Is QR Code Marketing For You?

In a world of smartphones and 5G connectivity, QR codes have finally taken off in the world digital marketing.

QR codes have been around since the 1990s, but their use has only recently become common practice. Governments have played a prominent role in this development, bringing QR codes into the mainstream with their use during Covid-19 pandemic response efforts.

How do you know if QR Code marketing is for you? Let’s find out.

The Origin of QR Code Marketing

QR codes were invented in 1994 by a Japanese automotive company called Denso Wave. They created them for the purpose of tracking vehicles throughout production. The code pattern was inspired by a game called “Go” an abstract strategy game known for black and white pieces. Each QR code is uniquely designed so that it can be tied back to a piece of online data.

Codes can be read from all directions, so that the user can scan it quickly and land on the web page immediately. Before the pandemic, many thought the QR code had failed to reach its potential. However, COVID-19 had made QR codes to the center of public attention. Restaurants quickly popularized QR codes so customers can be instantly directed to their online menu.

Over 83% of American consumers have canned a QR code at least one, and 72% of people have scanned a QR code within the last month. Creating unique QR codes is a simple task that anyone can do. Nowadays, there are many free online QR code generators that can create them in a matter of seconds.

Since anyone and everyone has now jumped on board to QR code marketing, is there creative ways to implement them into your strategy? Let’s explore some examples of QR Code marketing methods.

Examples of QR Code Marketing

  • Coinbase

Coinbase is a great example of simple yet effective. During the 2022 Super Bowl, the brand created one of the most popular ads that displayed a bouncing QR code. Users could can the code and gain access to $15 worth of free bitcoin if they signed up for an account. Even though the ad slot cost them $13 million, their main goal was to attract attention – which worked. Their website crashed shortly after the ad went live due to a massive surge in web traffic.

  • Starbucks

Starbucks is another coffee retailer who has been incorporating mobile into its everyday initiatives. The Starbucks Card mobile application is now accepted at many Target and Starbucks stores, making it one of the largest mobile payment initiative in the U.S.

The mobile application lets Starbucks customers check their card balance, reload the card and view transactions. The new QR code initiative shows that Starbucks is using mobile to further engage with consumers.

Benefits of QR Codes

As the examples showed, QR codes offer a lot more marketing potential than one might initially think. They are cheap, ubiquitous, and can be used very creatively. Brands today are already taking advantage of QR codes in marketing campaigns so think about how you can also use them to achieve:

– Increased brand awareness

– Increased traffic to your website or blog

– More sales of your products or services

Why Onimod Global

At Onimod Global, one of our main goals is to develop ‘Digital Synergy’ for your company. ‘Digital Synergy’ is about having visibility in the places your consumer needs you, including introducing QR codes for your brand. Every search request is an opportunity; each action on a social site is an opportunity. Having the correct brand, product or service positioning is essential.

We align marketing departments with sales and executive directions. Our consultative approach streamlines and organizes the marketing conversation for your business.  Got questions about QR codes or want to learn more about our services? Contact us here today.

Digital Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Small businesses should always be looking to find opportunities to stay ahead of the competitive market and reach their potential customers. With the right tools, you can create an effective strategy to have a big return in reach and awareness. 

The internet has become an indispensable tool for almost any consumer making a decision. Whis is why it’s always a good time for business owners to think about the most effective small business marketing ideas. 

Unsure of where to start improving your website or social media pages? Here are 5 quick and effective ways that you can jump start your digital marketing for your SMB.

1. Research Competitors and Differentiate Yourself

Competitor research is important because as a small business, you’ll want to be able to offer additional value in the market. One way to do this is by using Google Search Ads. Doing a search and seeing the results that pop up is a great way to start. For example, if you’re a plumbing company and you see the terms “No Call Out Charge”, “Fully Qualified Plumbers” and “1-Hr Response” for your results, they’re likely to be great selling points for other businesses looking to compete with these results.

How can you differentiate your company from other plumbers in the area who provide similar services? Most times, if you don’t have anything that differentiates your company from others, you can invent one. You can do this by giving your products, services, and reputation more attention and detail.

2. Get Your Website Basics Right

Users are increasingly demanding in terms of the experience they expect from a website. They want a fast loading website as a minimum requirement. As a local business, you may not have the budget of larger firms, but you can at least get the basics right.

Here’s a couple things you can do to fix this problem. You can start by test your website’s mobile speed with Google’s free tool and see how you could decrease bounce rates. If this doesn’t provide clarity you can move onto the following options:

1. Compressing Text and Images: Decreasing or converting your image sizing and scales can help dramatically, as well as removing any video content that isn’t critical to your site’s content.

2. Website Design: Over-designing web pages by adding loads of banners, images, icons, and other additions can lead to slower loading times.

3. Mobile Optimization: Last but not least, making your site mobile friendly is probably the most important thing you should do for your website. A majority of consumers now access the internet via mobile browser. So make sure your website is designed so that it is responsive per device and screen size.

3. Improve Google My Business Listing and Customer Reviews

When a customer searches for your products or services, your online reputation could be the deciding factor. Luckily, Google My Business gives you control over how people perceive your business.

Some of the common mistakes to avoid include:

  • Duplicate listings
  • Setting up unnecessary new listings after a change of address
  • Business name misuse e.g. adding unnecessary promotional messages

Customer reviews are not a new concept, but you might be surprised at how often they are overlooked. 30% of consumers said that reviews were a key factor in judging local businesses, so make sure this as a top priority in your digital marketing strategy.

4. Create Interesting Blog Content

In highly competitive industries, a content strategy is necessary to drive search results. When working with smaller businesses, it’s likely that they will not rank on the first page of Google for a broad term related to their product or service. Blog content plays a big role in creating and converting leads to customers. You can easily increase your organic traffic for local businesses through researching blog content that you can create in house. Here are a couple tips to amp up your blogs:

  • Putting the audience first
  • Making sure it’s SEO friendly
  • Correct tone of voice
  • Showing readers they can trust you

Final Thoughts

As a small business owner, you can use digital marketing to reduce barriers-to-entry in your industry by increasing the reach of your business through the Internet. But you need a plan to get there. A strong content marketing strategy and experimenting with different topics, measuring the results, and tracking your progress all help you develop an effective coverall content marketing strategy.

Onimod Global is your Chicago-based, in-house marketing team, your partner experts for specific marketing verticals or some nice balance in between. We excel in customer service and will teach you the most relevant and up-to-date digital marketing skills. From social media to SEO and paid search, you will have the tools to ensure your business succeeds online.

Have questions about creating your online presence and need help strategizing? Contact us here today.

How To Improve Your Ad Campaigns

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a valuable method to earning the coveted top spot on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). However, without a solid strategy, you will soon see underwhelming campaign results and ad spend issues.

Here are a few red flags to watch out for and some extra tips to help boost underperforming SEM campaigns:

Clicks are Few to None

If your SEM campaigns keywords aren’t relevant to a user’s search intent and where they are in their buyer’s journey, Google’s less likely to show your ads. Keyword research can help you target relevant keywords that satisfy Google and your users so they engage more with your ads.

Start your keyword research by using a keyword tool. If you use Google for your marketing needs, you can utilize Google Keywords. You can use the tool to discover new keywords, research keywords, and creating an advertising plan to share with your marketing team. The tool “cleans” your keywords by removing unnecessary characters and duplicates, groups keywords by campaigns, and more.

Poor Performance Tracking

If you want to measure the success of your SEM strategy, tracking your keywords’ positions can help you do that. If a competitor starts targeting or ranking for the same keywords as you, tracking their positions can alert you. Tracking relevant campaign KPIs helps you understand the following:

  • Keyword performance: Successful ad campaigns hinge on finding the right keywords. If the target keywords you’re using aren’t driving relevant traffic, you can quickly change them.
  • Media and content types your audience resonates with: By A/B testing campaigns with different media and content types, you gain insight into which media types drive engagement and help boost conversions.
  • Audience behavior: You can analyze audience behavior and tell which parts of your ad campaign your target audience is not engaging with.
  • Channel attribution: This enables you to focus more resources on these channels. Google Attribution is an excellent tool that can help.

Multi-Media Planning for Ad Campaigns

Media should be considered an integral part of your advertising campaigns. You can use different media types in the same campaign to create a seamless customer experience. Using a combination of websites, text messages, and YouTube videos may help you achieve this goal.

If your ad campaign assets aren’t in sync across all platforms, your customer will become confused and your engagement and conversion rates will suffer. With the right tools, multi-media planning will be significantly easier. Ad campaigns are optimized to offer customers a positive CX as they move across different platforms on your buyer journey.

Last Thoughts

While the business world is increasingly competitive, you can still outperform your competitors and drive enough revenue-generating traffic to your business. By planning ahead and strategizing your ad campaigns, you can stay ahead of the curve and create a robust ad campaign strategy.

At Onimod Global, our talented digital team has unbeatable experience and expertise when it comes to all things SEO, expanding your social presence and digital marketing. Got questions about how to develop a digital marketing strategy for 2022 or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today.

How to Measure Social Media ROI

As one of the top digital marketing channels for businesses, social media is a critical component in your company’s success. Here’s how to engage your network, drive collaboration, stay up-to-date, and share best practices.

Every business should be able to calculate their social media return on investment. By tracking ROI, it shows the monetary value of your social media campaigns. You can double down by using marketing methods that work and avoid ones that dont. Social media is a crucial part to anyone’s marketing strategy if your goal is to drive brand awareness.

Here’s how you can measure your social media ROI and improve your content.

What is Social Media ROI?

When you’re looking to increase your social media ROI, it’s important to know how to calculate the value of your activities.

The calculation is simple: (return – investment made) / investment made X 100 = social media ROI.

If your ROI value is more than 0 percent, it means you’re making money from your campaigns. If it is anything below that, then you are losing money.

ROI calculation depends on your goals and objectives as an organization. Different organizations will have different objectives. There are many social media goals you can choose from. It all depends on your core objective, which could be:

  • New followers
  • Click-through rates
  • Conversions
  • Completed lead generation forms

Metrics Used to Measure Social Media ROI

Your social media strategy is the backbone of your business. Without it, you’re just flailing around in the dark, hoping that things work out.

And they won’t. It’s time to get a plan in place.

  • Engagement – This metric is measured by the level of people interacting with your content and brand. A recent study shows that over one third of executives that create content are using engagement as a way to measure their contents performance. Clicks, likes, shares and brand mentions are all part of tracking engagement for you social media channels.
  • Reach- This metric is measured on views and interactions with your company on social media. Reach can be harder to measure than engagement because it only factors how many people saw your post.
  • Leads – This metric is generated by social media, and it’s important to know which channels provide the most leads and what content drives those leads. The best way to achieve ROI with leads is by linking your campaigns to your activity.
  • Conversions – This metric uses UTM parameters on the links within your posts so you can track clicks by each campaign and platform.

When you have all four of these metrics implemented correctly, it will drive ROI to your business.

Best Way to Track ROI

Once you have your plan laid out and you know which targets you are hitting it is time to set up a system for tracking your ROI. There are so many different types of platforms on the market that do a variety of things for you. The simplest way to do this is by using Google Analytics and setting up goals and event tracking.

Google Analytics is a simple tool to use and their help page provides their users with a step-by-step guide on how to use their program. Most importantly, Onimod Global is a Google partner. Google Partners are online marketing companies, trusted and recognized for exceling with Google’s products.

As more customers use social media to browse, connect and purchase, marketers need to know how social media continuously evolves. No matter what your ROI percentage is, there is always room for improvement. Some last key things to remember are:

  • Understand your audience – make sure you know who is interacting with you and how you can provide them with content that will engage them.
  • Think outside the box – quality not quantity, take time to create interesting and engaging content for your audience.
  • Test and Optimize – fine tune your organic social posts by using new imagery, keywords and headlines.

Last Thoughts

At Onimod Global, our goal is to help you align your content marketing efforts to real business results. Our data-driven content strategies make it easy to understand your audience’s needs, where your competition is winning, and areas where you have an opportunity to lead your industry.

As a Chicago-based, in-house marketing team, we are your partner experts for specific marketing verticals or some nice balance in between. We excel in customer service and will teach you the most relevant and up-to-date digital marketing skills.

Have questions about creating your online presence and need help strategizing? Contact us here today.

How to Enhance Your SEO with Keywords

If you don’t understand how to use keywords for search engine optimization (SEO), you’re losing business. Follow these suggestions and watch your website rise the ranks to the top of search-engine results. 

Keywords are words and phrases typed into search engines like google, to find information on a certain topic. Keywords are known as SEO keywords, keyphrases and search queries. While they may have different names, they all do the same thing. If you want to enhance your SEO, keywords are the way to go.

Here is what you need to know about keywords and how to use them in order to get your content ranking at the top of Google’s results.

What Are Keywords Known For?

Keywords are essentially the foundation of SEO and pay-for-click (PPC) in marketing campaigns. If you want to enhance your SEO, then ranking at the top of Google should be your number one priority. Having targets for a keyword can bring you quality website traffic that will generate into leads, and hopefully new clients.

If your marketing budget allows, invest in some pay-per-click ads to get your website organic results. With Google Ads, advertisers bid to appear at the top of search results for specific keywords. Keywords that signal someone is ready to buy could be good choices for a paid search campaign.

A good example would running an ad for a home appliances business. In that case, the keyword “washer for sale in Chicago” is a term that someone close to buying would search for. On the other hand, running a search like “best washers” is for someone just beginning their search on the buying cycle. Overall, it would be better to use an SEO keyword that would optimize a blog post around. 

How to Find Keywords for SEO

The keywords you choose can either improve your SEO or do the opposite. If you use keywords that are too competitive, you will have a hard time getting a good ranking in Google. If you optimize your website around keywords that your target audience does not search for you will end up with traffic that won’t generate the leads you want. If your business is new, you want to shift your focus to long-tail keywords. These are simply specific search terms with low search volume.

The benefits of using long-tail keywords is that it tends to convert at a much higher rate than high search volume terms do. This is due to people using long-tail keywords to buy something specific. Another good example of this would be using a keyword like, “Volkswagen Dealership in Chicago.” Its a specific keyword with a specific location.

Qualities of a Keyword

When doing keyword research, what are some of the things you pay attention to? These qualities say a lot about how your keywords will perform. The overall main qualities of a keyword should include the following:

  • Search Volume
  • Competition
  • Cost-per-click
  • Word Count

These 4 qualities all do different things for you in terms of keyword searches. Let’s break down what each one mean and how they can benefit your SEO strategy. 

  1. Search volume relates to the number of times a keyword is search in google each month. This helps you estimate how much traffic you can get if you rank keywords in Google.
  2. Competition relates to the more sought-after keywords that are likely used on many websites but you’re competing to be at the top, both organically and paid. A great way to take on this quality is by having keyword difficulty and competitive density. Keyword Difficulty helps you manage your SEO campaign, and Competitive Density helps you prioritize your advertising campaign.
  3. Cost-per-click shows you how much it costs an adversiter every time someone clicks on their ad after doing a keyword search. If you are planning an ad campaign, evaluating cost-per-click of your target keywords is essential when you’re trying to estimate how much the campaign will cost you.
  4. Word Count is the number of words that make up 1 keyword. If we go back to the example of “Volkswagen dealership in Chicago” that keyword would have the word count of four. Word count is a helpful way to narrow your research. The higher the word count, the more specific the search.

Last Thoughts

Keywords are extremely beneficial to anyone’s SEO strategy when used correctly. By following the steps above, you are putting yourself in a great position to outrank your competitors.

Onimod Global is your Chicago-based, in-house marketing team, your partner experts for specific marketing verticals or some nice balance in between. We excel in customer service and will teach you the most relevant and up-to-date digital marketing skills. From social media to SEO and paid search, you will have the tools to ensure your business succeeds online.

Have questions about creating your online presence and need help strategizing? Contact us here today.

Marketing Metrics Businesses Should Be Tracking

Marketing metrics matter because smart marketing is built on the foundations of solid data. That is why any business with a digital marketing strategy should be closely monitoring the following 4 metrics. Let’s hop right in! 

In today’s digital marketing landscape, there are a number of data points to measure. Some of these will help businesses with consumer insights and others with direct response. This can be tricky as trying to measure both consumer behavior as well as whether specific marketing activities have led directly to sales. After all, aren’t you ultimately in the game to book more meetings?

A business is only as good as the data it collects. Data reveals the most critical questions to help a business grow faster. Here’s a look at digital marketing performance indicators, along with best practices on how to evaluate the data they provide.

Traffic Sources

Knowing where your future prospects are coming from is important. Did they visit your website after google searching your company? Or did they find you through social media? There are so many places where your clientele can stem from, and its valuable knowing how they found you.

By having access to these insights, it will help you prioritize and optimize those channels. Once that has been done you can easily make simple improvements to other channels that are underperforming.

Tracking Engagement

When someone visits your website, it’s always best practice to know how long they’re browsing. This metric reveals how interested visitors are in your content and if you are attracting additional visitors.

If you see that visitors are only browsing on your website for a few seconds, it could be an indicator that they either didn’t end up on the site they were looking for or quickly realized they’re disinterested in what you’re offering. On the other hand, if you see that your visitors are on your website for an extended period of time, it can signal that you have content the market is interested in.

Everytime you post on social media, send out an email campaign or put out display ads you should be measuring your engagement rates. A great example of this is seeing how many likes an instagram post gets. At times one post may have more likes than another post. Knowing how your audience engages with your content will help you cater and craft future content for them.

CAC & CLV

CAC stands for customer acquisition cost, CLV stands for customer lifetime value. Both of these are crucial to your marketing metric strategy. With customer acquisition cost, there is a cost associated with every customer. Businesses need to measure how much it costs to acquire customers throughout their buying journey.

With customer lifetime value, you’re measuring how much the average customer will spend on your brand during their lifetime. This metric indicates the total financial value a customer brings. Ultimately, this metric will help you decide where to invest the most.

Brand Equity

Lastly, become an expert on your audience. Know how they view you and your products. Household name brands such as Nike and Coca-Cola are all names you recognize, even if you don’t buy their goods. A great example of this would be referring to the product as the brand name. Most people purchase disinfecting wipes and refer to them as “Clorox Wipes,” whether or not they’re purchasing that specific brand.

Analyzing your brand strength will help you know how strong you are in the market and if customers prefer your brand over competitors. It will also be a relevant factor in whether or not customers are willing to pay more for your products since they find your brand valuable.

Last Thoughts

When it comes to business, every company is different, and as such, will need to rely on their own unique set of KPIs and metrics to track their performance. Even the digital marketing metrics that are relevant to your business will vary greatly, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

We hope you have learned a little bit more about the importance of metrics and how beneficial it can be to your business. Our goal is to ensure we help improve your marketing and drive success.

At Onimod Global, we regognize the unique and individual nature of every client, and work with your business to help develop a custom strategy that is designed to bring you the highest success possible. Digital Decisions driven by Data is our mantra. Advanced analytics and reporting capabilities is what we do best.

Got questions about tracking and measuring your business performance? Contact us here today to start the conversation.

4 Tips for SEO Content Strategy

Want to create your best SEO content this year? Try these four data-driven content strategies to get more traffic and leads.

There have never been more new and exciting opportunities to master your content and reach a wider audience than right now.

An SEO content strategy isn’t just a document with instructions and requirements. The best SEO strategies come from an in-depth conversation, whether it’s between a writer and an editor, or a marketing team and the people who actually write the content.  In order to create a strategy, you’ll need access to how your content is performing. If you want to scale SEO, you need to prioritize it.

In this post, we’ll discuss how to make SEO a priority in your content strategy, and how this impacts scaling SEO.

Tip 1: Include SEO as part of the writing process

Incorporating SEO into the writing process is a great way to ensure that your content is optimized as it’s being created. If this doesn’t happen, there’s a chance that optimizations will be made after the content has been completed. This leaves out the opportunity for writers to include relevant keywords that have search volume while they are crafting the piece.

Tip 2: Provide Keyword searches for content topics

Keyword research is a crucial part of the content creation process. This is an opportunity to provide writers with relevant keywords so they can write holistic SEO copy. It allows them to pick and choose the keywords they want to write about to ensure content is in line with SEO strategy.

This can also prevent keywords from product pages from being the focus keyword of the copy. This is done to prevent two or more pages from competing for the same keyword in Google’s search engine results. Finally, it ensures relevant keywords with search volume and user intent are used.

Tip 3: Provide Keyword research for omnichannel campaigns

When you’re creating omni channel campaigns, it can be a challenge to find relevant keywords with any search volume. It’s important to ensure that your keyword research is accurate, because if the keywords you use aren’t relevant, then your campaign will not perform well on search engines. Here are some tips for finding the right keywords:

1. Try to include additional longer-form content with keywords that address users’ pain points and that have search volume. For example, instead of writing “Find out where we deliver in San Francisco,” write “Find out where we deliver in San Francisco, California!”

2. We recommend internally linking these assets into the campaign content to overcome organizational created language. For example, if the user searches “find out where we deliver in San Francisco, California!” and clicks on your ad, you can provide a link directly to your landing page with more information about delivery in San Francisco so it won’t feel like an interruption when they click through from Google Search Ads (GSA).

3. Map out your content by topics and keywords in a spreadsheet so that you can better internally link your content to the user’s journey

Tip 4: Content and keywords should be aligned

Keywords are important—they help Google and users find your site, after all—and they should be considered throughout the entire lifecycle of a buyer, from when they first start searching for information about your product to when they actually make that purchase.

If you’re not careful, you could end up with a disconnect between your keyword intent and the copy on your site. This can confuse both Google and your users, which means fewer people will see and click on your content.

To avoid this issue, make sure there is no disconnect between the keywords associated with copy and different stages of the buyer’s journey. Don’t confuse your users and Google!

Final Thoughts

SEO is a must for anyone who wants to scale their content marketing and create a profitable business model. If you want to learn more about SEO from someone you can trust, we would love to have the opportunity to speak with you.

In the end, Onimod Global is more than in tune with all things SEO, Content marketing and social media, so it doesn’t hurt to drop us a line and ask questions. We are always happy to chat about the latest trends in digital marketing or help you develop a custom digital marketing strategy for 2022. Contact us here today.

Google Analytics – What Does It Do?

If you manage a website, you need a deep understanding of how users find your site and how your content appears on Google’s search results.  If you’ve been looking  for a program that captures how your customers are interacting with your posts and website, read on.

Google Analytics is an extremely helpful tool when it comes to tracking your marketing efforts. As Google Partners, Onimod Global can assist you with the training, support and resources to help your business succeed and help your company grow and stand out in the industry. Whether its content for social media, or launching your new email campaign, Google analytics can maximize your marketing efforts.

Web Analytics

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, and analysis of web data. Web analytics tools provide useful information about website traffic. This feature is incredibly handy because it shows you how a user interacts with the site, and what content they engage with the most.  If you didn’t need more convincing as to why you should be utilizing Google analytics, we came up with a list of the three most important reasons why you should use analytics:

  1. Helps you take data-led decisions – You can see first-hand the way your website and social channels are performing.
  2. Makes Reporting Easier – Having the data readily available to you is a big plus. You can easily share with others how your campaigns are performing.  You can do this by measuring and acting on the data trends you observe using web analytics software.
  3. Helps you find the story behind the data – Web analytics helps you understand who your customers are, where they’re coming from, and what their interests are. You can use all this information to improve the experience on your site for the consumer and to optimize the channels that consumers use to visit your website.

Google Analytics Tools

There are many analytics tools on the market. While some of them are free, most of them require a paid subscription. Paid analytics products and free products vary greatly in terms of functionality, features, and support. Google Analytics is the most popular analytics program on the market. It also comes with a free version for those who want to test out the product before they pay for the subscription.

The paid version is known as Google Analytics 360. Google 360 offers additional functionality in terms of report validity and sample sizes. This is mainly for websites that receive millions of page views a month. If your website isn’t receiving that much traffic, it might be beneficial to use the free version of Google Analytics.

Google Analytics can track the user or consumer journey, providing rich data around channels used, locations, and devices. These journeys can then be tracked through to on-site activity, goals achieved, and exit point, as well as returning visitors, which indicates loyalty. Here’s a look at some of the benefits of Google Analytics:

  • Easy to install and use.
  • User-friendly interface.
  • Customizable reports, dashboards and data collection.
  • Seamless integration with other Google products.
  • Extensive and valuable insights into web behavior.

One of the biggest advantages of using google is that you can seamlessly connect other google products. The main tools available to link to are Google Ads, Google Search Console, and Search Ads 360, formerly known as DoubleClick by Google. To link these additional tools, you need to access the product linking section within the Property settings. Each of the available tools for linking are listed there and you simply follow the instructions to link the tools.

Taking Your Analytics to the Next Level

The expert digital marketers at Onimod Global develop custom dynamic digital dashboards with Google Studio for all of our clients. The large selection of graphs and charts gives us the opportunity to completely customize your reports making data the most transparent and easy to interpret for you and your company.

If you are thinking about adding an analytics tool to your marketing strategy, Google Analytics should be at the top of your list to try. As Google Partners, Onimod Global has over a decade of experience and expertise when it comes to all things SEO, social media advertising, content marketing and paid search. Got questions about Google strategies or want to learn more about us? Contact us here today.

How To Effectively Use Hashtags on Social Media

Promoting your brand on Social Media is paramount nowadays. And hashtags are an extremely effective tool when used correctly. Let’s delve a little deeper into the world of the previous pound sign (#) and how it can captivate audiences in 2022.

Hashtags can be one of the best way to make your content available in other realms of the social media world. The history of hashtags and their origin stem from Twitter and slowly began to grow across the board on other social media outlets.

Here’s a look at how to properly use hashtags to help people find your topics and expand your audience.

What are Hashtags?

By definition a hashtag is a keyword phrase or word preceded by a hash symbol (#). It’s used all over social media nowadays within the body of a post. The purpose of the hashtag is to bring attention to your posts in order to create interaction with new potential followers. When using a phrase as a hashtag, you spell it without spaces i.g. #onimodglobal.

Hashtags can include numbers but it cannot use symbols or punctuations. Beginning middle, or end you can place a hashtag in the body of your social media post or within the comment section. When you utilize this strategy it can help people who don’t follow you to find your content.

Why are Hashtags Important?

Hashtags are important for the sole purpose of your content being found by the right people. By using hashtags that are relevant to your business or the services you provide it can help drive your content to the right people. When this happens, you will have traffic to your content that will in turn boost your views, likes, and shares.

However, using them only makes a difference in your social media strategy when it’s done the right way. Here are some hashtag tips:

  1. Don’t get carried away with hashtags – The number of hashtags you can use depends on which platform you are using. Twitter would be a great example where one to three hashtags will have more of an impact opposed to using lot of them.
  2. Keep hashtags short and memorable – It’s in best hashtag practice that you don’t use a lot of words within a tag. A great example of this would be hashtag activism campaigns. The summer of 2020 was huge for the #BlackLivesMatter movement in America, and is still widely used within social media today.
  3. Don’t choose hashtags that are too obscure – If you choose a tag that no one is going to search for, it won’t benefit your marketing efforts.

Create your Own Hashtag Strategy

Anyone can create their own hashtag strategy. While there are many ways you can go about this, the best way is to choose specific hashtags whenever possible. The more specific you can get, the more likely you are to attract a targeted audience. Another strategy is using capital letters at the front of each word. This clarifies what you are trying to communicate.

Your competition is more than likely already using hashtags within their social media strategy. How successful are they at engaging your mutual audience? Pay attention to how much or how little they use hashtags and what the response is.

A successful hashtag strategy starts with knowing your audience and taking the time to become familiar with what works on each platform. With that knowledge in hand, you will continue to learn what works and what doesn’t, by using hashtags as part of your social media strategy and analyzing your results.

Overall, hashtags are a great tool for communicating with your followers as well as increasing engagement and attracting new customers.

Last Thoughts

Whether you’re new to social media or have been around it for a while, you can greatly benefit from learning a trick or two about hashtags. From Facebook to Instagram and Twitter, you will understand how to drive engagement and extend reach.

More From Onimod Global

Onimod Global releases the latest digital marketing news and essential marketing tips every Tuesday and Thursday! To catch up on the top digital marketing news and trends, click here. If you’re looking for assistance with your content marketing or any other areas of digital marketing, contact us today!

How To Increase Your Online Visibility Through Social Media

Social media plays a vital role in today’s society. It can help you generate buzz around your products and your brand by having users share your content. But social networks are incredibly busy and filled with stimuli. With so much going on, how do you make sure that users will find your content throughout all this mess? Read on to find out more…

Social media is a great resource when it comes to increasing your online visibility. There are so many ways that an organization’s pages can be optimized in order to do so.

We’ll take a look at how you can bring a couple of strategies together to generate more searches for your business—and from this, achieve a greater online presence.

Does Social Media Posting Help With Online Visibility?

While social media cannot directly impact your rankings, you can create a more holistic approach to online marketing. However, social media activity can raise your company’s profile and increase the clicks on their website. What are you aiming to achieve by linking social media activity with online visibility? Here’s a couple things you can do to get started:

  • Getting clicks on your organization’s website
  • Having an increase in online searches for the company
  • Social shares for a wider post reach and increased audience
  • Sharing information to help analyze social engagement

All of the things above have one thing in common and that is that they all increase the possibilities for lead opportunities. The way you can achieve lead opportunities above is by having and creating quality content. Often times quality content gets overlooked, its truly one of the best ways you can leverage and boost your online presence.

Which Social Media Platforms Are the Best for SEO?

Which platforms do you currently use? Most social media platforms can help with online visibility. A lot of people have that mindset, but you should honestly be thinking about  using the platforms that will help you reach your target audience. Each social media platform works slightly differently when it comes to encouraging clicks and shares.

It goes without saying most brands have a Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Google My Business accounts. But many businesses also utilize Youtube, Tiktok and Pinterest. But which performs best? Facebook continues to be powerful all over the world. With more than 1.71 billion monthly users, the social media platform is ripe for SEO. Be attentive with your company page and find and nourish your best promoters on the platform. Facebook is a great lead generator, so always stay on brand and use targeted keywords in your posts. Make sure to cross-post videos you produce and publish on your YouTube account as well.

Although Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, they perform differently for different organizations’ offerings.

Also, any social platform a company uses has to be “on brand” for them, otherwise it will defeat the purpose of boosting your SEO. At the end of the day, a great website should have all the key elements of an effective inbound marketing strategy:

  • An active blog.
  • Responsive design.
  • Intuitive navigation.
  • Effective conversion strategy with calls to action.

What Are the Best Ways to Optimize Social Media for Better Online Visibility?

How can you make the most of your brand’s social media platforms? Here are a couple of techniques that you can use to improve your websites online visibility. 

LinkedIn & Facebook

Most people breeze by “SEO-ing” their About us/Summary section. It’s one of the easiest ways to put the information you want out there for leads to easily access. Filling out as much as you can in the About section is a great start.

  • The “About” summary section gives you the capacity to use 2,600 characters (on LinkedIn, Facebook gives you 50,000!) to explain what you do. Use keywords that your clients are using to find your products and services.
  • Use keywords that describe your products and services in your headline.
  • The “Experience” section also gives you 2,000 characters to show case your expertise. Make sure you include a few paragraphs that talk about what your company provides from a product/services perspective.

How do You know if your Social Media Strategy is Improving SEO?

All social media platforms have some sort of analytics feature that you can use to measure the attention your socials are getting. You can also look into social media engagement tools, which you can download and use to generate tables and graphs. You can compare the social media and website stats to see the effect the former has on the latter. Lastly, you can see the organic changes in your Google Analytics account.

Last Thoughts

Social media is a crucial part of your marketing strategy. It can help you generate buzz around your products and your brand by having users share your content.

As trusted Google experts, our team is here to help with holistic digital marketing strategies including optimizing your Google Business Profile listing and ensuring you have the highest rank possible. Whether you’re looking for SEO tips, social media marketing ideas, or paid media strategies, our goal is to make your business more successful. Get a free audit and see how you can improve your digital presence with us here.