SoLoMo stands for Social, Location, and Mobile: a term combining social networking and geo-location targeting with mobile communications, allowing marketers to engage customers directly in the digital and real world.

Social

Consumers are social buyers, now looking to friends and family as their source of brand information. They utilize their social media networks to ask for advice, write reviews, and share their personal experiences about products they are using. Why is this important? Well, 62% of all online buyers read online product reviews from their friends on Facebook, with 75% of these buyers clicking through to the retailer’s site.

Location

According to Pew, 65 million Americas use mobile or location based services, such as Foursquare and Yelp. Users tag themselves at locations, whether it’s a shopping mall or movie theater, often times redeeming offers and deals and leaving tips and reviews for future consumers. With Facebook’s Graph Search, location will become even more important as users begin searching for local establishments their friends have already visited.

Location-Based Engagement (LBE) is the most attainable form of SoLoMo marketing for small-medium sized businesses. Forms of LBE include: social check-ins (Foursquare and Facebook), tagging tweets, redeeming offers (Foursquare and Yelp), photo tagging (Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, etc), and leaving reviews and tips (Foursquare and Yelp).

Mobile

It is estimated that 96% of mobile users will research a product on their phone, with 90% of those users deciding to buy within 24 hours of searching. That number is huge for businesses, making it critical for them to put more effort into generating website traffic from users on the go, whether through intense SEO campaigns or implementing responsive web design.

So Why SoLoMo?

The rise of SoLoMo has made it impossible for brands to ignore mobile technology and social media marketing. SoLoMo is only going to become more successful as consumers continue to use social media to help them make purchasing decisions and smartphones to help them find the closest retailer. And since this digital trend is only in the infant stages, it’s the perfect time for small-medium businesses to start implementing the strategy as there’s lots of room to grow and develop.

The following are some of the ways our web designers incorporate SEO friendly features into each and every WordPress website we create.

Positive feedback from happy clients is an excellent source of new business. Testimonials are powerful word-of-mouth marketing. Building an internet marketing reputation based on complimentary feedback quickly overcomes the occasional dissatisfied patient. Research indicates a strong correlation between a company’s growth rate and the percentage of its customers who are extremely likely to recommend the company to someone they know.

The Importance of Client Testimonials for Your Dentist Office

Think back to when you last bought a pair of running shoes or researched the next book to read. Where did your search start? If you’re like any other consumer, it probably began with customer reviews.

Why? Reviews are candid.

They’re words from people just like you. They aren’t published by the company promoting the product or fluffed with marketing lingo and buzzwords with no meaning.

While researching products or services, one of the most persuasive pieces of content a consumer views is a testimonial or a review. Reviews and testimonials are content consumers view before they reach out to companies, and therefore what makes customer testimonials a worthy investment of your dentist office.

How to Use Testimonials for the Benefit of Your Dentist Office

• Talk to your patients about participating in case studies. Case studies show your potential clients exactly how others are using your dentist practice to their benefit, and since they’re done with approval from your patient, they carry much more weight than the generic marketing copy that covers your website.
• Twitter is an incredible outlet for collecting client feedback, so if you don’t already have one, get a Twitter account! If someone says something nice about your dental practice, don’t let their tweet fade into the past! If you need someone to help manage your Twitter and other social accounts, an internet marketing agency, like us, of course, can assist you!
• Create customer testimonial videos if you have the resources. While these require more time to make, videos are one of the most credible forms of customer endorsement because the words are coming straight from the patient’s mouth, literally! As well, videos are quick and easy to watch.
• Encourage patients to write reviews. If you’re confident in your dental services, your patients should be, too! Encourage them to write reviews regarding positive appointment experiences and interaction with your professional dental hygiene staff. Often, patients just need a little push toward writing what they are already thinking!

The secret is that they know how to gather valuable information about their audience and website that you haven’t even considered: Conversion Optimization.

What is Conversion Optimization?

Conversion optimization, or conversion rate optimization (CRO), is the method of designing and marketing a website such that the goal of increasing the percentage of web visitors who convert into customers. This rate is directly tied to user experience. If a website visitor has a difficult time navigating your website or making a purchase, they will leave your site quickly and go somewhere else.

How Successful Websites Use Conversion Optimization

97% of websites FAIL at user experience.

The 2% however, are websites that are successful with converting web visitors into paying customers have spent time experimenting with the layout of their design to find what works best for them. Experimenting with website design and content variations to determine which layouts, copy text, offers and images can all help to improve conversion rate.

The Role of Heat Maps in Website Conversion Optimization

The following is a screenshot of a heat map overlay of the Apple.com website. Red shows the most clicked on areas of the site, while green and blue are the lesser clicked areas.

As you can see in the heat map, the areas that are clicked most often related to the actions a visitor wants to take. It shows that a small percentage of people use the website’s search bar compared to people who click on images and product links. This type of information can help a website owner determine what features of their site are most valuable to their audience and maybe remover features that aren’t as usable.

Heat maps can also help show a website owner funny quirks in user behavior. Note the big red spot on the Snow Leopard! Why might people be clicking on the picture of the animal? perhaps to save the image? or hoping it would be clickable and take them to more information about the OS?

As a bonus, wouldn’t it be neat for Apple to make the hot spot an opportunity to do something fun, like embed an audio clip that when clicked, the snow leopard let our a big roar?

Successful Websites Test, Test, and Test Again!

Testing with just 5 sample visitors can find 85% of your website’s problems.

All successful websites, big and small, understand the importance of constant and consistent testing. A user’s experience can change over time due to cultural shifts, and new technology is released. Testing allows websites to maximize their performance at all stages. Web designers that focus on user experience, will usually run A/B testing processes for a new site design to see which concept will perform better before making a full design change.

Just think about all of the larger brand websites out there – how many times does Facebook makeover their design? Apple? Amazon? They are doing it for a reason. To optimize their website’s conversion!

Semantic markup can increase chances that these bits information from your website will be highlighted in search engine results pages because they are written in a way that search engines (like Google, Bing, and Yahoo) can understand and read quickly.

So what are the most important semantic markups local businesses should be using? Here are our top 5:

1. Meta Descriptions

Meta Descriptions have been one of the earliest and longest surviving semantic markup elements. They’re possibly the most-influential as well, since they often appear as the entire snippet text in search results.

2. Authorship Markup

Authorship allows the blog post author’s Google+ photo to appear alongside search results of your website pages.

Which search result below stands out the most to YOU when you search for award winning web design?

3. Open Graph Protocol

The Open Graph API is a set of programming tools that let’s you get information in and out of social media. With Open Graph, social media sites such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter can identify important elements of a webpage.

4. Video

Video listings in search results are inherently more attention-grabbing. Consumers like seeing videos of products and services, so this can help with click-through conversions as well.

Which search result are YOU more likely to click on: a video thumbnail or standard text link?

5. Testimonials

Google allows local businesses to disclose that they have a testimonial by using semantic markup for reviews, and Google sometimes will display that information in conjunction with the business’s listings in SERPs.

**Important Note About Semantic Markups**

Markups DO NOT guarantee your data will show up in Google search results. It is strongly recommended, but because of the unique algorithms of each search engine, search results can actually vary person to person, search by search.

With people switching to iPads and Galaxy Tablets, your website is now being viewed in a whole different form factor. This leads to an exciting trend: responsive web design.

If you are thinking about cutting the cord (like millions of others) it’s important that if you are a brand or company that you start thinking about responsive design.

And there is no better arena to make the most of your connections than with LinkedIn. The following video shows you how to connect with other businesses (i.e. potential customers) through mutual contacts.

Get Started

1. Make sure your sales team has updated LinkedIn profiles that link to your business as well as highlight key selling features of your brand.
2. Follow company pages that you are interested in working with or selling to. Their updates to their company page will provide valuable insight on how you can be of service to them.
3. Connect with TheeDesign Studio on LinkedIn. We regularly share marketing and money-making tips with our followers.

When it comes to online marketing, many business owners have questions that they are too embarrassed to ask. Fishbowl recently published an infographic answering eight of the most popular online marketing questions that companies fail to ask.

Online marketing consists of being able to effectively reach a wide audience. This can be a challenge for many marketing teams. But blogging, SEO, and PPC can help your company reach its intended audience. This infographic only addresses some of your online marketing questions, so it’s always a good idea to consult with a professional!

We’ve all been there, you sign into Twitter, tweet out a few things, but you get no response. If you don’t get any engagement when you first use Twitter that’s fine.  Twitter takes a little bit getting used to, even for the most savvy social media veteran. The first thing to remember is that, just like every other social media platform, Twitter is all about engaging with your community.

The following are tips from our Raleigh marketing team that will help you create engagement today.

• Remember to use pictures to your advantage, when using Twitter. Chances are high, that you might find yourself using a smartphone or a tablet to tweet, so don’t forget to use your camera’s device to your advantages.  When you go to a conference take a picture or in the case of Snickers, you can upload funny pictures from your home or office.

• Be human. This is true, not just for personal accounts but for your brand as well. By showing that your brand is human more people will want to engage with you, so tell people hi when you walk into a building or send a heart felt message about the events going on in real time.

• Ask questions, to your followers. By asking questions, you can find out who is actively listening and wanting to engage with your brand.

• Talk to brands. Almost every brand has an account today, so instead of saying hey I’m eating a Snickers, say “hey I’m eating a @Snickers!” By engaging with other brands you are openly engaging with a possible dialogue between yourself and the brands that your customers use.

• But most importantly give people something to tweet about. Most marketers like coffee, so if you’re wanting to reach marketers, talk to them about coffee.

Twitter, just like most social media channels is ever-evolving, but if you follow the above tips you will be on your way to engaging with your audience today.

Did you know? iPhones make up 50% of the recycled phones in 2013 so far? And in each of those phones are highly valuable raw materials that can be reused rather than mined from the Earth. Talk about green technology!