If I’ve learned anything from clients who have no online presence but desperately need to get noticed, it's that it’s easy to get confused by all of the available must-have options. My trademark motto is “keep it simple and be real” and it’s a motto that leads to success for my clients.

The first order of business: Get your website up to speed. A website with no traffic (visitors) is a website that search engines will only ignore. It’s as simple as that. How do you go from zero to 100 visitors a day? Here’s the short list:

Make your website attractive

Make your website appealing with engaging photos and word content that makes sense. Be sure that you have a color scheme that draws the eye into the content and encourages visitors to look deeper. Even if you have a basic white scheme and feel like you need to stick with that - you can bring up the appeal by adding a significant color splash which you repeat throughout the site. Color prompts emotion and emotion leads to connection. Digital marketing is all about making connections.

I think it's also worth saying that websites with too much bling or too many moving parts will put visitors off. Too many images in a constantly moving slider is overwhelming, and people simply won't stick around long enough to watch more than two images. It's a fact. Also - a one-page website with too much splash and not enough content is frustrating for visitors who are looking for real answers (it also puts off search engine bots - meaning the very search engines you want to attract to your content will be more likely to pass on your website). Visitors want to find what they're looking for without doing a lot of scrolling down through a long one-page.

Write on!

Something people who create their own websites don’t often understand is that word count counts. It’s great to have images to help tell your story, but if that story is lacking actual words then search engines won’t take your content seriously. It’s difficult to get your message across when you rely on images alone (despite the notion that a picture is worth a thousand words). Every page needs to have at least 300-500 words if you want to excite search bots enough to entice them to crawl your site (and refer visitors as a result).

Where to start with social media

Now that you have a website that ticks all the boxes it’s time to turn your attention to social media. The must-have list may change over time, but the basics right now are:

• Google business (Gbiz)
• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube

Sharing content

Once all of these platforms are set up, the question becomes, how to make them work? Start posting content. It’s a simple as that. And yes! Google business wants you to post new content often. People tend to set up a Gbiz page, inflowing all of the relevant data to all of the various locations, assuming that when that’s accomplished, they’re done. But the truth is – like all social platforms it’s necessary to post to Gbiz right along with all of the other platforms.

Hashmarks and @'s

Hashmarks can help get content and posts noticed, but too many hashmarks will turn people away. The best policy with this is keep these to a minimum and before you use a hashmark, check that page to make sure it will help get the right people back to your website/services.

Start from your website

The biggest mistake newbies make is thinking that they only need to post independent items to social media – meaning they post a comment, or a photo and that’s it. This is only the beginning. Your goal should be to get people to your website where they can readily learn more about your services and begin to buy into what you have to offer. A stand-alone post isn’t going to prompt people to dig deeper. Every post should start at your website’s newsfeed or spring from content on a webpage. With this link you’ll be able to share information to every social site you maintain and automatically get people back to your website - where they are more likely to become interested in your services and products.

Build a community forever

What comes next? Making connections. If you only post to your social pages and do nothing to recruit followers – you have a very unsocial attitude. To be successful it’s necessary to spend time visiting other pages, liking other people’s content and following people’s discussions. Occasionally leaving a comment on someone else's post will do wonders for creating a following. All of this is paramount to your digital marketing success.

If you have a website that could us a makeover, or if your social media has stalled out, I can help. Visit my contact page for more information.