Today on the Academy we’re talking about measuring the performance of your social media efforts. That starts with establishing why you want to be on social media in the first place, and ultimately what success means when you get there.

Determining which social media metrics to measure can be confusing and a bit overwhelming, and quite honestly hard to do. For many businesses, it's hard enough to just do the work of posting and engaging on social media on a regular basis. The last thing most marketers and business owners have time for, is to actually figure out how to measure success.

From tracking growth of your followers, to knowing how well your posts are driving engagement, you might be wondering which social media metrics are the most important for your small business and where you can start.

We're going to start off by giving you a little bit of advice about what our company did to develop a little bit of structure for our social media and to set some goals as to why we're even going to do it in the first place. Then we'll get into more specifics about how you can measure paid and organic social media efforts.

About Sanctuary:

Do you need a partner to help you with your PPC and SEO? The Academy is a service of Sanctuary and we can help you with all your digital marketing needs. We'd love to chat with you about how we can help you grow your business. Learn more about our digital marketing services here.

Sanctuary, a digital marketing agency based in North Canton, Ohio, helps companies grow their businesses by developing and executing end-to-end marketing strategies. We believe in partnering with purpose to create and execute powerful marketing strategies accountable to measurable results.

We partner with you to build custom websites and use marketing tactics such as search marketing, social media and email to drive leads and sales for your business. Our team comprises highly experienced and creative specialists in a range of digital marketing disciplines, from marketing strategy and execution, writing, visual design and development to social marketing, user experience design, analytics and more.

We’ve been guiding passionate, thriving businesses like yours that serve owners, employees and communities since 2006. Learn more.

I just think that's a great quote. So, with that quote in mind, here are some reasons why SEO takes time and requires an ongoing investment, and ultimately what you need to be doing to compete in the future.

About Sanctuary:

Do you need a partner to help you with your PPC and SEO? The Academy is a service of Sanctuary and we can help you with all your digital marketing needs. We'd love to chat with you about how we can help you grow your business. Learn more about our digital marketing services here.

Sanctuary, a digital marketing agency based in North Canton, Ohio, helps companies grow their businesses by developing and executing end-to-end marketing strategies. We believe in partnering with purpose to create and execute powerful marketing strategies accountable to measurable results.

We partner with you to build custom websites and use marketing tactics such as search marketing, social media and email to drive leads and sales for your business. Our team comprises highly experienced and creative specialists in a range of digital marketing disciplines, from marketing strategy and execution, writing, visual design and development to social marketing, user experience design, analytics and more.

We’ve been guiding passionate, thriving businesses like yours that serve owners, employees and communities since 2006. Learn more.

Today we’re talking about designing a new website. For many people, this means hiring an actual designer. Someone that will help them to decide how their website is going to look. They’ll go through the process and create multiple color schemes and layouts. They’ll debate about the right shade of blue, and explore all the different font styles, sizes and weights that are presented. There will be discussions about whether they need headshots and bios for everyone in the company. And there will certainly be discussions about whether the most important information on the homepage is “above the fold”.

This is how it’s done. Right?

Wrong.

About Sanctuary:

Do you need a partner to help you with your PPC and SEO? The Academy is a service of Sanctuary and we can help you with all your digital marketing needs. We'd love to chat with you about how we can help you grow your business. Learn more about our digital marketing services here.

Sanctuary, a digital marketing agency based in North Canton, Ohio, helps companies grow their businesses by developing and executing end-to-end marketing strategies. We believe in partnering with purpose to create and execute powerful marketing strategies accountable to measurable results.

We partner with you to build custom websites and use marketing tactics such as search marketing, social media and email to drive leads and sales for your business. Our team comprises highly experienced and creative specialists in a range of digital marketing disciplines, from marketing strategy and execution, writing, visual design and development to social marketing, user experience design, analytics and more.

We’ve been guiding passionate, thriving businesses like yours that serve owners, employees and communities since 2006. Learn more.

I encourage you to explore the theory and science of social media on your own because it can be complex and a world of it's own. It's an understatement to say that it's always going to be changing.

But to get started today, let's simplify our focus on what you could be doing as a business owner and marketer. If you need some values to strive for, you can't go wrong with the original 5 pillars of Community, Conversation, Participation, Openness and Connection as a foundation. All can be applied to the following tactics.

Shownotes:

Facebook.com

Facebook Messenger

TikTok.com

Twitter.com

Instagram.com

LinkedIn.com

Pinterest.com

YouTube.com

WhatsApp.com

About Sanctuary:

Do you need a partner to help you with your PPC and SEO? The Academy is a service of Sanctuary and we can help you with all your digital marketing needs. We'd love to chat with you about how we can help you grow your business. Learn more about our digital marketing services here.

Sanctuary, a digital marketing agency based in North Canton, Ohio, helps companies grow their businesses by developing and executing end-to-end marketing strategies. We believe in partnering with purpose to create and execute powerful marketing strategies accountable to measurable results.

We partner with you to build custom websites and use marketing tactics such as search marketing, social media and email to drive leads and sales for your business. Our team comprises highly experienced and creative specialists in a range of digital marketing disciplines, from marketing strategy and execution, writing, visual design and development to social marketing, user experience design, analytics and more.

We’ve been guiding passionate, thriving businesses like yours that serve owners, employees and communities since 2006. Learn more.

Email marketing is one of the best ways to promote yourself and your business, whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or a strictly online business. It is relatively simple and easy to use, and it can help you reach an unprecedented number of potential customers while staying in touch with current customers.

When you're talking about inbound marketing, there are many ways that you can use email beyond just sending a company newsletter. A regular newsletter that's full of valuable information is a great start. But there are opportunities to send individual marketing emails will offers, to create multiple drip campaigns based on the customer's interest, and even create complicated automated campaigns that help work a customer down the funnel to a sale.

One of my favorite email automation tactics is the simple abandoned cart email that's sent after someone has added something to their cart, but didn't finalize their order. This simple tactic is a great way to use email to close a sale and all you have to do is setup the functionality and never touch it again. It's just really surprising to me how many companies aren't even using the most simple email techniques available to them. So I wanted to spend a little bit of time here today talking about email, and to hopefully get you thinking about the opportunities.

Shownotes:

MailChimp.com

Hubspot.com

About Sanctuary:

Do you need a partner to help you with your PPC and SEO? The Academy is a service of Sanctuary and we can help you with all your digital marketing needs. We'd love to chat with you about how we can help you grow your business. Learn more about our digital marketing services here.

Sanctuary, a digital marketing agency based in North Canton, Ohio, helps companies grow their businesses by developing and executing end-to-end marketing strategies. We believe in partnering with purpose to create and execute powerful marketing strategies accountable to measurable results.

We partner with you to build custom websites and use marketing tactics such as search marketing, social media and email to drive leads and sales for your business. Our team comprises highly experienced and creative specialists in a range of digital marketing disciplines, from marketing strategy and execution, writing, visual design and development to social marketing, user experience design, analytics and more.

We’ve been guiding passionate, thriving businesses like yours that serve owners, employees and communities since 2006. Learn more.

For those of you that are interested in learning about basic marketing principles and strategy, I’d like to recommend The 22 Immutable laws of marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout. This is not a book review and I am not going to fully endorse this book, nor am I going to say that it’s a waste of your time. This is just a summary of some of the points that the authors cover in the book which I found to be interesting and thought provoking. Maybe you’ll gain a little nugget of information that will help you expand your marketing ideas and strategies .

The premise behind this book is that in order for marketing strategies to work, they must be in tune with some quintessential force in the marketplace. Just as the laws of physics define the workings of the universe, so do successful marketing programs conform to the "22 Laws.”

This book presents each law with illustrations of how it works based on actual companies and their marketing strategies. For example, the "Law of Focus" states that the most powerful concept in marketing is "owning" a word in the prospect's mind, such as Crest's owning cavities and Nordstrom's owning service.

When it comes down to it, I don’t entirely agree that any of the “laws” in this book are actually immutable. This book was written several decades ago at this point, so take all of this with a grain of salt. But it’s an interested exploration and I thought it would be worthwhile to share a summary of each law. I’m sure you’ll come away from this with an important nugget or idea that you can use in the future.

Shownotes:

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

Al Ries on Amazon

Jack Trout on Amazon

More about Al Ries

More about Jack Trout

About Sanctuary:

Do you need a partner to help you with your PPC and SEO? The Academy is a service of Sanctuary and we can help you with all your digital marketing needs. We'd love to chat with you about how we can help you grow your business. Learn more about our digital marketing services here.

Sanctuary, a digital marketing agency based in North Canton, Ohio, helps companies grow their businesses by developing and executing end-to-end marketing strategies. We believe in partnering with purpose to create and execute powerful marketing strategies accountable to measurable results.

We partner with you to build custom websites and use marketing tactics such as search marketing, social media and email to drive leads and sales for your business. Our team comprises highly experienced and creative specialists in a range of digital marketing disciplines, from marketing strategy and execution, writing, visual design and development to social marketing, user experience design, analytics and more.

We’ve been guiding passionate, thriving businesses like yours that serve owners, employees and communities since 2006. Learn more.

For many local, small businesses it’s essential that you’re found when local people search for what you do. It doesn’t happen magically though. Search engines have no idea what your site is about, or where you’re at unless you tell them. If you search for a term related to your business and city and you don’t see yourself on the first page of results, then that’s a major missed opportunity. I’d like to help you change that and the concepts listed here are pretty easy to implement if you know what to do.

About Chris Auman

Chris Auman is a veteran digital marketer with over 25 years of experience in the trenches. As Sanctuary’s founder and Managing Partner, Chris has successfully guided online marketing efforts for companies large and small. Through his extensive and wide-ranging experience with design, development and marketing, Chris is able to come to the table and solve problems from all angles, continually delivering profitable results for our clients. Learn more about Chris Auman and connect with him here.

About Sanctuary

Do you need a partner to help you with your PPC and SEO? The Academy is a service of Sanctuary and we can help you with all your digital marketing needs. We'd love to chat with you about how we can help you grow your business. Learn more about our digital marketing services here.

Sanctuary, a digital marketing agency based in North Canton, Ohio, helps companies grow their businesses by developing and executing end-to-end marketing strategies. We believe in partnering with purpose to create and execute powerful marketing strategies accountable to measurable results.

We partner with you to build custom websites and use marketing tactics such as search marketing, social media and email to drive leads and sales for your business. Our team comprises highly experienced and creative specialists in a range of digital marketing disciplines, from marketing strategy and execution, writing, visual design and development to social marketing, user experience design, analytics and more.

We’ve been guiding passionate, thriving businesses like yours that serve owners, employees and communities since 2006. Learn more.

Today we're talking about SEO friendly design again. This is part three in our series where I provide tips to help you design your site in a way that benefits your SEO instead of hurting it.  Many people don't consider "design" an  important part of SEO. But when you consider that "design" includes related topics like UX (User experience) and UI (User Interface design), you'll start to see how many of these "intangible" practices that many consider "opinion" can make or break your SEO, and either improve or erode the overall experience of your website visitors.

About Chris Auman

Chris Auman is a veteran digital marketer with over 25 years of experience in the trenches. As Sanctuary’s founder and Managing Partner, Chris has successfully guided online marketing efforts for companies large and small. Through his extensive and wide-ranging experience with design, development and marketing, Chris is able to come to the table and solve problems from all angles, continually delivering profitable results for our clients. Learn more about Chris Auman and connect with him here.

About Sanctuary

Do you need a partner to help you with your PPC and SEO? The Academy is a service of Sanctuary and we can help you with all your digital marketing needs. We'd love to chat with you about how we can help you grow your business. Learn more about our digital marketing services here.

Sanctuary, a digital marketing agency based in North Canton, Ohio, helps companies grow their businesses by developing and executing end-to-end marketing strategies. We believe in partnering with purpose to create and execute powerful marketing strategies accountable to measurable results.

We partner with you to build custom websites and use marketing tactics such as search marketing, social media and email to drive leads and sales for your business. Our team comprises highly experienced and creative specialists in a range of digital marketing disciplines, from marketing strategy and execution, writing, visual design and development to social marketing, user experience design, analytics and more.

We’ve been guiding passionate, thriving businesses like yours that serve owners, employees and communities since 2006. Learn more.

Today we're talking about SEO friendly design again. This is part two in our series where I provide tips to help you design your site in a way that benefits your SEO instead of hurting it.  Many people don't consider "design" an  important part of SEO. But when you consider that "design" includes related topics like UX (User experience) and UI (User Interface design), you'll start to see how many of these practices can make or break your SEO -- all while doing everything you can to improve the overall experience of your website visitors.

Show Notes:

https://www.xml-sitemaps.com Visit this site to learn more about how you can create your own XML sitemap. (As mentioned on the show.)

SEO Friendly Design (Part 1)

SEO Friendly Design (Part 3 - COMING SOON)

About Chris Auman

Chris Auman is a veteran digital marketer with over 25 years of experience in the trenches. As Sanctuary’s founder and Managing Partner, Chris has successfully guided online marketing efforts for companies large and small. Through his extensive and wide-ranging experience with design, development and marketing, Chris is able to come to the table and solve problems from all angles, continually delivering profitable results for our clients. Learn more about Chris Auman and connect with him here.

About Sanctuary

Do you need a partner to help you with your PPC and SEO? The Academy is a service of Sanctuary and we can help you with all your digital marketing needs. We'd love to chat with you about how we can help you grow your business. Learn more about our digital marketing services here.

Sanctuary, a digital marketing agency based in North Canton, Ohio, helps companies grow their businesses by developing and executing end-to-end marketing strategies. We believe in partnering with purpose to create and execute powerful marketing strategies accountable to measurable results.

We partner with you to build custom websites and use marketing tactics such as search marketing, social media and email to drive leads and sales for your business. Our team comprises highly experienced and creative specialists in a range of digital marketing disciplines, from marketing strategy and execution, writing, visual design and development to social marketing, user experience design, analytics and more.

We’ve been guiding passionate, thriving businesses like yours that serve owners, employees and communities since 2006. Learn more.

Many people don't consider "design" an  important part of SEO. But when you consider that "design" includes related topics like UX (User experience) and UI (User Interface design), you'll start to see how many of these practices can make or break your SEO -- all while helping to improve the overall experience of your website visitors.

These are just a few of the best practices of SEO friendly design, and this is only part one in this series. Following these simple rules is easy and we'll be providing more tips in the near future. Follow the links in the show notes for additional episodes around seo friendly design.

Show Notes:

https://www.xml-sitemaps.com Visit this site to learn more about how you can create your own XML sitemap. (As mentioned on the show.)

SEO Friendly Design (Part 2) 

SEO Friendly Design (Part 3 - COMING SOON) 

About Chris Auman

Chris Auman is a veteran digital marketer with over 25 years of experience in the trenches. As Sanctuary’s founder and Managing Partner, Chris has successfully guided online marketing efforts for companies large and small. Through his extensive and wide-ranging experience with design, development and marketing, Chris is able to come to the table and solve problems from all angles, continually delivering profitable results for our clients. Learn more about Chris Auman and connect with him here.

About Sanctuary

Do you need a partner to help you with your PPC and SEO? The Academy is a service of Sanctuary and we can help you with all your digital marketing needs. We'd love to chat with you about how we can help you grow your business. Learn more about our digital marketing services here.

Sanctuary, a digital marketing agency based in North Canton, Ohio, helps companies grow their businesses by developing and executing end-to-end marketing strategies. We believe in partnering with purpose to create and execute powerful marketing strategies accountable to measurable results.

We partner with you to build custom websites and use marketing tactics such as search marketing, social media and email to drive leads and sales for your business. Our team comprises highly experienced and creative specialists in a range of digital marketing disciplines, from marketing strategy and execution, writing, visual design and development to social marketing, user experience design, analytics and more.

We’ve been guiding passionate, thriving businesses like yours that serve owners, employees and communities since 2006. Learn more.