Building a brand through SEO and digital marketing takes hard work and patience, but it can be done well if you know how to optimize content for organic growth. While it’s virtually impossible to reach large volumes of engagement without some form of paid advertising, plenty of small business owners and up-and-coming brands are making waves and experiencing rapid growth solely through organic marketing campaigns.
Should you focus on SEO or delve into influencer marketing for the quickest results? The answer is both. Each one poses unique benefits that could be woven into your personal marketing strategy. However, many companies are limited by budget and time constraints.
Be it engaging professional SEO services or an influencer, you’ll need to establish a budget before you start to develop a strategy. Setting aside revenue and saving to build a solid marketing budget is one option. If you feel like the need for substantial growth is more pressing, then you may consider using a personal loan to pay for influencer marketing and/or a professional SEO marketer’s service.
Loans can help small businesses grow faster and ultimately repay themselves when the brand’s organic growth produces enough conversions.
Before building your own strategy, let’s break down the different digital strategies and see how they can benefit your business.
Organic SEO Strategies
Today, SEO stems beyond your website to also include your social media platforms as well. Do you use relevant hashtags that genuinely increase visibility and growth, or are you relying on the same copy-and-paste group of tags that do little but attract spam accounts who just want to increase their own following? It’s surprising that so many companies today use social media without segmenting their audience or using the appropriate metrics to guide their content strategy.
If you don’t know who you’re making media for, and you don’t know how your posts are performing, there’s no way to sustainably grow.
On the web front, you need to ensure your website’s copy and content is always up-to-date, consistent with trending search queries and is optimized for relevant keywords without being overdone. Highlighting keywords without providing value will only work against your business in the long-run. Here’s a basic checklist you should have for your website and social media SEO:
- Google Analytics created and installed.
- Social media trackers like Facebook Pixel installed.
- A current and optimized sitemap.
- Multiple versions of hashtag groups for different audience segments.
- A consistent posting schedule.
- Linkable content with URL shorteners.
- Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing Strategies
One of the best ways to gain new traffic is by having a popular figure recommend you to their audience. Influencers are respected in their field and have a rapport with their following that businesses can struggle to attain on their own. Collaborating with an influencer creates a personal connection between you and them. The influencer’s audience, who is your target audience or one of your segmented groups, is likely to take their word and check out the promoted products or services.
While on-site and social media search engine optimization is free, working with influencers costs money. The traffic you gain with influencer marketing might double or triple the results you receive with traditional web or social advertising, but the costs tend to be higher up-front.
Every influencer sets their own rates, and some will promote a product or service without additional payment if they’re given the item or service for free. However, most will require payment per post or want a commission on sales.
One way to engage influencers is to solicit the help of a third-party platform. StarNgage is an influencer marketing platform that allows brands to easily search for, discover, and connect with millions of global influencers for their brand campaigns. While engaging a third-party will mean additional investments, the bang is worth your buck.
Your outreach as well as your access will multiply significantly by using a third-party platform. Companies like StarNgage will take the guesswork out of finding the correct influencers for your brand. Using the right platform will help your efforts by mitigating wasted time and creating a process that is streamlined, customized, and efficient.
Paying for the most popular influencers can be a significant hurdle for smaller businesses, so consider first reaching out to nano influencers with 5,000 to 10,000 followers, who still have a significant reach, but tend to have much more affordable rates than those with higher follower counts.
Moving Forward
Building organic growth is difficult, otherwise, every business could reach millions of potential customers and limit the failure rate that impacts too many owners each year. With today’s pandemic affecting the way typical business is conducted, along with the new approach to working at home, adaptability and thinking outside the box is as important as ever.
Developing the right strategy for optimizing content with SEO and influencer marketing will add extra hours to an already stretched work-life balance, but the hard work is necessary to shape your business going forward.
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