Hey everyone, it is Phil. I am a brand strategist based in Los Angeles. If you're reading this you probably recently caught the webinar that I did with Izabela Russell from New Media Europe. What an amazing webinar that was, some incredible engagement, lots of props. Izabela and I were competing and of course some amazing questions that we did not have time to answer all of them. As a reward for you for being so awesome and participating, I thought I would take a few minutes to record my answers in case we didn't answer your question live on the air. Here we go, let's dive right in.
Organic SEO vs. AdWords
Matthew Butler asks, what are your thoughts on organic SEO compared to AdWords? Obviously the latter an expensive investment, yes. AdWords is definitely an expensive investment, something you have to spend money on to actually see some results and something that not a lot of individual brands likely have a budget for. If you can budget for it within your marketing dollars, fantastic. If not, I would invest your time in making sure you've taken proactive steps to improve your SEO on your website. Depending on your platform, WordPress, Square Space, RainMaker, Weebly, Wicks. These are all platforms that I hear about often that people are on, there are resources available for you online to go and find how you can best optimise your site for SEO.
There are lots of best practices and experts on SEO with lots of free information on the web, all you need to do is spend time to actually find those resources and put them into action. The upside of everything, in the social media space is that Google since changing it's algorithm in the last few years has given more weight to social media activity. That works in your favour because you can be active on social media without spending money. I'm all about ways to promote your brand without actually having to spend advertising dollars. I don't have clients that come to me and say, I wand to spend lots of money Phil, what do I do? I have clients that come to me and say, I don't want to spend any money or very little money, what's the way to get the biggest bangs for your bucks.
I'd focus on the organic SEO and I'd focus on being a rock start on three social media platforms that are best for your brand. Doing something memorable, giving each platform purpose and cultivating an audience on each one of them.
Aligning Social Media with your Brand Name
Heather Bates asks, I want to align all of my social media with my name as my brand and it is, with the exception of my website. Huge domain is parked on HeatherBates.com and she doesn't plan on buying it for over $2,000.00. Do you suggest I use an initial or something else? My advice is always going to be different in this case depending on your name and obviously depending on what's available. But here's what's great, there are some incredible top level domains that were released fairly recently that are awesome, that you can consider using for your business. I'm not going to name any Heather in case anyone goes and buys them but, well I'll name one, HeatherBates.design is probably available so go and scoop it up before someone else does.
There are a lot of really creative ones that you can use not only to have a website home, but to also reinforce your brand. I branded myself under .com for years, prior to that I was .CA when I was working in Canada. More recently I changed it to .co, I still own the .com but .co is newer and fresher and it reinforces my company name which is PhilPallen.co. It's just one little step that I take to reinforce my brand, remind people who I am through my online collateral. I would dissuade you from using an initial unless there's literally no other option, I'd focus on something more memorable. It's not likely that people are going to remember your initial if it doesn't exist anywhere else.
Instead use a more creative top level domain, something like .
