on LinkedIn in front of them. If you have the LinkedIn App on your phone you can whip it out, send a connection request, and add a nice note to remind you both what you spoke about.
“But Kate”, I hear you say, “why does this fall under digital marketing tips? Isn’t this just good old fashioned networking?”.
To which I say “it really isn’t!”.
Building a list of connections on LinkedIn is a fantastic way to grow your audience and brand awareness. Having your new LinkedIn connections secured right after you meet them at an event will allow them to see the strategic content you’ve planned, allow you to make a post thanking them for the great conversation, and connect with their own connections / network.
These strategic activities on LinkedIn are all about growing your reach, utilising the LinkedIn algorithm to its fullest potential, and creating lasting connections with other Brisbane business owners. If you want to learn more about how we use LinkedIn for Brisbane businesses, take a look at our blogs “B2B Content Marketing Customer Journeys” and “Leveraging LinkedIn for Brisbane Networking Events”.
Use Facebook Groups to Your Advantage
Local community groups, hobby groups, or parent groups – there is always a Facebook group perfect for your brand and your brand story. Putting your brand into a Facebook group is a great way to get your name out to the people who will benefit most from your product or service.
It’s important in these groups to make sure you aren’t dominating the conversation, or giving unhelpful or irrelevant advice. Adding your business as a member of the group and interacting with other users content, replying to relevant questions with how your business can help, or sharing useful and relevant content into groups are all ways to get your business’ name out and about in Facebook groups while still adding more to the group than you are taking away. Learn more about the importance of community management on social media in Caitlin’s blog “Social Media and the Importance of Community Management”.
Let’s Talk Digital Marketing Tips
There are so many ways digital marketing can set Brisbane businesses up for success, but digital marketing really can be a full-time job on top of the day-to-day operations of running a business.
If you want someone to help take the load off, get in touch. We’re always excited to help Brisbane businesses’ level up their digital marketing game.
