We promised more information on the importance and joys of adding Facebook Stories to your workflow, and so we are going to deliver!

Hello again, sweet Summerville! Welcome back. We hope you and yours are staying safe and healthy. Keep washing those hands and practicing social distancing! If you have the chance, we also encourage you to support local businesses as much as you can right now. So many of the staples we love that are Summerville through and through need your love and support. Get carry out, pick up some coffee, and visit your favorite local artist's websites or Etsy pages! Every little bit helps right now, and we encourage you to pay it forward. If you'd like some recommendations about some of our favorite local businesses, please don't hesitate to reach out to us! We have been enjoying our fair share of our favorite Summerville things thanks to delivery and pickup!

Now, let's jump back into some work. Our last blog kicked off our blog series discussing the importance of Facebook Stories. We just had so much to share - we couldn't limit it to just one post!  Even though we are all smartly practicing social distancing, one of the many ways we can all stay connected is social media. We can stay close and remain in contact with as many people as our hearts desire thanks to social media. This is why it is so important. You can remind your audience that you're still here, you still care about how they're doing and that you and your company will still be here when all of this is finally over

YOUR CUSTOMERS; THEIR NEEDS
We've touched on the topic of customer experience and service multiple times throughout our blogs in the last few months. The importance placed upon it needs to become one of your top priorities. Good customer service is one of the top digital trends for 2020. How to listen and connect with your clients needs to evolve and grow over time. We love being heard, and we all love when our opinion is valued and listened to. Stories, videos, and going live on Facebook gives your client an in-person opportunity to give and voice their opinions. It opens up the floor to more of your followers to join in on the conversation and to agree and disagree with their peer's needs or opinions in a safe and productive environment. Take what your followers say to heart. If they aren't opinions or needs that you feel are in your companies best interest, that's ok. But acknowledging them means a lot to your customers. You can create images and stories to hype up announcements, new products, sales, and exciting events they can all attend - either online or hopefully soon, in person. When you go live on Facebook, you can see the comments your follows are making in real-time and you can physically respond to them. What an instant connection! You can answer questions, solve issues, express gratitude, and connect with your audience in real-time. This frees up time that you would be spending answering these questions and concerns via email or phone call, allowing you to get back to work.

ANOTHER CHANNEL
Being consistent is an excellent tool in branding and leading a successful company. Being consistent creates a subconscious connection between you and your clients and a sense of safety and trust that they can depend on. But, that doesn't mean that everything you post has to be the same. This can draw more of your follows to check out other platforms that you run your social media on, and is another tool you can use to get your customers excited. For example, you might only make announcements about new products, deals, and giveaways on your Facebook stories. But, you hint on all of your social media platforms that to view and learn about these announcements you have to view it on Facebook stories. This can then bring your Instagram or other platform's audience to your Facebook page and vice versa. This is a great way to cross-promote your social media platforms and to keep up traffic to all of your pages. Also, different audiences prefer different types of social media platforms. When creating any story, tailor them to the platform and the audience that prefers it. Not only are you speaking to your audience through your Facebook videos, but you are also speaking to a very specific group and demographic.

IT'S ALL IN THE TIMING
Just like Instagram, Facebook Stories live right at the top of your followers' Facebook feeds. They are the first thing that pops up once the app is loaded on their phone or computers. Staying at the top of their page and in their minds' eyes is very important and effective for your business. This is very similar to putting in the much needed time for SEO and getting your company in the top few results in Google searches. This is why you need real and in the moment, not perfect, videos. The more honest they are and the more you draw in your audience, your stories will remain in a consistent spot in their feeds.

Are you getting excited about the potential Facebook stories can bring to you and your company? We hope so. Even if you're still a bit skeptical, now is a great time to try out the many features Facebook stories can give you. Have fun, be bold, and be honest. Your audience, customers, and fans love and support you for a reason. Let that reason shine through your posts! Don't let your audience forget about you, and don't forget about them. We hope you're doing well, Summerville. We miss seeing you and look forward to enjoying our town together very soon. Stay safe, stay smart, and stay home!

Gaining online traffic to your website can be a little tricky, but the more you understand the different types of traffic and how to get them to your website, the more you can build your business online and off. Take the time to continue learning about the different types of traffic and how it can help you and your company!

February is here! We mentioned how much we love love, and we wanted to continue that with you. In our last blog we started the conversation about what online traffic to your website is and the different types there are out there. Remember, many different types of traffic can visit your website, but we are focusing on the four most popular. In our last blog, we talked about direct and referral traffic. In this blog, we are going to be finishing out with talking about organic and social traffic. These two are some of the most tangible and easiest forms of traffic you can implement into your company and very easy to add to your online advertisement goals.

TRAFFIC TYPE THREE: Organic Traffic!
This type of traffic comes from an online search. An online user isn't specifically typing in your companies name, because they don't know who you are yet. But they are searching for a specific product or service and want a recommendation for something. They type in something that relates to your business, and if you use this type of traffic properly, your company will pop up in the top three website options for them to choose from. The best way to increase this type of traffic is through SEO - (S)earch (E)ngine (O)ptimization. This will place your business at the top of a Google search, so, likely, your website will automatically be picked first by the online user. SEO labels you as being the authority and pro on the topic you're being searched under and helps increase your Google and Online ranking. It is very easy to track this kind of traffic, and the more work you put into it the higher the return you will receive. The big factor in putting work into this and making Google recognize you as an authority is having high-quality content. You need a beautiful and well-designed webpage and Social Media pages, a very safe hosting site, and written blogs posted to your website at least twice a month (AKA what we provide to our clients!). Being very present and active on your Social Media Pages will also help dramatically with this type of traffic too.

TRAFFIC TYPE FOUR: Social Traffic!
This kind of traffic is cultivated by people visiting your website by finding you on a social media platform. They are so interested and intrigued by your brand, that it causes them to visit your website through a link you've provided in a call to action or posted on your social media pages. The more followers you gain on your social media platforms, the more of this type of traffic you can gain. What helps is posting at least once a day on your platforms, being on-brand and consistent when you post, and staying connected with your followers. You need to interact, communicate, and respond to any posts and messages. It can't be a one way street of communication to be successful in this type of traffic. Don't be selfish in this form of traffic. Don't just post to gain followers and traffic. Your goal should be to create a vibrant community that you're proud to be apart of and that your brand is proud to be a part of. This is what social media was created for. If you see that a certain type of social media platform is working better than others for your company, adjust your time and budget accordingly. Post on all platforms, but be realistic in what is bringing traffic to your website and what is not. This reflects the demographics and age range of who is visiting your website, which is ok! Just be aware of these factors.

You not only need to be aware of each of these forms of traffic and understand how they work, but you also need to know how they help and how to achieve them. You need to track the success of each form of traffic that is coming to your website as well. Google My Business does track these numbers for you and you can find them in your information account under the Acquisition Tab. After you open this tab, you can find it in the Overview section. This gathered data can help you see what types of traffic you're consistently doing well with and the ones you're not doing well with. If there is a type of traffic you want more than others, then it's time to switch up your plan on how you are marketing yourself to gain the traffic you want. Have better offline marketing for the direct traffic or perfect your social media platforms to gain Social Traffic There is a trick to each of these types of traffic, and depending on what works best for you and your company, is what you need to put your focus on!

We hope these past two blogs have helped you understand a little bit more about online traffic and the importance it can bring to your website and company. Understand that each of these types of traffic is important and necessary to grow your businesses. You need to add goals of gaining traffic to your website to your goals of online marketing, and you need to understand your audience and the demographic you are wanting to target. Once you can harness these ideas and understand what type of traffic works best for you, then you'll be unstoppable.

Keep working hard, driving forward with your goals, and staying caffeinated!

Not all traffic is created equally. Some of it we dread at 5 PM, while others we work very hard to bring to our websites to grow our brands. Do you know the different kinds of traffic that come to your website and the ways you can help them flourish? Take a moment to sit back and enjoy the ride through this particular kind of traffic!

Valentine's day is almost around the corner, and we just love celebrating love. Love of one's brand, love of one's growth, and the love of one's ad campaigns. These three things might be difficult to love because they can take a lot of time and effort to become prosperous. But so does an important relationship. You often spend more time working at your job and helping it grow than you do with your family and friends. Understandably, you need to nurture and support these aspects of your company just like you would a budding relationship. One very popular way to grow your company is to understand the four different types of traffic your website can have to gain followers, new customers, and keep returning customers coming back for more. Remember, your website is a gateway to your business. it's the first introduction many people will have to your brand and what you're selling. If you can increase the number of people who come to your website, potentially you'll have more followers, customers, and purchases.

But building a website and hitting "publish" won't automatically bring visitors to your website. Getting people, and a large amount of them to visit your website isn't an easy task. There are billions of websites out there and infinite amounts of information readily available to you at all times. If you don't have the right tools or don't use the right tools to gain proper website traffic, your website could easily be losing traction and not getting the attention it deserves. Understanding and using all forms of traffic for your website isn't a quick and easy fix. There isn't one solution to make your website the most popular website ever or to get the number of visitors you want right now. Your business and advertising strategies need to have a few different tools working at the same time to optimize your website and to get those visitors you want and need.

We completely understand that online marketing is or can be overwhelming. That's one of the reasons why our company exists. We are here to take away that worry and stress and do it for you. But if you're taking this on by yourself and you're handling it all on your own, it's easy to fall into a pit of despair. But don't fall prey to it. There is a good amount you need to know to be successful in gaining the right amounts of traffic to your website, and sometimes it's hard to know where to start. There are admittedly many places to start and many great tools available to you. But start simply with one goal, getting more traffic to your website. If you start there and continue to grow, there is nowhere to go but up.

In the big scheme of things, four big types of traffic visit your website. There are others, but in this two-part blog, we are just going to be discussing the four main players in bringing traffic to your website. So sit back and learn, and let's get some traffic to your website!  

TRAFFIC TYPE ONE: Direct Traffic!
This audience is specifically looking for you the minute they look for your website. They sit down at their computer and type in your website or specific type in your business name into their browser. They have heard about you and went looking for you directly. This audience and type of traffic already know, is very familiar with, and wants your brand. For companies that have been around for some time and are established, this kind of traffic is the result of years of cultivating an audience through branding and pushing to make themselves a household common name. If a much younger business is getting this kind of traffic, it is thanks to very smartly placed ads and a well-branded marketing plan that understood and knew their demographic right at the very beginning. This type of marketing doesn't mean online marketing. Its benefits come from an offline marketing strategy. If your company is getting a large amount of this kind of traffic to your website, but you're not seeing any sense of return in purchases or new clients, then it might be time to rethink your brand. Always make sure your brand matches what you're selling and who you're selling it to.

TRAFFIC TYPE TWO: Referral Traffic!
This type of traffic comes from visitors visiting your website by outside links that are placed across the internet. If you place your links on popular webpages or forums where a lot of traffic already exists, the more likely you are to also lead this traffic to your website. If you publish an article, popular post, something that grabs an audience's attention with a call to action to visit your website, then you might find some big success using this type of traffic. Be very careful with this type of traffic though. Google can flag these posted and shared links as bots or scams. Which is the last few months, has become a very strict regime. Make sure your links have value and quality, and you post them on reputable sites. Avoid creating or posting on gimmicks, scams, and cheesy advertisement to get followers for the sake of followers. That will blow up in your face before any success comes your way.

Think about this. These are just TWO of the four ways to optimize traffic to your website. They are in-depth, but not out of reach. How are you feeling about these two types of traffic? Do they sound familiar?  Are you using them in your everyday drive to bring more traffic to your website? If you're not, try and add them to your traffic intake, and see where you are when we post the second half of this blog. You should experiment and see what you can gain by using them. Remember, you won't be losing anything by spending time cultivating these types of traffic. Try something new in your ad campaign this month. It might just completely turn around the traffic to your website, and get you on track to exactly what you want from your online business.

Until next time, work hard, stay inspired, and stay caffeinated.