If you are a digital marketing agency owner, you must be quite familiar with the fierce competition in this industry. Still, it is surprising to see most agencies promoting themselves as full-service agencies with an integrated marketing approach.

Can you drive any benefit out of this strategy that has already been practiced by 90% of the agencies?

Using such tired cliches is the most common blunder agencies make worldwide, only to see dismal results later. This is the effortless method to get obsolete.

That is why every expert and consultant would suggest you differentiate your marketing agency from competitors. The Internet is crowded with such advice, but the big question remains unresolved: how to stand out from the competition.

Why Your Agency Needs to Outshine Your Competition to Succeed?

With information overload all around us and social media content exponentially multiplying, marketers will not be able to catch the users' attention if they repeatedly use the exact phrases and terms.

As of July 2022, there are about 4.70 billion active social media users globally, and over 200 million businesses used Facebook to reach their customers.

Platforms like TikTok are rapidly penetrating the masses and are responsible for decreasing attention spans.

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In such a scenario, your success as an agency highly depends on your ability to catch users’ attention. You should be able to engage them with your content.

Nobody would pay attention if you blew your own trumpet or used common strategies and repeated terminologies. What if everybody targets the same audience, offers similar services, and uses identical advertisements?

So, if your marketing sounds like another “me too” product, you’ll have a tough time winning clients and surviving in the market.

By choosing a different marketing positioning, you’ll be able to do the following –

• Attract and convert new clients.
• Exponentially increase the referrals.
• Meet special needs of specific industries requiring specialized skills.
• Build brand image and loyalty, trust and authority.

Many agencies try to differentiate themselves based on the following points.

• We provide excellent customer service.
• We hire trained professionals and digital marketing experts.
• We have a proven track record with years of experience.
• We offer cutting-edge SEO / SEM services that work.
• We understand your business goals and hence implement the best strategies.

It sounds pretty obvious.

It might make sense for a novice, but we disagree. We believe that almost everybody talks about conventional things in their adverts and marketing communications.

What Do Businesses Look For in an Agency?

Before we discuss how to differentiate your marketing agency from the competition, let’s discuss what a customer would look for in an agency before signing a contract.

A. Successful Track Record of Proven Results

This is one of the most crucial requirements for a successful agency as every other buyer needs to hire an expert who can deliver results.

Most of your competition is focused on making money, so what differentiates you from others are results.

You can use the following three methods to showcase your expertise.

1. Client Testimonials and User Reviews

You can find client testimonials on your websites, user reviews on Google, social media, and directories.

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2. Experience Quantified

It includes the data that proves your expertise, such as the number of clients serviced, years of experience, and the number of projects handled.

3. Content Marketing

It includes content that showcases your expertise, search as awards, certificates, trophies, memberships, seminars, case studies, and educational videos and reels.

You can create a fantastic agency portfolio this way.

Pro Tip: If you are an absolute beginner, you can publish ebooks, long-form blogs, branded content, run email marketing campaigns, and create social media video series, etc., to add instant reviews and kudos.

B. Timely Communications

Since digital marketing is data-driven, timely and consistent communication is one of the most sought-after qualities of an agency. For long-term relationships, it is important that you and your client are on the same page. So, you should consistently share digital marketing reports to keep them updated with the latest developments and achievements.

C. Excellent Customer Support

Lastly, people expect excellent customer support from their digital marketing agencies. Nothing can frustrate a client more than poor customer service. So, make sure you've trained customer service representatives onboard.

Your customer service staffers should be accessible & approachable and should promptly resolve their customers' pain points. This one quality alone can differentiate your agency from others. They should be well-informed about digital marketing and how to interpret reports.

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How to Differentiate Your Agency and Outshine Your Competition?

So, what differentiates you from others?

This article will discuss unique ways to differentiate your agency from the rest and enjoy the strategic advantage.

A few actionable steps can easily differentiate your agency from your competitors. Here are the top three steps.

1. Focus on Results

If you focus on results, you can easily knock down your competition. If you promise 4X ROI and try to deliver 10X, your happy customers will become your brand ambassadors, and you will never have to spend a single penny on marketing. Your results and expertise will speak for themselves.

Pro Tip: Focusing on results will blow your competition out of the water. If somebody gets 10X ROI instead of the 4X initially promised, they will spread the news everywhere, and your business will grow like wildfire.

Remember, most of your agency competition is focused on making money and not on results, so here is an ample opportunity you can capitalize on.

Pro Tip: To deliver the best results, you can outsource from DashClicks fulfillment services and concentrate your energies on customer service and marketing. Dashclicks' digital marketing fulfillment services are world-class yet affordable.

2. Focus On One Niche at a Time

A general marketing approach will never yield fruitful results. It will make you look like thousands of other cookie-cutter agencies, and your advertising dollars will go down the drain faster than you can imagine.

Instead, if you are focused on one niche at a time, you can soon become an expert in it, and word-of-mouth publicity will help you rope in dozens of customers without spending a single penny on advertising.

For example, if you are an agency dedicated to plumbers or dentists in your area, you will soon have an impressive portfolio of successful clients. These clients will refer other clients in the same niche.

Soon, businesses in your niche will start trusting you because of your expertise in the field and your ability to deliver results positively. They will choose you because choosing a full-service agency can be a gamble for them as they don't perceive such agencies as experts in that niche.

Once you position yourself as an expert in one particular niche, you can soon expand your portfolio and include other niches. However, it would be best if you kept your primary niche the same.

3. Become the Best in the World in Your Niche

In The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone says, "competition is a limiting concept. For extraordinary success, you shouldn't worry about competing with others and focus instead on domination."

According to the principles of capitalism, competition is good. However, its drawback is that it creates dozens of choices. If you are focused on extraordinary success, do not go for competition, as it is a limiting concept. If you're looking for 10X success, do everything you can to dominate your field and not compete with your rivals.

Competition limits your perspective because when you compete with someone, your energies are focused on what they are doing. It prevents you from seeing the bigger picture and thinking outside the box. The most successful people are innovators and not competitors. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk are all innovators. They are driven by global objectives, invest in highly creative and innovative projects, and try to dominate their fields instead of competing with others.

Final Words

There are three key takeaways from this article, and you should religiously act on them to differentiate your agency from competitors. Focus on your results, try to dominate your marketplace, and specialize in one niche at a time. Once you become a well-known face in your niche, it will be significantly easier to scale and autopilot your business. This strategy will reduce your marketing budget and increase your efficiency manifold.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) are both forms of web security governing how data is transferred over the world wide web and protecting users’ data from breaches.

Trends on the internet keep changing and evolving every second. Back in August 2014, Google launched the update to shift its platforms from HTTP to HTTPS and also made HTTPS one of the critical factors of its ranking system. But why did Google, the mega-giant, choose to take this huge step not just for itself but for every website searched from its search engine?

Well, for one, HTTPS is much more secure for the users, leading to a better and safer surfing experience. And Google is all about its users. The following blog unveils everything essential you need to know about HTTP and HTTPS to upgrade your website’s SEO.

HTTP vs. HTTPS: What Is the Difference?

HTTP is the backbone of communication between server and client, while HTTPS is an upgraded, safer HTTP version. But before you shift from HTTP to HTTPS, it would be beneficial to have a detailed understanding of what these two are –

What Is HTTP?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) has rules that determine how web browsers and servers communicate and transfer data with each other. HTTP works at the application layer network built on TCP. For HTTP to perform, different commands are separately executed as it cannot handle more than one command together. It is also called “stateless protocol” for this reason. The executed commands are independent of each other, which can reduce the speed of websites with complex commands.

What Is HTTPS?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is the safer and more protective version as it combines HTTP and SSL (System Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) certificates. It works on the transport layer and provides bidirectional encryption for added privacy. It is helpful for YMYL web pages and websites that take private information from their users, such as passwords and pins for transactions.

How Does HTTPS Secure the Website?

When discussing HTTPS vs. HTTP, it is intriguing to know how exactly HTTPS secures the website.

1. SSL Certificate

The System Sockets Layer certificates ensures that the owner uses a secure network to conduct information transactions over their website. It also allows a bidirectional secure connection between the server and your browser.

2. Verifies Authenticity

An independent authority verifies the certificate holder's identity. This additional verification gives every SSL certificate unique authentication details about the owner.

3. Uses Encryption Algorithm

HTTPS uses key-based encryption algorithms in its transaction protocols. The strength of this key is 40 or 120 bits.

4. Protects Data

HTTPS does not save data in the form of cookies on the client system, unlike HTTP. Cookies are used to save user preferences for given websites to enhance the experience. However, this data is open and can be breached and easily stolen by another party and used for personal benefit. Since HTTPS does not allow user data to be saved, it protects them from cybercrimes.

5. Restricts Permissions

Users can click on the authentication padlock present before the URL to check the website's cookies and all the allowed permissions. Users can also change their preferences or leave the website before giving their personal information away.

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Should You Use HTTPS vs. HTTP?

Every website shifting to HTTPS should mean it has got much more to offer than HTTP, right? Well, that's not entirely correct. HTTP and HTTPS both have their advantages and limitations. You need to decide if your website really needs one over the other. It is essential to know the key differences setting these two things apart to make intelligent choices.

When You Should Stick to HTTP?

If your website does not require users to share their personal information, you certainly don’t need to go through the troubles of converting to HTTPS. Here are a few more reasons to stick with HTTP –

• It saves you money as you do not need to buy SSL and other certificates.
• No handshaking is required before data transfer, hence more communication.
• There is reduced work of encryption, decryption, and extra header inputs.
• You can quickly access HTTP pages because they are stored on the computer and caches.
• The codes are independent of each other, allowing cross-platform porting.
• Overrides firewalls, giving global access.

However, you should also remember where the HTTP loses the game to HTTPS it does not use any encryption. Hence usernames and insecure passwords can be easily stolen by anyone who intercepts a transaction.

The question still remains, why HTTPS over HTTP. Although HTTP can provide faster information transfer, it is like an open channel where all the data is available to anyone. Netizens do not prefer this transparency for transactions involving money and data transfer. The following column will give you reasons other than security to choose your bidding.

More Reasons Why HTTPS Over HTTP?

Along with the benefits of security, HTTPS indirectly helps your website in multiple ways. Some of the advantages are -

1. Increased Ranking

Converting to HTTPS increases the security of your website, making your users more comfortable using your platform. Google prefers websites that use HTTPS protocols for ranking them on SERPs.

2. Affects SEO

If you check your referral data on an HTTP website using Google Analytics, it will show all the incoming traffic as “direct” traffic, making it unclear what you need to focus your SEO on. However, with HTTPS, you get more detailed information about your traffic, helping you craft a better SEO strategy.

3. Authenticity Proof

Google has added a padlock before the website's URL with HTTPS, whereas websites with HTTP have an open padlock representing an unsecured network. Users can check the legitimacy of your website with details provided there.

4. Warning Pages

In most cases, you will be redirected to a warning page that the website you want to visit is not secure, and you will have to accept to continue.

5. Build Trust

Providing your viewers with a secure network to continue their activities builds their trust in them. HTTPS uses the SSL (System Sockets Layer) certificate for security. Moreover, it performs at the transport layer giving your user absolute encryption benefits. Trust is an essential factor for better ranking in Google's UX core web vitals and E-A-T guidelines.

Can You Use Both HTTP and HTTPS?

It is possible for you to divide your resources into HTTP and HTTPS. By this method, the content on HTTPS will be secured, while that on HTTP will not. This form of content serving is called “mixed content protocol” since both the contents are available on the same page.

However, you should remember that hackers are always hunting for weaknesses in websites. If they find that you have mixed content on your website, they will steal user information and use your website to their benefit.

Web browsers warn the users about mixed content, just like HTTP insecure network, but by the time the user gets the warning, the data is already saved on the caches.

Moreover, with Google's preferences for HTTPS, it has now become mandatory for every website to shift to HTTPS. Otherwise, you will never achieve a ranking on its Search Engine Ranking Pages.

How to Change Site From HTTP to HTTPS?

Step #1 - Schedule your shift since the shift can take some time. It is best done when your website does not have much traffic.

Step #2 - Choose which SSL certificate you need for your website, depending on your requirements.

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Step #3 - Obtain and install the certificate from your website host.

Step #4 – Make sure you configure the certificate according to your website. Enabling HTTPS can be a lengthy task depending on your website’s complexity. Here are some things you need to update from HTTP to HTTPS –

• Website sitemaps
• Robot.txt files
• Code libraries like JavaScript and other third-party plugins
• Content Delivery Network’s (CDN) SSL settings
• Links in marketing automation tools
• Landing page and paid search links
• Old URLs and redirects
• Images and videos references
• The more intricate internal links

Step #5 - Add 301 redirects or use CMS (Content Management System) to automatically redirect the traffic. They will enable the users to directly visit your updated website. The 301 redirect pages also inform search engines about your update so they can index your website.

Step #6 - Enable HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), so your browsers use HTTPS every time.

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Step #7 - Enable OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol) stapling, which will allow the servers to identify revoked security certificates, and no authority cross-referencing is required.

Step #8 - Add and verify the updated website on Google Search Console.

What Things Should You Remember When Switching?

• Inform Google about your shift from HTTP to HTTPS so they can crawl your website again for better ranking.
• Learn about all the different forms related to the SSL certifications that come with HTTPS. Although the security provided is the same for all three, the verification process is different. The three SSL certificates are- single domain, multiple domains, and wildcard SSL certificates.
• Use Google Analytics Tool to smoothly convert from HTTP to HTTPS.
• Allow essential bots like Google spiders to crawl and index your website.
• Add 301 redirect pages to every page, so your users are redirected to your new HTTPS pages.

What Is HTTP/2?

With the dynamic updates in online content, security and communications must improve too. HTTP updates have been on a halt for a long time, but now we have the all-new HTTP/2 with multiple new features.

There are certain upgrades in HTTP/2 over HTTP, like it can transfer multiple files at once, unlike HTTP, which uses a TCP connection. It uses binary protocols and not textual protocols, reducing the bandwidth. Moreover, it has increased security with encryption.

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Additionally, HTTP/2 also offers advantages over HTTPS, like- reduced overhead and improved efficiency for more SEO friendliness. Moreover, with the introduction of HTTP/2, costs and overhead on SSL certificates have dropped, making HTTP/2 a good competitor for HTTPS.

FAQs

1. Is It Necessary to Make the Shift From HTTP to HTTPS?

Google is known for its user experience. Security and Google both advocate for HTTPS websites because it enhances the E-A-T for the website owner. Ultimately, the user feels more comfortable using their website.

2. Why Is User Data Security Important?

As mentioned before, users will feel more confident while using your website for transactions because they know their data will not fall into the wrong hands and will not be misused. Increased trust improves their chances of returning to your website when they need more help.

3. Where Can I Get an SSL Certificate?

You can get your SSL certificate from your website host. Moreover, you can also ask them to configure it according to your website. But, if they do not provide it, you can reach out to other platforms that can avail the SSL certificates to you. You can get your SSL certificate from the places like ZeroSSL and Let's Encrypt.

4. What Is TLS?

Transport Layer Security (TLS) is interchanged with System Sockets Layer (SSL). TLS is a standard protocol for Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). TLS and SSL provide authentication, privacy, and data integrity between two communicating web servers and browsers.

5. Can I Use VPN With HTTPS?

It is preferred to use VPN in every case as it provides added security to your data transfers and hides your IP address from hackers. You can easily use a VPN along with HTTP, HTTPS, and HTTP/2.

Conclusion

We looked intimately into the world of security that the internet has to offer. However, it entirely depends on you and your website's purpose if you need to make the shift from HTTP to HTTPS and even HTTP/2 in the near future. The above blog guides you in deciding on the transfer and successfully shifting your website security from HTTP to HTTPS.

It may take some time and a lot of work, but shifting to HTTPS is better for your SEO and, ultimately, your ranking. Giving your visitors and users a trustworthy platform will increase their chances of returning to your website.

When you think about SEO and content, there is a high chance that you may end up focusing on just one thing – producing fresh content.

But it’s equally important to focus on your “existing content.” This means, removing low-performing and outdated content from your site.

Now, you may wonder, what’s the point of focusing on content that’s already present on your site?

This is because your old content can be negatively affecting your company’s growth. It can be the reason for some of your lagging traffic.

A process called “content pruning” helps remove low-performing and outdated content from your site.

It involves getting rid of content that has no value or usefulness and contains potentially harmful advice. It lets other content, which has potential, to flourish. The content pruning process also helps ensure that your link authority flows only to relevant pages.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the full benefits of content pruning and the steps involved in this process. Let’s begin.

What Is Content Pruning?

Let’s discuss what content pruning is before we move on to discussing its benefits.

Content pruning involves removing or updating content which weighs down a site and hampers its performance. When this dead weight is removed, the website’s overall health increases.

Chances are, you may have heard of the term “pruning.” It is a gardening term that means trimming or cutting back. If you think about it, content pruning is almost the same as pruning a tree. When you prune a tree, you remove the dead leaves and branches. All the tree’s resources then start to go to the parts that you want to grow. This helps increase the overall health of the tree.

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Now, you may be wondering, what kind of content is typically pruned? Here is a list:

• Pages with thin content or duplicate content.
• Pages with outdated information.
• Pages that are not or won’t ever get engagement or traffic.

Why Is Content Pruning Important?

Now, coming to the benefits of content pruning. Here’s a closer look:

1. Better User Experience

Content pruning provides an improved user experience to your site visitors. This is because this process lowers the risk of your site visitors finding any confusing or outdated information on your site.

2. Better Content Quality

Content pruning boosts the overall quality of your content by ‘pruning’ the content that doesn’t add any value.

3. Improves Metrics

Because pruning content leads to enhanced overall content quality, it improves metrics such as conversion rate, time on page, and bounce rate.

4. Speeds Up Indexing of Your Best Content

Another major benefit of content pruning is that it results in faster indexing of your best content.

Now, how is this possible?

This is because content pruning ensures that search engines no longer have to sift through old content pages.

Is Content Pruning Required Only for Large Websites?

Regardless of your website size, you would want your site visitors to find useful and updated information, right? Hence, content pruning is recommended both for large (10,000 pages) and small websites.

When Should You Prune Your Content?

Content pruning is not a one-time process. You need to do it continuously.

We recommend that you do it on a monthly basis. Whenever you create a new piece of content, keep an eye on its performance and state.

The reason we suggest you do regular pruning is because you have a lot to gain from pruning content. You must also go for massive pruning exercises once or twice a year.

To do content pruning on a monthly basis, you need to first complete one full content pruning cycle (talked about in the next section).

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Content Pruning Process

The content pruning process involves the following three steps:

• Content Inventory: Create an overview of your entire content
• Content Audit: Assess your content’s performance
• Decide the Fate of Your Content: Determine what you need to do with the underperforming content. In this step, you will decide whether to remove it or go for an alternate option.

Step 1: Content Inventory

Make a list of all your content.

Also include PDF files, images, and videos.

Next, supplement this list with an export from your CMS and backlink data from a tool (we recommend Ahrefs). Also include data from Google Search Console, your web analytics tool, and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Note: Ensure you eliminate any duplicates.

After you follow all these steps, you will be left with a list of unique URLs. This is the overview of your content.

Now, for every content piece in your list, add the following information:

• Its target audience
• The goal(s) you aim to achieve with it
• The search queries it should be ranking for

Step 2: Content Audit

You need to carry out a content audit to score how well your content is performing.

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Take the final list you have created from the previous step and add:

1. General Performance (visits and conversions in the last 6 months)

For pages, you will find the amount of traffic and conversions in your web analytics tool. For embedded videos, you will find this information in the platform you use to embed the videos. And for downloadable images and PDFs, you will get to know the amount of traffic and conversions if you are tracking clicks on links.

2. Organic Performance (visits and conversions from the last 6 months)

You can find the conversion numbers and the number of visits for all your content types (pages, videos, PDFs, and images) in Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and your web analytics tool.

3. Social Performance (visits, shares, and conversions from the last 6 months)

You can know the number of likes and shares in a tool called BuzzSumo. For conversions and visits, you can get to know it from your web analytics tool.

4. If It Contains Outdated Information or Not

Use smart search queries in Google to check for mentions of any previous years in your site. This will help you know if your content contains outdated information.

5. If It Has Thin Content or Not

As per Google, thin content is content with “little or no added value.”

You can check for such content with the help of Screaming Frog.

6. If It’s Cannibalizing Other Content or Not

You can find cannibalizing content by looking for pages that don’t have unique H1 headings, meta descriptions, and title tags. Also look at pages that are ranking for the same queries.

7. The Numbers of External Domains Linking to Your Pages, and Internal Links

To find the number of external domains linking to a URL, you can use Ahrefs.

And to find the number of internal links to a URL, you can use Google Search Console. Open it, click on “links,” and choose “Top linked pages — internally.”

After you add all this information, you may find certain content that doesn’t cater to any purpose. For instance, you may get to know that there are different pages that are telling the same story. You may also find pages over-optimized to the point where people can barely read them!

Step 3: Determining Your Content’s Fate

In this step, you need to mark all the content in a spreadsheet that:

• Isn’t getting any organic traffic
• Offers old information
• Is cannibalizing other content
• Shows poor social media performance
• Has thin content
• Isn’t getting any traffic in general
• Has few external and internal links

You can call all of the above “potential pruning candidates.” But instead of going ahead and removing this kind of content, you can also consider making it non-indexable or improving it.

Improving the Content

Check which content you can get back in shape by carrying out some basic on-page SEO. See if you can rework the title, headings, and/or meta descriptions. Also check if you can get rid of outdated sections and add a few sections that are based on recent developments.

Trimming, Updating, and Moving the Content

You can also think about repurposing certain content. All you need to do is trim it, update it, and move it to an FAQ section, for example. Also, if you have a lot of weak pages on the same topic, you can merge their content to make a single, strong page.

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Note: In case you have outdated content that you think will still be useful, you can do the following:

• Ensure you let the visitors know the date on which it was last updated.
• Include links of any up-to-date resources you may have.
• Add a disclaimer stating that it may contain outdated information.

Making Content Non-Indexable

There can be cases where the content is useful for visitors, but not for search engines. For example blog tags. When used the right way, they are helpful for visitors to navigate around a site. But the pages themselves offer zero value from an SEO point of view.

Removing Content

A word of caution here. When you decide to get rid of low-performing content, your organic traffic can get impacted. Also, when you disavow links, we recommend that you don’t remove all of them at once.

Wrapping It Up

All set and done, you are now in a more informed position to do content pruning. Carefully follow the steps we listed above (creating a content inventory list, conducting a content audit, and deciding your content’s fate and what to do with it) and you are set to reap the benefits of content pruning!

Content pruning is a process that helps maintain your website and boosts the overall quality of your content. It not only improves user experience but also speeds up the indexing of your best content. Ensure you don’t keep putting it off for later as it can negatively impact your SEO strategy’s success.

A word of advice: Always think ahead and carefully plan your content marketing efforts. This will help limit the need for content pruning.

Building a positive brand image is at the core of every business's success. It is crucial as it heavily impacts a customer's buying decision.

Most of the marketing and branding happen online, so customer reviews on Google and social media take center stage when building your brand image. Reading an average of ten reviews is what it takes for a customer to trust a local business. It has also become commonplace because of the increasing marketing noise.

Since it is strongly linked to your sales, you should religiously monitor your online reputation. It is easier said than done because much of it is out of your control. However, there are specific tools to make your life easier while managing your reputation and protecting your brand online.

This article discusses DashClicks' reputation management tool and how you can use this tool to protect your brand.

What Is Brand Reputation Management?

Customers' perception is so crucial to your brand's success that we need an entire process and a strategic action plan to manage it, and that is called brand reputation management. Its objective is to improve your brand image, primarily focusing on social listening, customer reviews, and brand mentions on Google and social media.

It is a continuous process; you need to work on it to know the market pulse and identify the scope of improvement in your products and services. A strong brand image leads to customer loyalty, a highly desired business metric, as it's directly linked with repeat sales, revenue, word-of-mouth publicity, and growth. Damage control, firefighting, and maintaining communications with your customers are some critical activities you need to perform to protect your brand.

What's Brand Safety?

Brand safety is mainly concerned with the appropriateness of content distributed by the brand, including advertisements, marketing messages, and all other types of content shared by brands.

Brands should exercise caution while creating content and choosing where it is being shared, such as ad space. You must ensure that the content or its placement is not associated with any negative consumer opinion. Brand safety is similar to reputation management and is its subset. So, brand safety is a broader part of brand reputation management.

How Does DashClicks' Reputation Management App Work?

Managing brand reputation across different channels can be a daunting task. DashClicks' reputation management app helps you in different ways.

A. Manage Your Reviews

First, it compiles all your business reviews and brings them to a single dashboard so you can effortlessly manage them. You can also track your ratings and publish replies using just one platform.

B. Manage Your Review Page

DashClicks' app also allows you to share your public review page with other customers across the globe. This, in turn, will bring more feedback and reviews.

C. Reputation Reporting

You can track your best review sources, average rating, and peak performance months anytime-anywhere with DashClicks' reporting dashboard.

Watch this video to know more about this feature.

D. Reply to Reviews From the Same Dashboard

DashClicks lets you communicate with customers from every review source, such as Google and social media, and leave replies. It's suitable for instant damage control, explanations, and customer retention efforts.

E. Invite Customers to Leave Reviews

With DashClicks' reputation management app, you can invite customers to leave business reviews by sending carefully designed emails and SMS messages with one button. It will help you boost your reputation.

Watch this video to know more.

How to Manage Your Reputation With DashClicks' Reputation Management App?

The reputation management app manages online reviews from different third-party sources. Online reviews form a significant part of online reputation management.

At present, DashClicks deals with Google My Business reviews and Facebook reviews.

Once you add your Google My Business and Facebook account to your DashClicks app, you can track your metrics from within the reputation app, leave replies, and like reviews. Usually, businesses have to log into different platforms to manage their reviews, which makes it quite hectic.

How to Access the Reputation App?

Open the app drawer on the top right corner in your DashClicks Dashboard and click on the Reputation App.

Watch this video to know more.

How to Navigate the Reputation App?

As you open the Reputation App, you can easily find a tab, My Reviews. Since you are using the app for the first time, you'll be prompted to connect your first review source.

Once you successfully add the source, the app will start checking your reviews.

It will look something like this:

My Reviews

Here, you can see the reviews just like you see them on Amazon, etc. These reviews will be in chronological order with the following information.

• The profile picture of the person
• Name
• The date of the review
• The actual review and
• Your reply, if any

This information is sufficient for you to manage your reviews.

However, you can't retrieve the usernames or profile pictures for any of the reviews on Facebook due to Facebook's Privacy Policy. They will display as "Facebook User" along with a generic icon.

You can see that the user's actual name and profile picture will appear in this place for all the reviews from a platform other than Facebook.

How to Reply to a Review?

Locate the empty text box available for you to write your reply to the review. Press the Reply button, and your response will be automatically posted to the platform. If you want to spot the reviews that haven't received replies, look for the red Pending Response text.

Flag reviews as positive/negative within the reputation app, with a green or red highlight running along the left side of the review box.

Use the options available in the left column to sort the reviews.

Go to Status>> Sort your reviews by clicking Needs Response. This feature helps you in locating reviews that require a reply.

Identify the Poor Ratings

Look for the rating in the above screenshot. Here you can sort by star ratings or like/dislike. Most platforms utilize star ratings, while Facebook uses thumbs up and thumbs down.

You can also filter your reviews by source.

To know more, watch this video.

Watch this video to integrate Facebook reviews.

Here is all the information summarised in an infographic -

Final Thoughts

Managing reviews and online reputation is no easy feat. It involves tedious monitoring, tracking, and damage control. DashClicks' reputation management app is designed to address these woes of marketers.

You can quickly deploy the app through DashClicks Dashboard. You can also enjoy its fantastic reporting features. Most online reviews are posted on Google and Facebook, and DashClicks' App is designed to manage all the reviews on these platforms from a single dashboard.

SEO is undeniably one of the most critical aspects of digital marketing. It is a viable and cost-effective way to reach customers. With a majority of the users initiating the internet browsing by performing a search, organic traffic makes up the central portion of the total viewership for any web page or website. And to convert this new traffic into regular visitors and users, website owners use numerous SEO strategies. There are many types of SEO techniques, but if your website's technical SEO is not strong enough, other SEOs might be of little help.

What Is SEO?

Search engine optimization techniques are specifically formed to improve the ranking of a web page on the SERPs by engaging and attracting relevant traffic. Additionally, SEO strategies also aim to enhance the page experience for users since it plays a pivotal role in Google Ranking Systems. There are various types of SEO, but the three critical ones are the on-page, off-page, and technical SEO.

Traditional SEO aims to optimize the content on the web page and is of two types- on-page and off-page SEO. At the same time, technical SEO intends to improve the website or web page architecture to enhance crawling by search engine crawlers.

What Is Technical SEO?

Every search engine works by discovering and identifying your webpage content on the internet. It crawls, indexes, and then ranks your web page to be visible on internet searches.

But the question is, how does a search engine know if you have content for them to crawl through? And if the crawlers know about your content, are they reading it in the way you want them to? Technical SEO is the answer to all such questions.

Technical SEO checks if your website content satisfies the factors of search engines that may impact your ranking on their search result pages. Some of these factors are the site's loading speed, mobile friendliness, accessibility to the content, and more. If search engines find these factors to be negative, they drop your ranking, affecting your conversion rates.

Why Is Technical SEO Important?

Only 9.37% of the content over the internet gets organic traffic on Google, leaving the rest of 90.63% of content untouched, which is a massive percentage. This high percentage of unseen content on the internet is mostly not available on the first page of the SERP. Implying that, if your website does not appear as a search result on the first search engine result page, your data is as good as invisible.

Now, this doesn't necessarily have to be because your content does not provide rich knowledge or isn't engaging. This can be because the search engine crawlers could not match your content to the search query. It also may be because the crawlers read your content but could not understand its intention and hence could not appropriately index and rank it.

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Elements of Technical SEO Audit

• Files robot.txt
• URL
• HTML and XML Sitemaps
• HTTPS instead of HTTP
• Easy navigation
• Page loading speed
• Mobile-friendliness
• Breadcrumb menus
• Canonical URLs
• 404 error and 301 redirecting pages
• Schema Markup

Implementing a Technical SEO Audit

Although a technical SEO audit sounds highly complex, and you may be wondering how to do an SEO audit, it is not as intricate. The technical SEO audit includes focusing your attention on the aspects that help a search engine read your content and your reader to use your website most efficiently.

You should conduct two types of SEO audits on your website -

1. Website-Wide Auditing

A website holds multiple pages together, and pages make the first impression on any visitor. To enhance the website's user experience, optimize the essential pages and web pages that drive traffic to your website. These pages may include the home page, contact page, about page, and products page.

Use the following tips to perform a website-wide audit -

A. Improve the Web Page Design

The web page content should clearly distinguish headers, titles, body, and footers. The website should match well with the brand color codes and look welcoming to the user. The call-to-action buttons and forms should be readily available.

B. Enhance User Experience

The UX matters a lot for your page to rank well. While doing an SEO audit, you should ensure that your website ticks most, if not every, points on the technical SEO audit checklist. To enhance the user experience, there should be a navigational menu on every page; the content should not be dense and should be appropriately divided into subheadings for easy readability.

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C. Create a Clean About Page

Usually, a visitor goes to the about page to learn about the owner. It also means that the user is interested in your services or products. Make a concise yet attractive about page, giving the visitor a reason to trust the content on your website.

2. On-Page Auditing

Compared to the complete website audit, on-page auditing is performed to optimize every individual page on your website that you want to rank in the SERPs. Since web pages make a website, they need to be appealing enough for users to stay on your website instead of bouncing back. During an on-page SEO audit, the elements to check for are content, HTML elements, and site-architectural elements.

Here are some tips for performing an on-page audit on your web pages -

A. Call-To-Action Buttons

To generate leads, every page should have CTA buttons and a form for the user to fill in and look at your services further. The CTAs should be evenly distributed through the content, with the first one being at the top. Moreover, you should keep only about three to four CTAs on a page, as too many of them can repel the users.

B. Add Pop-Ups

Along with CTAs, pop-ups also help in lead generation. Set the time for the pop-ups to appear. Make sure they do not appear as soon as the user lands on your website. Preferably, time the pop-ups according to how much the user has scrolled down already through the web page.

C. Simple URL Structure

The URL should be clean of unnecessary words and easy to read. The URL should show a simple hierarchy, so the user knows their location on the website. An ideal URL structure has a domain, a sub-domain, a directory, and a specific page route.

Additionally, the algorithms, especially Google, get constantly updated. And these algorithms need to be convinced that your web page is worth sharing with the people. Fortunately, the good part about updates in algorithms is that the changes are gradual, giving you enough time to improve and optimize your content for the best user experience.

As discussed above, every search engine works in three stages with your web page - crawling, indexing, and ranking. To ensure that the search engine conducts all these stages according to your preferences, performing a technical SEO audit is essential.

The Factors to Optimize During a Technical SEO Audit

1. Manage Your robots.txt Files

The robot.txt files available in the root folder of websites direct the crawlers on your website; this is called The Robots Exclusion Protocol. You can limit them to what they should view and what should not be indexed. Mostly the admin details are something you wouldn't want everyone on the internet to know about. Moreover, you can also stop proxy robot crawlers and spammers from over-crawling your website, reaching email addresses, and blocking the pages you don't want to be accessed by checking your robots.txt files. Google Search Central has detailed information about the robots.txt files.

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Working and Creating a robots.txt File

Working and creating a robots.txt file can be easily understood by an example –

For a URL – https://www.dashclicks.com/blog/10-reasons-why-your-website-should-be-seo-friendly/

A crawler will go to the specific path of the web page, separating it from the URL itself. The crawler will read content after the first slash (/) in the URL structure. Now, to remove the access permission, you need to go to the root folder and change the structure to – https://www.dashclicks.com/robots.txt

Structure of a robots.txt File –

A robots.txt file is a text file that can have multiple records. An example structure would look like this-

User-agent: *

Disallow: /path 1/

Disallow: /path 2/

Here, the “User-agent: *” applies the conditions to all robots, which can also be changed (See Conditions in a robots.txt files section). And, the “Disallow: /” removes access to the applicable robots from particular directories or pages. In the example above, two directories are not allowed to be read by any robots.

Conditions in robots.txt Files –

1. For excluding all robots from the complete server:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

2. For allowing all robots full access, don’t create a robots.txt file or use the following:

User-agent: *

Disallow:

3. For excluding all robots from exclusive paths:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /path 1/

Disallow: /path 2/…..and so on

4. For excluding a particular robot:

User-agent: Spambot

Disallow: /

5. For allowing a specific robot:

User-agent: Google

Disallow:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

6. To allow a particular file within a page:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /path 1/ file 1/

7. To disallow a particular file within a page:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /path 2/ file 1.html

2. Adding Sitemaps

The HTML sitemap simplifies navigation for the users, while the XML sitemap helps the search engine crawlers suitably go through your website. The HTML and XML sitemaps are available in the root folder of your website.

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If you can’t find them there, you can use the following Google search command-

Site:domain.com inurl:sitemap

It is essential to inspect your XML sitemap if you are facing errors related to crawling and indexing. Additionally, ensure that you have added all the content you want to be indexed into the XML sitemap. You should also submit your sitemap to the Google Search Console to notify Google every time your content is updated.

For WordPress: WordPress is an excellent content management system, and to create a sitemap here, you need a plugin. These plugins automatically create new sitemaps for you as soon as you add new content or update the existing one.

To Add XML Sitemaps:

You can use the following plugins in WordPress –

• JetPack: This tool is used by most WordPress-powered blog websites to create XML sitemaps. The JetPack has all the essential marketing tools needed for SEO audits.
• RankMath: It is a new tool for 2021, but it already has 900,000+ users. RankMath is packed with features after which you might not even need any other WordPress SEO plugin.

To Add HTML Sitemaps:

The most widely used plugin for creating HTML sitemaps in WordPress is the Simple Sitemap Pro. It is easy to use, efficient, and quick plugin to add HTML sitemaps to your website.

For Manually Creating Sitemaps

Manual sitemaps are created primarily when the sitemaps are heavily customized according to the user’s interaction with your website or if your website is not powered by WordPress. In both cases, you will have to manually add sitemaps to your website every time you add, subtract, update, or change the content of your website. The advantage of the manual creation of sitemaps is that the tools let you see the hierarchy of your website for better understanding. Further, even with automatic sitemap creation, it is advised to do a manual audit every 3-4 months for better results.

To Add XML Sitemaps

• Slickplan: This tool has a complete suite for your website. Slickplan will create customizable XML sitemaps for your website in minutes and build a website structure.
• Dynomapper: This tool allows you to create sitemaps in different styles, namely, default, circle, and tree. Dynomapper is a visual sitemap creator with a high crawling capacity.
• Sitemap by click5: The sitemap by click5 tool generates sitemaps for your website, creates robots.txt files, and has custom post-type support.

3. Build a Good Website Framework

A solid outline of your website’s content will help visitors and crawlers easily access pages and posts. Make a simple yet effective structure defining all the pages and precisely relating one page to another. View the following aspects for a good website architecture –

A. Content: Keep your content streamlined and connected. Get rid of any content that may not be useful for the present times or is an old concept. Update your content with new statistics to make it more relatable to the current scenarios.

B. URL Structures: The URL structures should be clean and void of anything that makes them look stuffed up. An ideal URL structure is detailed in Tip#5: URL Structure section.

C. Menus for Easy Navigation: To enhance the UX of your website, you should create menus for easy navigation. These menus should define and link to every primary page present on your website so the user can reach the preferred content quickly.

D. Breadcrumbs: A breadcrumb menu is created at the footer or a header to show the user’s path to the current web page. A breadcrumb menu also allows the user to reach several pages back with a single click. This menu can also show the hierarchy of the path for the website. A breadcrumb menu looks like –

Home>Blogs>White Labeling>SEO Reselling Guide (Updated 2021)

E. Internal Linking: Integrating pages using hyperlinking on the source page is called internal linking. They establish an information hierarchy, making navigation more manageable, and grouping the content to reduce cluttering.

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4. Simplify the Content

Search engine crawlers consider websites with too much content irrelevant. Moreover, websites with a complicated hierarchy are not preferred by the users either. Streamlining the content will help users and crawlers to read through your content quickly and easily. To simplify your website structure, you can combine the content in the following ways-

A. Group the Content Based on Similar Keywords: Combine all the content with identical keywords so the user and crawlers will have only one place to target when they need it.

B. Group the Content Based on Relevancy: Although grouping the content according to keywords will also combine them with relevance, sometimes topics could be related and still not share keywords. In those cases, employ your manual skills to divide or merge the content.

C. Highlight Essential and Updated Content: To stay at the top of the game, keep updating your content with the latest data, information, and keywords. You can highlight crucial information by bold formatting or changing the text color to enhance its visibility to the reader.

5. URL Structure

Long and complicated URLs are discouraged by search engines and frowned upon by the readers. The URL should only contain the major elements of the page and website. You should follow the following for a good URL structure-

• Remove the unnecessary words and digits from the URLs
• Use a maximum of two keywords
• Use HTTPS over HTTP for enhanced security
• Use canonical tags to stop crawlers from reading drafted versions of the same content
• Follow a standard structure

https://www.dashclicks.com/blog/10-reasons-why-your-website-should-be-seo-friendly/

The above example is a simple structure clearly defining the path of the blog.

6. Check the Loading Speed

The page should load quickly, preferably within three seconds. Any reader usually searches for a topic to get answers in urgency. If your page takes too much time to load, the reader will leave to check out another page. This will increase your bounce-back rates, which is not suitable for getting a rank in the SERPs.

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To optimize your website for loading speed-

• Use Google PageSpeed tools and modules,
• Check the loading speed of your content regularly,
• Compress the included images and videos,
• Avoid too many plugins,
• Manage JavaScript files

7. Enhance Mobile Friendliness

Your website will earn a higher rank if it is accessible by the users through a mobile phone. The guideline by Google in early 2021 mentioned that mobile-friendly sites would be prioritized since most searches today are done through mobile phones. Moreover, using a responsive web design, you can make your website viewable on any device. Using HTML and CSS, an RWD design adjusts and resizes the website content according to the device the reader uses without pixelating anything.

You can check out the following tools for using responsive web design for your website –

• Bootstrap: It is the world’s most popular tool for developing mobile-first websites. Bootstrap is a tool to quickly design highly responsive websites, with mixins and Sass variables, responsive grid systems, and much more.
• Webflow: It is a complete web design tool, CMS, and hosting platform. The flexbox is the most bougie feature of the Webflow tool, which allows you to customize layouts that are hard to work on.

8. Improve Content Structure

Content is the most crucial part of your web page and website that provides you with good traffic. For top-class content, you can use the following tips-

A. Use Schema Markup Strategies: To enhance the quality of your content, use strategies that involve writing content with a decent amount of keywords or phrases that help search engines quickly locate your web page. Moreover, add structure to your content for enhanced readability.

B. Remove Duplicated Content: While performing a technical SEO audit, make sure the content is not copied from another source, as this deteriorates your ranking. Remove paraphrased sentences and plagiarized text to enhance your content for the crawlers.

C. Address the Demand: Quality content will resolve the problem in focus for the user. The solution should be easy to follow and at a level that your average readers can comprehend.

D. Add Visuals: Good content is not only about the text but also about making sure that the information reaches the user. Images and videos help better communicate to the users, as visuals can be understood and remembered quickly and effectively.

E. Content Should Be Accessible: The content available on your website should be available to everyone. If your content is hidden or saved as e-books, it takes longer for the reader to reach it, and as a result, they give up and leave.

9. Security

Google also prefers websites with HTTPS instead of HTTP because of the higher security level. The HTTPS provides encryption to users’ data, enhancing their trust in sharing their personal details with your website. HTTPS also has an SSL certificate that uses a third party to verify the reliability of your website. Security and privacy play a vital role if your website falls under the category of YMYL websites.

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10. Improve Clarity of 404 Error Page

The 404 error page informs users that the content they are looking for is no longer accessible. The 404 error page should clarify the issue and help the user to reach other pages easily.

11. Use 301 Redirecting Pages

The 301 redirecting pages are used to send the users to authority pages when you give preference to one page over the other. 301 redirecting pages can also be used to club multiple URLs if many pages exist for similar content on your website, acting as a tool for canonicalizing (Read canonical URLs section). Moreover, the 301 redirecting pages should also load quickly, providing all the details to the user for a better experience. Further, these pages should have a similar web page architecture as the rest of the pages to simplify navigation for the user.

12. Set Canonical URLs

Canonical URLs are used when there are multiple copies of the content on your website. The duplicates may be due to the updated content on those web pages. Canonical URLs allow you to direct the crawlers to the principal or preferred page that you would like it to index. Canonical URLs are meaningful because if the crawlers read the duplicate copy you did not want them to, they may rank that web the lower and irrelevant page.

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For adding canonical URLs to your website, use the following methods –

Method #1: Use the “rel=canonical” tag in your website’s header. Most CMS platforms allow specific canonicals even if you are not a web developer.

Method #2: For WordPress: Setting up canonical URLs is straightforward with the use of the correct plugins for WordPress SEO audit. You can use the following plugins in WordPress –

• Yoast: The canonical URL creating tool by Yoast is a highly efficient tool that lets you manually customize your canonical URLs, provides security and developer controls, and reports to you which pages you shouldn’t put under canonical tags.
• RankMath: It is a complete set of SEO tools. For adding canonical tags in RankMath, follow the following steps-

Step #1: Open the page containing duplicate content that needs to be added to the canonical URL and open the editor.

Step #2: Open the advanced mode in the editor. If you cannot find the advance tab, you can enable it from WordPress Dashboard > Rank Math > Dashboard.

Step #3: Edit the canonical URL by changing the directory domain to the main content you want crawlers to read.

Step #4: After completing, you can save the settings. Now, the updated URL will direct the crawlers directly to your prioritized page.

For example, if you wish Page 11 to be read instead of Page 3, you can go to the advanced tab on Page 3 and edit page 3 to page 11. Canonical URL will help the crawlers to reach and index page 11 instead of page 3, even if they are on page 3.

Tools for Technical SEO Audit

1. DashClicks’ InstaReports Tool: This tool highlights your online marketing campaign’s pain points so you can fix them and achieve the best results. Create in-depth performance reports in seconds to help close deals faster with InstaReports, a white-label digital marketing audit tool.

2. SEMRush Site Audit Tool: The SEMRush site audit tool scans your website for a thorough SEO audit report.

3. SEO Audit Report Tool: You can get a comprehensive website audit report with this tool. SEOptimer reviews your site to identify the problems keeping your website from reaching its potential.

4. Screaming Frog SEO Spider: It is an SEO website crawler that you can use to identify your weak points. The SEO Spider tool extracts data and audits your website for common SEO issues.

Conclusion

Technical SEO plays a vital role in making your content readable for crawlers and users. It is not the traditional SEO strategy that only aims at the keywords and structure, but a complete architecture of the web page and website. The tips mentioned above should be a valuable and detailed guide to improving your website’s technical SEO audit for better ranking and enhanced user experience.

Social platforms have gained immense popularity among B2C marketers as well as B2B brands. There are many simple explanations as to why. They provide you with a stage to reach out to your audience and showcase all your achievements and services. Additionally, social platforms bring you closer to your customers as you can also check their interests in their profiles. Unlike B2C, effective B2B marketing requires a different approach. B2B marketers have to develop a unique game plan to reach business owners and decision-makers. However, step on these stones carefully because social media can quickly build you or break you.

Here is a helpful guide for you to create your own social media strategy for B2B business-

1. Recognize Your Focal Points (Goals)

Every successful campaign needs to be thoughtfully planned, and the first step begins with understanding why you want to be present on social media.

Recognize your goals and focus on achieving them.

The following are the main focus of every B2B social media strategy-

A. Brand Awareness

People need to know who you are and what you can provide them. Social media platforms offer you an excellent space where you can comfortably showcase to your prospects why your brand is better than your competitors. Through separate posts, your viewers can see your products and services. Moreover, the comments on your posts act as reviews for other customers and an analysis of your brand's performance.

How to Measure Brand Awareness on Social Media?

Method #1- Direct Traffic: If your prospects visit your website by directly searching your website or brand name in the search engines, they become your direct traffic. Direct searches indicate that your viewer is interested enough in your brand that they remembered you.

Method #2- Tags and Mentions: When someone tags you in their post, it means they are involved in some way with your brand. Tags, mentions, and hashtags are efficient and simple ways to know how many people you are reaching out to and how many like your services.

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Method #3- Searches: When someone searches for your business as a keyword over search engines and social platforms, it increases your search volume. The clicks and searches can be analyzed using the Google Search Console. It will also show you the best-performing ad campaigns.

Method #4- Your Reach: The number of people exposed to your brand through social media campaigns counts as your reach. Every platform offers multiple ways to track your reach, including Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. In the similar way, LinkedIn scraping powers better segmentation and strategic planning for marketers. You can also check impressions on Twitter, which is another way to track your reach.

B. Brand Introduction

Letting your consumers learn about your brand is beneficial to building trust. Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest introduce your brand through posts with photos and short videos about you. Other platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn educate your viewers more through textual involvement.

Tips for Introducing Your Brand -

Tip #1: Many businesses use content and SEO to educate their prospects about their brand. The content should solve an issue that the customers are probably facing and searching an answer for.

Tip #2: You can also opt for publishing e-books that are about your business. It can let other prospective companies explore your journey.

Tip #3: Researches and reports are also a great medium to let people know about your involvement using case studies. People like to buy products from companies that are enthusiastic about their performances.

Tip #4: Every product has a specific method of being used. And in most cases, customers fail to understand how something should be used. Make how-to videos for the ease of your customers. The views will also translate to how much visibility your brand has.

C. User Engagement

It is a crucial part of social media strategy for B2B business, even if it does not exactly show your growth. Content that gets your viewers actively involved in your brand reflects how you influence people. Users will only engage in your products if they like them. High user engagement also proves the social platforms' credibility and better content of your brand. In turn, social media showcases your business to a much larger audience, boosting your visibility.

Every platform gives the option to check your user engagement rates with filters like a particular post, week, month, and more.

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Measuring User Engagement -

Method #1- Comments: When viewers comment on your posts, it means they are intrigued by your brand. Comments also suggest that people want to get involved in a discussion related to your products. Higher conversation rates can signify greater interest of customers.

Method #2- Reactions and Polls: Since netizens have a very microscopic attention span and do not want to waste their valuable time on boring content, reactions are a good way to know if the viewers are interested in what you offer. Reactions, polls, and likes options are available on every platform today to assess your performance.

Method #3- Shares: Sharing content over a social platform directly translates to relating your content to the viewer. People only share relatable and valuable posts. Every social media platform has shared posts data you can check to get your assessment.

Method #4- Views and Time: Getting views on your videos suggests that the viewer got attracted to your content and wants to know more about you. Although, if no one is spending time watching your complete video, it means you did grab their attention but could not keep it. For best practice, make interesting videos with short content.

Method #5- Clicks: If you attach a link to your posts, the click-through rate helps determine if the users enjoyed your ad and want to check out more services that you provide.

D. Trust Building

As a consumer of your products, your customers will want to see how much they can rely on you. Social platforms are a fantastic way to show your work is better than your competitors through comments on your posts and other social proofs.

Tips for Building Trust-

Tip #1: Reshare the posts that your customers tag you in. These posts are testimonials of your products and services from your clients.

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Tip #2: Positive reviews on your products are also social proof of your quality and reliability.

Tip #3: Acknowledgements like trophies, awards, and milestones are an excellent way to show your trustworthiness to your prospects.

E. Conversions

Lead generations are an essential aspect of any B2B social media strategy. Your social presence aims to add value through promotion and convert the viewers into your regular customers.

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Methods to Measure Lead Generation and Conversion Rates -

Method #1- Calculate your Cost per Lead (CPL): The campaigns should bring you leads. But if the cost of those methods is more than the clicks they are getting, then the campaigns are not benefiting you. Calculate your CPL, brainstorm what will better match your requirements without wasting money, and focus on that strategy.

Method #2- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL): The leads you generate should convert into your customers. The primary reason for not getting conversions would be that the leads are not your prospective customers.

Method #3- Estimating Return on Investments (ROI): A great way to get the approximate value of your ROIs is by calculating the profits that one lead gets you and multiplying it by the expected lifetime of that lead with you. You can then assign the obtained value to new customers to get your total ROI estimate.

Method #4- Closing Rate per Channel: The closing rates are critical for determining which platform brings you more leads and hence profit. You should then focus your investment on those channels with higher closing rates.

2. Choose Platforms for Your B2B Social Media Strategy

When used appropriately, social media platforms provide an ocean of benefits to B2B marketers. According to Statista, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are the top marketing platforms for B2B businesses, with Facebook at first place with 89% usage and LinkedIn at second place with 81% usage.

However, before investing big, it is advised to experiment with every platform because every social media has its own pros and cons for supporting brands. If you are wondering how to use social media for B2B business, here are the most effective platforms to achieve your defined goals-

A. LinkedIn

With almost 850 million members, out of which over 58 million are registered companies, LinkedIn is a brilliant professional networking platform and has gained immense popularity among B2B marketers. In 2021, 81% of B2B businesses used LinkedIn to grow by providing job opportunities, posting on trending topics, and collaborating with profitable networks.

B. Twitter

Twitter is popular for trends. It has over 396.5 million users actively tweeting their thoughts on the latest news. A great platform to introduce and promote your brand, Twitter has 82% active B2B business accounts.

C. Facebook

Most famous and the king of social platforms, Facebook reaches 59% of social media users, more than any other platform. Although, with the transformations in the overall view of Facebook through the years, it has become more ad-forward. But with well-planned strategies, it is also an excellent way to communicate and reach out to other prospective B2B businesses.

D. YouTube

Launched in 2005, YouTube supports 80 different languages and has more than 2.5 billion active users worldwide, coming second to Facebook. Moreover, some people watch videos without using Google accounts as well. YouTube provides different methods for reaching out to your audiences, like videos, commercials, and stories. Through its stage, you can make how-to tutorial videos, review videos, and much more.

E. Instagram

Instagram is the new social media craze having more than 1.4 billion monthly active accounts as of January 2022. It ranks third in the social media race with its ease of use for both consumers as well as companies with photo filters, stories, and reels for short videos. It is an incredible place for B2B businesses to thrive in a friendly manner.

3. Build a B2B Social Media Strategy

Once you have chosen the social platforms that suit your brand and are focused on your target goals, you can create a robust social media strategy for your B2B business. Here are some points you should practice and include in your plans for a successful social presence-

A. Tell Your Story

Consumers love to know what goes behind the building of a brand. Social platforms provide the right stage to show your prospects your evolution, the reason behind it all, and the vision you have for the future. Stories also play a critical role in building trust and influencing customers to know you and use your brand instead of others. An inspiring story can include-

• The inception idea behind your brand
• Struggles faced
• Growth and experiences
• Products and services
• Plans and vision for the future

Work Around Your Target Customers: As a company that sells services to other B2C businesses, your customers are the managers, entrepreneurs, and executives of those places. Social platforms work as efficient channels for B2B businesses because the consumers can go back in timelines and see the progress you have made. It is also reliable as the comments, likes, and followings act as social proof. Moreover, make sure to include feedback and reviews from your customers in your social media strategy for earned testimonials.

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B. Analyze Your Audience

Customer analysis helps you uncover new and innovative methods to engage their interests more. Customers who have purchased your services belong to the audience group that wants them. You can create customer personas based on their profiles, which will give you an exact idea of their requirements, and you can work on them to your advantage.

Use demographics such as age, gender, location, position, industry type, and business size to the list of information to your buyer persona to better understand your consumer market.

For instance, Twitter analytics will help you gain insights into the likes and dislikes of your targeted customers.

Analyzing Audiences Will Help You-

• Learn what works for them
• Create similar posts that interest them
• Advertise in appealing and suitable ways

C. Stay With the Trends

B2B social media trends are vital to follow to make your social presence visible. You do not need to hire a completely new team to keep your posts up to date with your target's choices. Many tools for social listening help you monitor your mentions, customer feedback, and conversations. Moreover, they also plan long-term strategies using the data they collect.

Tools to Use for Social Media Listening-

Tool #1 - Sprout Social: It offers a complete set of features you would need for social listening. Some features of Sprout Social are audience listening, consumer research, competitor comparison, trend research, and much more.

Tool #2 - Socialbakers: The tool by Socialbakers uses artificial intelligence to help you conduct social listening. It also allows you to monitor competitive and industry benchmarking and identify the content your competitors invest in.

Tool #3 - Digimind: This platform provides you with real-time social listening and brand monitoring options, focusing on sentiment analysis over consumer care and community management. Digimind is also based on artificial intelligence.

D. Create Engaging Content

Social media is all about creating intriguing content and attractively presenting it. Even though B2B services are usually presumed boring, they can still provide exciting content to their targets. Moreover, your prospects also need you. Hence, you are not boring but essential to those consumers.

Here Are Some Points to Remember When Creating Your Content –

• Create long titles and headlines because they have 76.70% more chances of shares.
• Aim for questions as they get more than average shares and views.
• A professionally written content does not have to stick to the rules of formal language.
• Be social media-friendly with indulging posts.
• Keep commenting open. People feel more comfortable when they can communicate their thoughts about something.

E. Focus On Creating Short Posts

The average social media user does not want to spend much time on one post. Moreover, you have a character limit that needs to be obeyed for every platform. This means you will have to promote your service in the quickest possible way. Instead of creating long blog posts, try to go for the following few points-

• Use captions and formats of your posts that are most appealing,
• Choose infographics over long textual posts,
• Post short videos if your content is long to read,
• Long texts are standard on LinkedIn. For any post that has a technical format and too many characters, use LinkedIn.
• You can add Twitter threads instead of external links.
• Make list posts instead of paragraphs, as they are shared 218% and 203% more than how-to videos and infographics, respectively.

F. Use Attractive Multimedia

As mentioned before, people do not have time to waste on long-form textual posts. To instantly grab their attention, you can use multimedia as your option. Multimedia has more potential of engaging the viewers and getting you more views. Use following instead of text-based posts-

• Use infographics
• Add exciting elements to your campaigns
• Post short and easily readable content
• Use short clips and videos
• Share stories to build and sustain interest

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G. Create Dedicated Support Accounts

Simple things grab more attention. Keep your profiles streamlined by dividing them into different categories. This separation also helps the consumer. For example, they do not need to search for a customer support section in your marketing profiles. The various accounts you can create may be-

• Manufacturing insiders for educational purposes and internal insights
• Marketing for promotions and sales
• Support services
• Customer relation and testimonials
• Research and development for persevered curiosity

H. Check On Your Competitors

For your business to succeed, you should always know what your competition is doing. Monitoring gives you beneficial insights into what will work and what does not. You can either do it manually or use monitoring and social listening tools to keep an eye on your contenders.

Things to Check While Monitoring Your Competitors –

• Invested campaigns,
• Used hashtags and keywords,
• Schedule and lengths of posts,
• Targeted consumers and networks

I. Conduct Performance Analysis

To evolve your social profile with the company’s growth, you need to analyze the efforts you have put into your branding. Look out for the following when conducting performance analysis-

• Follower growth
• Engagement rate
• Effects of your optimizations
• The efficiency of your social media strategy
• Improve your plans according to B2B social media trends

J. Invest Money for Better Reach

Just like for B2C brands, B2B businesses also need to build campaigns and get in front of more people. Social media allows your brand name to reach out to a much larger crowd when you invest in their ad strategies.

According to Gartner, marketing budgets have climbed to 9.5% of total company revenue in 2022, an increase from 6.4% in 2021.

In 2022, the total social media advertising spending by US companies is expected at just under $80.67 billion, expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2022-2027) of 10.10%.

For a better reach, try creating ads that will relate to the pain points of your targets. For instance, you can create effective ads using the LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

Here Are a Few Practices to Follow to Create Effective LinkedIn Ads -

• Stay Within the Specifications: You can create attractive promos with visuals and texts using the specs provided by LinkedIn. LinkedIn offers multiple options, so you don't entirely depend on long-form textual posts. Some options are- single image ads, carousel ads, video ads, and message ads.
• Attach Lead Gen Forms: LinkedIn features the option to attach their Lead Gen Forms with your sponsored ads and in-mails. These forms help generate leads by filling in all the details, and the viewers only need to submit them to you.
• Analyze Your Ads: LinkedIn ads are created to gain some form of return on investments. Analyzing your ads will help you understand which ones are worthy of improvement and which ones should be entirely removed to improve your visibility. You can track all these key metrics using the LinkedIn Ads Manager. Further, use LinkedIn Insight Tag to gain more knowledge of your prospects.

K. Use Employee Advocacy

The best people to review you and your brand are those who work closely with the services you sell. An employee with a large following can be used as an asset to enhance your reach. They can be key influencers for your business. Your consumers would prefer getting an internal perception of your work.

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Reasons for Using Employee Advocacy

• Increases the trust of the prospects in your brand
• Humanizes your brand,
• Suggests that you value your employee’s opinions
• It is an earned advertisement

FAQs

1. Do Social Media Platforms Work for B2B Businesses?

We make most of our decisions based on what society thinks about something. And social media provides you a stage to showcase your brand in front of a large crowd to boost your business. You can easily promote your products and services and effectively reach out to your audience.

2. Which B2C Strategies Can Be Used as B2B Social Media Strategies?

Whether it is B2C or B2B business, eventually, we, as marketers, sell things to a human. You can employ all social media strategies used in the B2C market for B2B businesses with little to no changes.

3. Which Is the Most Effective Platform for B2B Businesses?

LinkedIn runs first in the professional networking platform base. However, other platforms like Facebook and Instagram also have a substantial impact on B2B clients.

4. Should I Hire a B2B Social Media Agency or an In-House Manager?

Although developing a social media strategy for a B2B business is not a complex task, you can still hire professionals if your requirements are more. Make sure the outsourcing service or the in-house manager you employ checks all of your specific needs and is result-driven.

Conclusion

In the tough competitive market, every business needs to play its best card to win. Social platforms are a rich source of media to help you enhance your sales, create networks, and communicate with your prospects directly and more openly without being too much in their face. The above guide will help you realize your goals and work on them using different platforms. You can use the given B2B social media strategies involved with any social media for whichever purpose suits your need the best.