I belong to a business network organisation which is nothing do with magic as such, but which is a brilliant way for me to mix with local businesses in order to promote my corporate work and to learn more about what the challenges are facing those in business generally.
At each monthly lunch meeting, one of the members will get up and do a 10 minute presentation on a subject related to their business or expertise, and recently I saw an excellent talk by David Graves of GWS Media, a company which deals in website design and marketing.
David provided a 10 point checklist of things to help your online marketing, and it was so useful that I thought I would pass a summary of it on to you now.
- Big Sites Are Best. Small sites will get less attention from search engines, whereas sites with plenty of pages get noticed.
- Regular updates. Google has no interest in sites that never change their content, so use blogs and other regular content changes.
- Keywords. While it is counter productive just to randomly insert keywords into your site text, consult the Google keyword suggestions for some you can use.
- Search Engine Optimisation. Having good SEO on your site will help with Google rankings and make your site more likely to be shown near or on the first page.
- Site Content Structure. Don’t make the mistake of leaving your important site content way down on the homepage. Get it ‘above the fold’ near the page top.
- Pay Per Click. PPC such as Facebook or Google ads in which you only pay a fee when someone clicks on the advert are a good way to generate site traffic.
- Links. Another way to curry favour with Google is to have plenty of incoming links—in other words, 3rd party sites that link through to yours.
- Social Media. Consistent posting is advisable. You can share your material on several different platforms and can re-post relevant content from elsewhere.
- Offline. Don’t ignore offline marketing because it can be useful to encourage people to visit your online presence as well as reach people who don’t use the web.
- Site Tracking. Google Analytics provide highly detailed feedback on who is visiting your site and what they are looking at which is helpful when deciding on content.
GWS Media (www.gwsmedia.com) are a highly respected media business based in Bristol, so the advice above is coming from a good source. If you are unsure whether any of the aspects of your media presence are fit for purpose, you would do well to consult companies such as theirs as they can hugely improve the effectiveness of your marketing.
Promoting ourselves as magicians is so much more complex than it used to be and to make an impact and be noticed by the general public requires a more sophisticated online approach. Unless you are well versed in the technical side of online marketing, professional help is really essential otherwise you could be wasting much of your time and effort.