Are you a long time Staten Island business owner with a mind for meeting your goals, growing your business, and staying in-the-know about the latest marketing and technological trends? As you may know,  business strategies and marketing techniques are always evolving.  If you’ve found yourself struggling to stay up-to-date with the biggest trend in marketing — the beast that is internet marketing – no worries, I’m here to help you.

Digital Marketing can be confusing, especially for business owners who simply don’t have the time to learn and understand how internet marketing works. I see so many business owners thinking they can get by with a digital billboard website and an inactive Facebook page. The days of these techniques working are pretty much over. Social media gives businesses owners free tools to collect data on people that interact with your page- use to them your advantage.

Like Google, social media algorithms are constantly being updated as well. Last year, Facebook engagement for brands and publishers fell 20%. Since Facebook is turning its efforts towards pier to pier engagement, the cost for social media advertising will likely see an increase in price. If you aren’t using paid ads, you shouldn’t expect to see much engagement.

More often than not, small businesses feel that they don’t have the marketing budget to advertise the way the big Fortune 500 companies do, resulting in wasted advertising dollars due to poor targeting campaigns.

I’ve laid out a few of the top tips about how to ensure that your small business’ digital marketing strategy is at the top of its game!:

SEO: Organic is the Way to Go

Sure, you’ve probably heard the rumors about SEO being dead. While it’s true that spam tactics will no longer rank your website, NYC SEO can still do great things for your business. Consumers are always reading reviews online before they make a decision on where to shop. You want to make sure that potential customers can find you and contact you before they get in touch with the competition.

If you don’t have the budget for a SEO campaign, there are still a few ways you can optimize your website that you should take advantage of.

Google analytics is a free service offered by Google to help you analyze your data and help locate errors. You can take a good hard look at your present site and what people are doing with the time spent on your website. With this data, you can figure out an effective way to funnel prospect clients and convert them into paying customers.

Google Webmaster is another tool that helps analyze and address the present state of your website and any errors you may need to correct. You want to make sure your website gives the user (and Google!) a quality experience every time they land on your website.

Focus on ranking for keywords that make sense for your business. You never want to stuff your website with a bunch of random keywords, that’s a great way to get a manual penalty for over optimization. If you’re having trouble figuring out keywords to target, I recommend entering your target keyword in Google search, and comparing it with the similar keyword suggestions that Google provides for you at the bottom of the search engine results page.

High Quality Content Can Push You To The Top of the SERPS

While we always think that sharing content regularly can put you ahead of the curve, it’s not just as simple as spamming out recycled content. Instead of posting small 300 word blog posts every week, take the time to combine those posts into a killer piece of long form content that offers real value to your readers.

It sounds cliché, but content really is king in the SEO industry.
Original content is a great way to increase your credibility and help position your brand as a voice of authority in your industry. It can also help you nurtureand generate leads for new business.

What are a few other benefits of original content? It can give your fans something valuable to share and talk about on social media, increasing your engagement rate. More than that, it will help you rank higher in search results, Google especially, loves fresh, relevant and quality long form content. Having long form content allows you to turn your pages into a real resource that provides value. When your content receives social signals, it tells Google that its a popular piece that’s worth checking out.

Engage in Social Media

When it comes to inexpensive marketing that can reach either a very specific, targeted audience or broad audience, there’s no better, or more versatile tool, than social media. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more, can increase your brand’s visibility in search engines as well as be an effective customer service tool.

One of the best ways to grow engagement on a new social media account is influencer marketing. First, identify key influencers within your industry and build a relationship with them. Learn from them, and use their sites to figure out what works and what doesn’t for a company like yours in the industry. Ultimately, you want to try to maintain a professional, online relationship with leaders in your industry. Bloggers and influencers are always willing to share relevant content that their fans might be interested in.

Additionally, you could consider managing your multiple accounts with third party apps such as HootSuite to help you stay on top of your marketing needs. With an app like this, you can schedule your posts, determine the best times for you to post, and gain an understanding of what brings the highest traffic and social media engagement for your site.

The biggest benefit of being on social media? The free analytics that come with it. Make sure you’re using the easy-to-understand analysis to help better understand what works for your pages and what you should improve on. Figure out which posts are your top performers (people tend to share visual content such as infographics or videos) and double down on what works.