Social Media | Kelly Website Design

7 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing is Important

Written by Kaitlin Farris on December 9, 2022. Posted in Social Media.

Social media marketing is an essential tool for businesses looking to reach their target audience and drive engagement and sales. With billions of active users on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, social media provides a huge opportunity for businesses to connect with potential customers and grow their brand.

But with so much noise on social media, it can be challenging for businesses to stand out and effectively market themselves. Here are some key strategies for successful social media marketing:

Identify Your Target Audience

Before you can effectively market on social media, you need to know who you’re trying to reach. This means defining your target audience in terms of demographics, interests, and behaviors. This will help you create content that resonates with your audience and gets their attention.

Develop a Content Strategy

Once you know who your target audience is, you can start creating content that speaks to their interests and needs. This could include blog posts, videos, infographics, and other types of content that provide value to your audience and encourage them to engage with your brand.

Use Visuals

Social media is a visual medium, so incorporating visuals into your content can make it more engaging and effective. This could include high-quality images, videos, or even memes that grab your audience’s attention and help your content stand out in their feed.

Engage with Your Audience

Social media is a two-way conversation, so it’s important to actively engage with your audience. This means responding to comments and messages, sharing user-generated content, and asking for feedback to foster a sense of community around your brand.

Monitor and Track Your Performance

Social media marketing is most effective when it’s data-driven. This means using tools to monitor and track your performance, such as the number of likes and shares your content receives, the reach of your posts, and the engagement rate of your audience. This will help you identify what’s working and what’s not, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Collaborate with Influencers

Influencer marketing is a popular and effective way to reach a new audience on social media. This involves partnering with influencers who have a large following in your target audience, and working with them to create sponsored content that promotes your brand.

Advertise

While organic reach on social media can be limited, advertising provides a way to reach a wider audience and drive specific actions, such as visiting your website or making a purchase. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer a range of ad formats and targeting options, so you can tailor your ads to your audience and goals.

In conclusion, social media marketing is a powerful tool for businesses looking to reach their target audience and drive sales and growth.

A Guide to Using Third-Party Reviews on Your Website

Written by Kaitlin Farris on February 18, 2022. Posted in Marketing, Social Media.

What you need to know about using third-party reviews on your website

Reviews and testimonials can have a major impact on drawing in new customers. And because of that, many people copy and paste reviews from third-party websites onto their own website. But that doesn’t mean this is a good idea because you should not use someone’s name or review on your website without their permission.

Engaging in this practice can actually cause copyright issues. And these reviews don’t offer the same credibility that embedding recent reviews from these third parties could have.

What are third-party reviews?

A third-party review is any review left about your business on a website that is not yours. Some examples of third-party review websites include:

Google
Facebook
Yelp
Amazon

Customers can easily provide their thoughts and opinions on these websites. Some allow for anonymous posts while others include full details including profile images and other reviews from that same user.

Issues with copying and pasting reviews

Without including information from the original third-party site, copying and pasting reviews feels a bit ingenuine. When using this method, you can pull only the best reviews, which makes it feel staged.

Not only are copied and pasted reviews ingenuine, but they can also cause copyright issues with sites like Google. Reviews posted there are copyrighted information for that website. Taking that content from there could mean you face legal battles.

Finally, the person provided their permission for their name, likeness and details to be posted on the third-party website. They did not provide that consent for your website.

Alternatives to copying and pasting third-party reviews

Instead of copying and pasting reviews, you can look to these alternatives.

Ask the reviewer’s permission to use their review or have them write one specifically for your website. Sometimes this option gets you better content anyway because it’s tailored to your website and your needs.
Use a WordPress plugin. This way, it pulls in your reviews and embeds them directly from these third-party sites. The WordPress Business Reviews plugin offers a free option to pull in up to five Google reviews and three Yelp reviews. To get more than that, you’ll need to upgrade to premium. The premium option also offers a page showing merged reviews on a neat landing page.

Embedding the review from its original source is not the same as copying and pasting the content from the review over to your website. That’s because it provides the appropriate attribution from the third-party website and displays the source of the review. And, it doesn’t look like you’re posting that review as your own.

Why third-party reviews matter

Third-party reviews are more credible than testimonials on your website. That’s because you can’t pick and choose which reviews you like and show only the good ones on your website. That way, no bad information is out there about you.

This isn’t as trustworthy as showing the reviews from their original source. In addition to being more credible, these review sites can also show overall results on a larger scale by showcasing how many stars a company has based on how many total reviews. Showing total review counts can demonstrate the breadth of the customer base and offer greater context for a rating.

Third-party reviews are one aspect of your website strategy. For a full website strategy, design and hosting, contact us. We offer free quotes based on your needs!

Tips for Increasing Website Traffic

Written by Kaitlin Farris on December 5, 2021. Posted in Marketing, Social Media.

Many businesses set a goal of increasing website traffic year-over-year. But finding ways to increase quality visitors is challenging and takes work and strategy.

As a website management team, our clients often ask for tips to get more quality website visitors. We offer insights on how to improve your website traffic in practical, sustainable ways.

Post to Social Media

Social media can help build traffic to your website. But you’ll need a strategy for how often to post and to where.

Take advantage of groups where users are more engaged. Groups are most prevalent on Facebook and LinkedIn and can be fantastic for growing traffic. You’ll need to post new content in these groups regularly though to continue to see benefits.

LinkedIn is a powerful tool for publishing. Your connections know you on a personal level and will be likely to check out your content. Invite your employees to all share your content on their personal profiles to gain even more traffic.

Blogging

Blogging is something that most businesses try at some point. But the problem is, they don’t stick with it or start with a dynamic strategy. To make content marketing efforts really work for you, you need to do the following.

Create irresistible headlines. Even with the best SEO targeting, you’ll be one of 10 results a user sees. You need to entice them with great headlines to pick your article.
Target long-tail keywords. Many companies do some basic SEO research and target keywords that hundreds, if not thousands, of other businesses are already targeting. Instead, use long-tail keywords to reach the very specific audience who will benefit from your content.
Write content and create visuals that entice referral traffic. Getting links to your content will help build organic traffic to your site from other websites.

Write a Guest Blog

Guest blogs help in improving SEO value due to having more backlinks. But they also help in building awareness for your business with people who have no previous relationship with you. While it’s great to write for your own blog, writing for other blogs is also beneficial to grow your following.

Distribute Content via Email Marketing

If you build it, they may or may not come. Don’t rely on SEO too heavily to the point where you don’t take full advantage of your owned audience.

Email marketing, text messaging and social media are all great ways to reach existing fans and followers with your content. If you’re publishing blogs or content marketing of any kind and not emailing it out to your list, you’re missing out on a great opportunity.

Build a Community

One-way content is not nearly as inviting to return to as interactive content is. When you build a community, you have an excuse to reach back out to customers to ask their thoughts and input on various topics.

Communities can be through Facebook groups, forums or other website tools. Just be sure you’re monitoring and managing the community as failing to do so will make you look uninterested in the interactions.

And while you’re building communities, consider adding to other communities you don’t own. Interacting in comment sections can build awareness for your business and provoke some clicks from curious people who want to learn more.

Use Video

People engage with different kinds of content. Some people prefer to read a blog while others prefer to get their content from videos. YouTube is essentially a search engine for videos. Get more traffic to your website through posting videos.

And when you post those videos to your website, be sure to use schema markup. Ask your website team about video schema and the benefits it provides your website.

Purchase Well-placed Ads

Sadly, not all traffic-building efforts are free. But paying for well-placed ads can do wonders for generating the RIGHT traffic to your site. Ads help build your following and bring quality traffic to your website.

Think about ways you can use ads to build your owned audience, such as getting new social media followers or increasing your email marketing distribution.

If you need help building your website’s traffic, consult the Kelly Website Design team. We have extensive experience in building high-functioning websites that encourage repeat visitors. Contact us to learn more.

How to Increase Your Facebook Organic Reach

Written by Kaitlin Farris on April 29, 2021. Posted in Marketing, Social Media.

Facebook’s organic reach has been on a steady decline over the last several years as the platform tries to push brands to purchase ads and promote content. The average organic reach for a post is only 5.2 percent of a Facebook page’s total audience.

So even if you’ve built an outstanding following, your everyday posts will only reach a fraction of your audience. The key to changing this metric for your business is in varying your content and learning more about what resonates with your following.

Ultimately, Facebook aims to delight users when they log in, so they serve those visitors content similar to things they’ve liked, commented on or shared recently. To increase your organic reach, you need to increase engagement. And to do that, you’ll need to vary your content.

Host Facebook Live Sessions

Faithful followers of your brand will get a notification when you go live. And the more they watch the live videos, the more notifications Facebook will send your followers about these videos.

Plus, live sessions invite interactions. Followers can comment and ask questions while you discuss a product launch, sale or other news. You can also offer sessions where followers can ask you anything, which might be like getting free insights if you’re an expert in your field.

To do Facebook Live correctly though, you need to advertise when the live sessions will be. Or set a schedule that you’re always live on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. or at another convenient time that meets the needs of your customers.

Announce your live sessions on more than just your Facebook page. Add information to your website, send out an email to your list or add the content to your other social platforms.

Create a Facebook Story

Facebook stories are available for 24 hours. They are a collection of photos or videos that are timely and relevant. When users log into Facebook, the top of the page highlights new stories from the friends and pages they follow. And if they view your story regularly, Facebook will also send your followers notifications when you add to your story to make sure they don’t miss it.

When posting to your Facebook story, consider these tips.

Be personable. Since these posts are only there for 24 hours, you can show even more of your personality. That’s not to say you should be unprofessional. But consider short videos that show a little insight into your operations.
Ask questions to encourage interactions. The more interaction you get on a post, the more the Facebook algorithm will favor your content.
Provide answers to common questions. Review your customer service requests from the last month to see trending topics that people tend to ask frequently. This allows you to be proactive for those who haven’t taken the time to ask the question yet.
Share information from your clients. People love to see content from other customers to see what it’s really like to work with your company.
Be consistent in your story posting. The more consistent you are in posting and making sure there’s new content on your story, the more your followers will view and engage with the content.

Generate Customer Polls

Creating engagement with your followers is how you really move the needle in getting Facebook to show your content to more followers.

Facebook polls are a great way to get fast and easy interaction. Ask questions that help followers consider their preferences and needs. You’ll get valuable insights while building your social media engagement.

Share Content from Your Followers

Don’t just post content you create. Share relevant information from other brands and services in your industry. And reshare information from satisfied customers who leave a review on your Facebook page or who post about your products or services.

Good social media listening tools will help you find these posts so you can share them with ease.

Be Responsive to Followers

When a customer comments on your posts or stories, be responsive. It’s important to encourage continued engagement by interacting with your followers. Otherwise, you look cold and lacking in customer service skills.

If you need help managing your social media, Kelly Website Design offers this service. Reach out to us for more information about how we help businesses grow their social following.

Why Is Website Accessibility So Important?

Written by Kaitlin Farris on December 17, 2020. Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Website Design.

One in four Americans has some form of a disability. That means that 25 percent of your target audience might not be able to view or navigate your website if you haven’t considered its accessibility.

Failing to make website accessibility a priority can also mean you could face fines and lawsuits from individuals who are unable to access your website.

Let’s review what website accessibility is and why it matters to your business.

What Is Website Accessibility?

Website accessibility is about making sure that all people can “perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the Web.” This includes people with auditory, visual, cognitive, speech, neurological and physical disabilities.

Additionally, those with disabilities should be able to contribute to the web just like anyone else.

An accessible website provides the necessary details for screen readers to describe what’s on-screen for those with visual disabilities, makes it possible to navigate for those who can’t use a traditional keyboard or mouse, etc.

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative provides guidelines and resources for people who manage websites. These guidelines provide technical specifications for ensuring that a website is available to everyone. These standards are international to ensure that all people can access the web from anywhere.

Why Website Accessibility Matters

Just like brick-and-mortar stores have accessibility requirements, so does online commerce and browsing. Without such guidelines, businesses might miss out on serving a large population of consumers. Here’s a look at why you should make your website accessible.

You’ll expand your customer base. When a person with disabilities visits your site, are they able to browse its contents with ease? Or will they constantly come upon areas they can’t view or understand because you haven’t considered your website’s accessibility? If they get there and there’s nothing there for them, they’ll go to your competitors. And your competitors might be better prepared to serve their needs. Now you’ve lost a customer, which you don’t want to do in today’s competitive landscape.
Lawsuits are far costlier than a website accessibility specialist. In 2018, there were 2,200 website accessibility lawsuits filed. The number of lawsuits continues to rise each year, and companies of all sizes are being forced to pay out large fines and settlements due to their website’s lack of accessibility. In 2019, the Supreme Court ordered Dominoes to pay out a large settlement due to a lack of accessibility of both their website and mobile app. The cost of a lawsuit, even if you win, will be far greater than the cost of making your website accessible now.
Fewer offline queries. If your website is not accessible, individuals with disabilities might flood your phone lines and get in touch via alternate methods. This can be time-consuming and not have as good of an ROI as website transactions do. Making your website accessible from the start can help reduce these inquiries.

How to Make Your Website Accessible

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative outlines many rules and regulations for what makes a website accessible. This includes but is not limited to:

Adding alt text to all images
Ensuring appropriate color contrast
Making text resizable
Creating keyboard accessible graphs and tables
Not timing out forms and fields
Not requiring CAPTCHA
Using specific link anchor text instead of text like “click here”
Keeping error messages clear and concise

The process can be time-consuming and tedious. It’s often a job that’s best for an expert. Kelly Website Design offers website accessibility services to help you stay compliant with the law and welcome all customers. Contact us to learn more.

Social Media Website Design Tips and Tricks

Written by Kaitlin Farris on November 24, 2020. Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Website Design.

Do you know what your website looks like when it’s shared on social media as a link? If not, take a moment and copy and paste the link to your homepage into the most popular social media platforms.

Does a nice image appear and a good description of the page? If not, you need to review your website’s settings. You should never discourage users from sharing your website on social media or make it look unattractive or uninviting to visit your website.

You do have control over what your website looks like when shared on social media. Here’s a look at how to modify these elements and ensure they look great from every angle.

The Social Media Website Image Users See

During your test, you might have seen a default illustration or icon instead of a photo from your website. Or, the social media platform might have used your logo in the image field because that’s the only image on the page.

Social media platforms will look for an image to place there. If none exists, the link will look dull and there won’t be anything to entice the reader to click.

Here’s a look at the dimensions of three of the most popular social media sites that provide link previews.

Facebook link preview dimensions are 1200 by 630 pixels
Twitter link preview dimensions are 1200 by 675 pixels
LinkedIn link preview dimensions are 1200 by 627 pixels

You’ll see that the dimensions are very similar. The best thing to do is to start with an image that’s 1200 by 627 pixels. Create a great design. Then, add some free space to the top and bottom to make it 675 pixels tall, which is the tallest of the three.

This way, when the other platforms crop the image, you won’t lose any important details in the process.

Use that image as the featured image for the page or post within WordPress. This will tell social media platforms that this is the image you’d like to use on social media.

Additionally, you can use the Yoast plugin to see a preview of your link on social media. And in this box, you can also change the social media image to something else.

The Social Media Website Text Users See

The text that social media platforms pull in is your page title. This should be optimized for SEO but also still sound natural to read. Based on your site’s settings, it should also pull over your site’s name after the page title.

The smaller text below that is your meta description, which should tell the reader even more details about the article.

If for some reason you have a page title that isn’t especially compelling when shared on social media but is optimized for other purposes, you can use the Yoast plugin to customize that text as well.

Expert Social Media Website Design

For website optimization from search engines to social media, contact Kelly Website Design. Our team has vast experience helping businesses build an effective online presence.

Adding a Podcast to Your WordPress Website

Written by Kaitlin Farris on November 11, 2020. Posted in Marketing, Social Media.

Podcasts are a great way to reach your customers in a flexible way that’s easy for them to consume and understand. This medium is growing so fast that 62 million Americans listen to a podcast at least once a week.

The great news is, adding a podcast to your WordPress website is as simple and easy as managing a blog using WordPress. We’ll explain the ease of posting your podcast episodes on a WordPress website. You have several options for how to manage your podcast on your WordPress website.

Hosting the WordPress Podcast Locally

You can upload the podcast file locally to your WordPress media files to host the podcast locally on your website if you are choosing not to go through a third-party podcast hosting company.

This will slightly limit your exposure as some podcast services provide users recommendations for additional listening that are similar to podcasts they’ve listened to in the past. But it does streamline the process of adding the podcast to your website and allow you to keep it local.

Here’s a step-by-step look at how to add a locally-hosted podcast to your website.

Get the file URL from your uploaded files.
Copy and paste that URL into your WordPress blog post or webpage.
Publish the article.

Your podcast will not have the fancy artwork and player options that it would if you were to embed it from another location. However, you can add that information to the blog article to achieve the look you’re going for.

Embedding WordPress Podcast Episodes

Once you’ve published your podcast episode within Apple Podcasts or another podcast program, you can embed the episode in a WordPress blog article.

Using this technique can be beneficial for SEO as you can post the podcast with its full transcript or at least a decently long description of the content within your podcast. Here’s the easy step-by-step process for posting your podcast in this way.

Get the embed code by clicking share under the podcast episode and toggling to the embed tab.
Choose your player options to adjust the embed code to meet your needs, then copy the embed code.
Paste the code into an HTML box within your WordPress blog and transform the code to “preformatted.”

At this point, you can then add additional text boxes and information about the podcast, if you’d like.

Add a WordPress Podcast Plugin

Depending on what podcast service you use to host your podcasts on, you might be able to get a WordPress plugin to add to the ease and simplicity of publishing podcasts on your website.

These plugins can sync to your podcast station or make it simpler to embed podcasts from these third-party locations. The plugin you’ll use for this way of managing your podcast will vary based on which third-party service you’re using for your podcasts. Do some research into plugins based on your needs or ask your WordPress website developer for more information.

WordPress Website Developer for Podcasters and Other Businesses

If you’re looking to increase your web presence as a podcaster or small business owner, our team can help you set up an outstanding WordPress website that enables you to manage your podcasts on an ongoing basis. Request a free quote to learn more about how Kelly Website Design can support your needs.

5 Website Updates for Businesses to Thrive During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Written by Kaitlin Farris on May 13, 2020. Posted in Marketing, Social Media, Website Design.

One aspect of business operations and strategy that has become quite clear in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic is that digital communication is crucial. Most digital communication starts and ends with a strong company website.

If you haven’t taken the time to review your website strategy as government mandates require alterations to your business, it’s certainly time now to do that website review. A strong website could be the difference between your business thriving and surviving during the pandemic and going out of business due to a lack of income.

As you review your company website, here are the five updates you should consider to keep your business alive and thriving during these challenging times.

Update Your Homepage With Relevant Information

The big question consumers have right now for businesses is whether or not they are open and accepting orders. From the moment your customers land on your site, this information should be apparent. Make sure your homepage explains that you are open and ready for business.

Have a statement in the website banner or somewhere else that’s prominent making this evident. The banner can link out to a more detailed explanation of adjustments you’ve made to your business model or new expectations in product/service delivery timeframes.

If you are unable to continue operating your business, you should still make this apparent on your homepage and set timelines for when you anticipate reopening. While you might have to update those timelines regularly, it still gives your customers an idea of what to expect from you.

Add/Enhance Your eCommerce Ability

Some companies that never operated within the e-commerce space are now required to do so due to brick and mortar closures and the suspension of events, such as farmers’ markets. If your e-commerce capability was limited, it’s time to expand that capability.

Some things you want to consider in your e-commerce capability include:

In stock notifications
Inventory management (as your online business grows, you won’t be able to keep up with manual spreadsheet inventory or other manual means of keeping track of this information)
Pickup options (for stores that had a brick and mortar presence that now can no longer permit people in-store)

Add Interactive Content

With newfound time on their hands, people are turning to online content to fill their free time. Review how interactive your website is. Consider adding videos, courses and interaction feedback to your website to encourage return visitors and shares on social media.

Review Logistic Details and Turn Around Times

Not only is the coronavirus affecting a company’s ability to operate brick and mortar locations, but it is also putting strains on the supply chain and shipping. Because so many goods are being transported via the mail and other shipping services, timelines for delivery might be longer.

Review the promises that you make on your website for shipping timelines and delivery. Make sure these are still realistic with your new staffing levels and the options that mail and carrier services are offering now. Do not over-promise during these challenging times because your customers are counting on you.

Analyze Your Website Data and Calls to Action

Take an in-depth look at your website analytics. Review where people are exiting your website from and pages with high bounce rates. You might be losing these valuable customers due to a lack of a call to action or a weak call to action.

Invest time in ensuring that every page on your website is performing at its optimal capability to bring in new customers and prospects.

If you need help reviewing your website’s design and functionality, contact Kelly Website Design for expert service in Radnor, Media, Springfield, Ridley, Havertown, Philadelphia, and West Chester.