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  • Head in the Clouds… what is all this about cloud computing?

    Cloud ComputingIt’s everywhere. Literally.

    For some, they have found the cloud to be a less than perfect place with recent stories about celebrities and their Clouds being hacked, with private photographs making their way on to certain websites and sharing platforms. Not a pleasant thought and one which raises security concerns for not just celebrities, but for all of us – companies, local online businesses and ourselves, as individuals.

    But what is all this cloud thing, anyway? How do you when you are in the cloud? Is it technical or complicated? And so, with the terms cloud/cloud computing bandied about everywhere we take a look at what all the fuss is about…

    What IS cloud computing?

    It really is quite simple – instead of accessing and storing data and programs on your computer (that is, its hard drive), you use the Internet. In other words, the cloud is the internet and everything you want to use or store can be found there; you connect to it when you need something and it gives out what you ask for.

    Local storage is…

    … the term used to describe the process of saving/storing and accessing programmes or information on your hard drive. Everything you need is physically close and access to it is simple and easy. In fact, this is how many of use traditionally started to use to computers and are probably still doing so.

    But, storing things through cloud computing means that no matter where you are, you can access the information or data stored there. It all sounds a bit magic and, unless you have an innate sense of the huge processing capabilities of the web, it probably is just too complicated and big to understand.

    What it does off is the ability to be truly mobile when it comes to accessing information you need. Remember the day when you were at a meeting and realised you had forgotten your USB pen and you needed the information ASAP? You needed someone to email you a copy and then you needed to access your email…

    You can save yourself all this stress and hassle by signing up to the many different apps, drives and programmes that allow you to log in, securely, no matter where you are. Some of these magic apps and drives – such as Google Drive – allow you to share this information with selected people, such as colleagues, friends, family etc., too hence the need to send emails with humongous attachments could also be a thing of the past.

    As long as you have an internet or data connection on your smart phone etc., you can get to your stuff.

    Business and individual users

    Large corporations have a different type of ‘cloud’ to access to the one talked about here – cloud computing as described is the type that individuals and small, possibly medium seized entities will access. Huge companies have something slightly different but functions along similar lines called ‘software-as-a-service’ or SaaS.

    There are many other examples and some business have taken the leap, with all their computing needs now being in cloud services, rather than having a room full of servers, expensive software that needs updating and a department full of IT specialists…

    Some cloud examples

    On one hand, we have simplified the notion of local computing and cloud computing in to two distinct separate entities, but just when you think you have a handle on it, along comes another example that blurs this distinction.

    For example, with the Microsoft Office 365 programme, this is ‘loaded’ on to your machine and is therefore a local computing example BUT, as part of that package, it also utilises the Microsoft Skydrive which is a cloud-based programme.

    However, here are two common cloud examples and we intend looking at various other cloud-based applications in future posts as well as …

    • Google Drive – we have already mentioned this and is one that people are finding increasingly useful. You can use this on your laptop, PC, tablet, iPad smart phone along with many other devices. There are many other examples from Google including the Calendar, Reader, Voice etc.
    • Apple iCloud – this has been at the centre of the very recent controversy around celebrity accounts being hacked and items, such as photos, removed and used elsewhere on the web. It can store media files, and also as a way to synchronise mail, contacts, calendars and other applications etc.

    Common applications that are cloud-based that many people use are DropBox, Open Drive, SafeSync etc. But there are also many useful applications that businesses use, such as accountancy cloud packages, as well as managing projects and time – and it is these applications and platforms that we will look at in future posts!

    The pros of cloud computing (this vary from business to business, and person to person… always pays to do your research as to what you could  get out of each cloud service for you)

    • Cost reduction – it may be possible to lower costs through opting for cloud services simply as it minimises the investment needed in both hardware, software and, in some cases, high-tech IT people; you will need far less resources to manage it.
    • Use what you pay for – just like your energy bills, as a business you pay for the space you use, in some instances; if you need more, you buy more.
    • Levels the IT playing field – whereas at one time, only the big hugely profitable business could afford to invest in sophisticated technology, cloud computing has made it more accessible to the smaller businesses and sole trader.
    • Collaborate and communicate – there is no doubt that the greatest advantage is that businesses can collaborate and communicate so much easier across vast distance, global in fact!

    But there may be some cons too…

    • Availability – if the cloud service ‘goes down’, when will you able to access important information? Clearly, there needs to be a backup plan.
    • Ownership – there seems to be some issues in some cases about who owns the data and what happens to it if you close the account etc. Again, this needs to be a well thought out consideration.
    • Security – again, there have been questions raised recently that seem to point that nothing is safe on the web from being hacked but maybe, by following advice it is possible to make it harder for people to steal your data. However, industry experts have suggested that providers of cloud based applications need to ‘up their game’ in terms of security.

    Is cloud computing for you?

    It can offer many different things to different people but like all business ‘purchases’, do you research and get the right package and you too, could soon be walking with your head in the clouds!

  • Avoid Google’s Wrath…

    Thankfully, not all relationships in life are as fickle but as we near the end of the first full week since Google Authorship disappeared (see previous post ‘Storm in a tea cup?’) what the announcement will have done is create speculation and double-guessing of what Google could have in store for the future of search engine optimisation.

    Which got us thinking here at Locally about SEO, websites and when things go sour between your website and Google.

    It’s an odd relationship

    One sided, in many aspects – you spend money, time and nervous energy creating a website that customers will love and buy your services and products – it feels like you do all the hard work. You constantly covet the favour of Google as, after all, if they like you, your website could be catapulted to the stars…

    But, some people, in their desperate attempts to climb their way up this ladder, take a wrong turn; Google punishes them and down they fall. Even worse, once you have fallen out of favour with Google, it is incredibly hard to get back in (…although, for those of us with a slightly skewed vision of the online world, it seemed that some huge corporations have managed to buy favour back…)

    And so, here is Locally’s guide to avoiding being told off/punished/scolded/call it what you will by one of the most powerful search engines in the world today…

    • Plagiarism

    Just like you were flung outside of the head’s office at school for copying someone else’s work, the same is true for the content on your website. Using duplicate information from somewhere else on the web completely goes against the underlying principles of the Internet, as far as Google is concerned – users don’t like it, it’s useless and it is a hindrance to originality.

    Locally’s Top Tip: Don’t do it!

    • A web address that doesn’t fit

    This means that a company, business or person needs to select a Uniform Resource Locator (URL or web address) that best suits their business. Google will give you credit for this when it searches for results zillions-of-times-per-second across the globe. The more apt your URL, the healthier Google will rank it.

    Locally’s Top Tip: do you research not just about your name, but all the component parts of a URL

    Things that don’t work

    Included under this title are links that do not work; we’ve all clicked on what looks like a great resource only to be met with the ‘error 404’ code. These dead links, and other broken bits, do create a disadvantage for your website but on a scale of 1 to 10 – 10 being the worst thing ever – it is fairly low down the scale.

    Locally’s Top Tip: keep your website fresh and maintained.

    Absence of Key Technical ‘bits’

    Sitemaps and Robot.txt files are just two of the ‘technical bits’ that many people do not understand but they are essential for when Google crawls your website looking for it needs in order to know what you are and who would be interested in your site. Having a greater knowledge of SEO can help…

    Locally’s Top Tip: ask us how we do all the background techy bits…

    Keyword phrases – using them TOO much!

    We all know the importance of key words, phrases and the like but it is possible to over use them! This sends a rather wonky signal to Google who sees it as you stuffing your text with keywords, which means it probably makes very little sense. Your content (and your writing) needs to be genuine and disciplined.

    Locally’s Top Tip: in a 500 word blog, post or article, your keyword should appear no more than 5 times (and even that is pushing it in such a small space! 4 times works better…)

    Bizarre H1 header tags!

    This is usually the title of a post but what can happen is that they are used across the website/post/article and it all becomes a little bizarre, with whopping titles leaping off the page. Try to keep your desperation under wraps and use them sparingly, with the biggest profit.

    Locally’s Top Tip – identify when a H1 tag really needs to be used…

    S-L-O-W response times

    Just like we moan about waiting for the shop assistant to get off the phone etc. the same is true when it comes to surfing the web. Naturally impatient, any website that takes longer than a nano-second to load is an instant turn-off. Google feels the same; it shares the pain of the user and so dumps you down the rankings. Sorry.

    Locally’s Top Tip – get expert help on why your website is taking so long to load…

    Trying to hide things

    When text is hyperlinked, it appears a different colour from the surrounding text. The user can choose to click on it or not (we do it in our blog posts – it means we’ve come across something that offers more info on what we are blogging about, and think you may be interested in it too). Quality and appropriate links are great BUT, what some have done is change these links to match the colour of the surrounding text (the user doesn’t know they are there) but Google does and it sees this as over-stuffing and not playing fair.

    Locally’s Top Tip – don’t do it! Keep you link visible, useful and relevant.

    Cloaking

    This is a really poor exercise that upsets users and that is when they are deceived by keywords that when clicked, takes them to a website that has nothing to do with the content of the original website, business etc. It is frustrating, can be embarrassing depending on what the link is to and Google hates it.

    Locally’s Top Tip – nope, don’t do it.

    Spamming links!

    This again is a source of huge frustration to users hence, Google comes down on it like a ton of bricks and this is using links on your web pages that have absolutely nothing to do with your website. Google take this very seriously and, in all honesty, is very hard to come back from.

    Locally’s Top Tip – this is a definite no-no.

    And so, we see that if our websites follow certain rules, feel and look ‘genuine’ then its climb up the rankings may be slow, but it will be a quality step each time, rather than precariously teetering on every rung.

  • Storm in a tea cup or something you need to take note of?

    Web Design GoogleThe “Google Authorship is Over!” headline and what it means for your website

    Here at Locally, we like to keep all our online, local businesses up to date with the goings on of search engines and how they will, or will not, select your website for in their rankings. And one announcement that seems to have thrown the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons – in other words, it caught the tech world off-guard – is Google’s announcement that Google Authorship is over.

    Whilst those ‘in the know’ all sucked in their breath, tweeting and emailing their surprise to one another, us lesser mortals have been wondering if this has any implication for us, for our constant, yet brave struggle to outrank the big bodies when it comes to search engine ranking and whether we need to really do anything…

    Scratching our heads, we take to the Internet and research the whole thing, only to end up more confused. Some may say that is has no implications but others may be more cautious… in this post, we attempt to explain the whole episode and what, if anything, it means for your online business.

    Let’s start at the beginning: what is Google Authorship exactly?

    Acronym alert! SERPs means search engine results pages: the further up the SERPs you are, the increase in website traffic you should get (as you are more visible)

    You will have noticed across a whole range of websites the G+ button, the Google plus account that some people and businesses have. If you have a G+ account, you will have a profile and circles of people, from family to friends and circles for acquaintances/colleagues/business associates… in fact, you can create your own circles as you wish.

    When you find something you want to share, you can share it on this platform and send it around everyone, or a selected few; in other words, G+ is a sharing platform.

    As part of this platform, you could also tell Google you were an authoritative writer, blogger or sharer of information… in other words, you ‘owned’ an ‘authorship’ (however, as we will see, this was not quite all that it was cracked up to be…)

    Hence, whenever you search on Google for ‘search engine optimisation’, at one time the top few results in SERPs would be authors you would eventually become familiar with as they are seen as an authority on the subject. What would spring up is their photo and some of the blogs they had written on the issue.

    Now, clearly, it is Google’s ‘baby’ and so some of us opted for a G+ account; you can customise your profile, add a delightful thumbnail photo that shows your best side (but there were rules on this – the photo had to be good quality, not a cartoon or any other kind of graphic; this was all about authority, don’t forget).

    And it is these photos and additional information that has, it seems, been creeping up the ranking in previous years. But many of us were simply unaware that there were additional steps to getting the very best out of this account; this has all changed now…

    … BUT, it only worked if the person verified their accounts (told Google they owned it) and only 12% of people using G+ are thought to have done this. On researching the topic of Google Authorship, we looked into how authors verified ownership of their G+ accounts and it seems it was not easy…

    In a nutshell, Google authorship was a nod to the reliable, trustworthy information, blog etc. that searchers would find useful.

    And…?

    Well, Google has stopped placing weight behind these authorship accounts and have effectively removed them as signal to its algorithm. The effects seem to have been immediate, whereas you would have seen results with photos or graphics, you will now not see these.

    BUT, it seems that companies/business/people with G+ accounts are still figuring in these rankings. Which seems a bit odd but look on it as a minor tweak which could affect some people, but for others it may not make too much of a difference.

    Why is Google getting rid of ‘authorship’?

    Well it seems, according to Google that it was not giving its users what they wanted; it was distracting; and they’ve done their research too. By not having the results high in SERPs (some people say that authorship was removed in October 2013…), it did not reduce traffic to sites nor reduce the number of clicks on ads.

    In other words, no one really noticed. Google have since said it was an ‘experiment’ that last three years and they have been tweaking it along the way.

    As a result, Google have released results from 3 years of data collection that show it was not working how they envisaged it would because…

    • Those that did set up Authorship did not do so properly – in other words, profiles were completed
    • Users did not find any value in it

    Right, what do you need to do?

    Well, it seems that this announcement has caught people off guard and wondering if it is all a ploy by Google to get people on to G+ as they are using these results in SERPs; some people see it as an aggressive tactic to get people to use G+ as most people doubly-serious about their rankings will do anything to get the edge.

    What not to do – panic!

    This is not a massive change to search engine optimisation for some people but, it may be worth looking at Google+ as another platform to add to your website as a means of being able to share your content, offers, business, ideas etc., especially if you do not have an account yet. SEO experts are currently leaning towards this idea simply because one thing that has been noted is that blog posts by G+ authors are coming out near the top of the rankings.

    If you have a G+ profile, you may need to make sure you are using it but, Google are currently telling us that the results are not much different when it comes to SERPs it is always worth keeping an eye on any changes that this search engine creates – after all, it is used billions of times every day across the globe.

    The basics have not changed: quality content, regularly updated on your website and plenty of social signals via your chosen social media platforms – it is still a marathon, not a sprint.

    Coming up next: top tips on how to not be punished by Google and then we are off to the Cloud…

  • SEO, spidering, page rank and tags – know what they are all about?!

    What is Search Engine Optimisation?Search engine optimisation (SEO) – a basic guide for all local, online businesses

    Yup, you have all heard those words and we have all sagely nodded, pretending we know exactly what is being talked about; we’ve sucked in breath at what seems like an opportune time in the conversation and rolled our eyes to register our disapproval at something we think we should do… when really, as a local plumbing or luxury spa resort, we haven’t the foggiest what is being debated.

    The stock answer tends to be ‘our web design people do it’ and, with a flick of the hand, we have washed all SEO responsibility from ourselves. We assume the web design people are doing it; they could be but, it does pay to know what it is you may have agreed to (as some of it may cost you money!).

    SEO – what is it?

    SEO stands for search engine optimisation and it is the process by which a search engine – such as Google, Yahoo etc. – push your website to the top of the pages that a searcher will see when they are looking for something. Get it right, and your website will be at the top (or near it) on the results page and that is a really fabulous place to be.

    There are lots and lots of articles on what SEO is, attempting to shed off the veil of uncertainty and mythical powers such as in this article https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2014/jan/16/what-is-seo-how-website-google-visibility

    The search engine – a creature with mythical powers

    Unseen, yet powerful, the search engine has an immense power in the background that spends all day and all night, wondering around the Internet, all-seeing and all-knowing. And these are some of the things they do:

    • Spidering – not the hairy-knee’d tarantula type but more a description of the research phase of a search engine’s cycle. It takes a quick look at all or some of the pages on your website and then it will group it along with other, similar websites. So, if you are a beauty therapist, your website will be placed with all the other beauty therapy websites.
    • Page rank – this is when Google or another search engine after indexing your website, will assign a certain level of importance to it. The more reputable and authoritative the search engine believes your website is, the higher the page rank.
    • Search results – this is the list of websites that pop up when a user has typed on a phrase or words they want to search. The users types in ‘gardeners London’ and it will throw a whole load of websites into a prioritised list that it thinks best matches the search that user is making. These are the natural search results, as opposed to the sponsored adverts.

    Many companies and local, online businesses want to improve their performance on these search engine rankings, not surprising when you consider how searchers use the listings; how far past page 2 do you look?!

    How to improve your ranking

    1. Key words and phrases

    These are the words that point the search engine to you website, telling it in one word or short phrase what your company is about. The start of this process is quite simple – simply match the words that are obvious such as an accountancy firm would use ‘tax’, ‘book-keeping’. ‘Self-assessment returns’, ‘small business’, ‘VAT’ etc.

    But, the second step in this first process is to delve a little deeper in to how customers would search for a company offering a product or service like yours. There is a technical trick to finding what their keywords are so you can match theirs… (right click on a text area, this will open a new window of code; at the top of this box you may see their hidden keywords).

    2. Use these keywords on your website

    This is where the ‘marathon not a sprint’ bit comes in to play and why so many online business invest in professionally written articles and posts. You can, of course, write blogs etc. yourself; if a key phrase is ‘website designer Gloucester’, then you can create a blog that has these key word phrase peppered through it (Note the word ‘peppered’, not over stuffed!).

    Companies tend to be a little over-zealous about the number of different keywords and phrases in an article. One blog is not going to cut it – you are looking at creating a series of blogs and posts that have these keywords in them… the marathon, not a sprint bit!

    3. Links

    There are many articles on the use of links on websites but stay away from the whole buying links as this sends the wrong message to the search engines, especially Google and once you have a black mark against you, it can be difficult to claw your way back.

    So, in your articles and posts you add some links to other authoritative websites (like we do in our posts). They need to be appropriate and fit with the content and have an obvious reason why they are there. Like keywords and phrases, just stuffing them in is not the right way to go about optimising your website for the search engines.

    4. Measure

    Many websites, serves and hosting companies have the ability to measure the number of visitors to your website and you should start to see an increase as soon as you start to make these changes. Some people say that when you posts your articles and blogs is important; potential customers tend to be browsing in an evening and over the weekend, so having your articles online before these times is a great way of tapping into a ‘market’ (Monday morning, some experts say is the time people are least likely to be surfing the web, with later on in the week is the ‘best’ time).

    But, this is an never-ending task… once you have completed this cycle, you need to start again!

    And this is why https://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/01/11/5-big-reasons-to-monitor-your-website/

    SEO is the process of getting your website as close to the top of the results page as possible. There are many other technical aspects to getting your website noticed all of which can be helped along with some expert input, such as meta tags and more.

    Is your website search engine optimised? If not, what help do you need?

  • It’s a tragedy! How rubbish content is costing you money

    Content is king Website content is a dodgy subject – what one person likes, another will detest. But there is a bigger tragedy acting out centre stage when it comes to your website content and that is the stuff that is b-a-d.

    There is one huge problem with bad content – it is losing you money.

    The Psychology of the Shopper

    Like a title from an educational series, we need to look at the psychology of the shopper but, before you navigate away and find an entertainment website to catch up on celebrity gossip, just stick here for a while… there is a whole load of stuff written about how and why shoppers make the decisions that they do.

    For example, slightly Americanised but this is a great infographic that shows how shoppers make their judgements and decisions based on offers and information they are given https://www.mycustomer.com/news/psychology-e-commerce-shopper

    But we are not going to delve too deep in this article but suffice to say, as shoppers, our decisions are based on emotions.

    And, buying online is no different than buying in a shop, supermarket etc. Opting to borrow money to buy a new, reliable family car is an emotional decision; looking to get the best deal on flights for your holiday is an emotional decision; deciding not to trust a website because it is littered with spelling mistakes and looks ‘cheap n’ tacky’ is an emotional decision.

    Content must fit your company or business; if you are a hip and trendy local cleaning company, your colours and tone of content should reflect this. If you are a local accountancy firm specialising in tax affairs of the rich and famous, then your content needs to reflect this.

    Shoddy content with bouncing 1980s clipart graphics is a sure fire of not only pointing potential customer to the exit, but opening the door for them as well. It is losing you money.

    If you haven’t reviewed your content in a while, do it now. If you website is not generating leads, take a look at your content and do it now. Why not engage the services of a mystery online shopper and see what they think of the whole buying experience?

    Content travesty is causing financial loss for you and your business.

    How to add much-needed sparkle and authority…

    Hint no. 1: what you do and what you sell

    A local butcher on the high street, with an online e-commerce website. Which do you prefer from the examples below?

    We make a range of sausages and home-made burgers, freezer ready and with offers on various packages all of the time, you are sure to find a bargain!

    Not bad… but try this:

    With a growing range of sausages and burger, all made from the finest local ingredients, you can be sure of great products at great prices;

    • Freezer ready packs – just choose the pack that suits you, pick up and freeze
    • OR, we can deliver at a time that suits YOU
    • Place a regular monthly order and receive 10% off
    • Join our ‘savings club’ for those extra special entertaining events
    • Organic produce and GSM-free too!

    There’s a bit more pizzazz to the second one, displaying a passion for local ingredients that come from responsibly farmed sources. And they are highlighting that shopping with them is just as convenient as shopping at a local major supermarket. As a landing page, this is not too bad.

    The moral of this hint: tell the consumer HOW you are different from competitors, without being negative. Remember the unique selling point (USP) that businesses need to create?

    Hint no. 2: who you are and not just what you are about

    Many companies have websites with an ‘about us’ page and I’m the first to admit, I enjoy a good snoop so always take some time to have a gander at this info. Depending on the value of the purchase in terms of both emotions and price, expectations vary.

    A local butcher, similar to the one in the above example, may want to tell people that…

    • They are a family run firm and when they were established
    • They hold a variety of qualifications and experience
    • they have supplied meat and products for some fairly hefty clients and events (adding a bit of kudos…)
    • Awards they have won for certain products
    • Local farms or suppliers they use

    A little bit of history is no bad thing but if a consumer is investing in a larger product, such as needing independent financial advice, they may want to know a little more about qualifications, award and experience and why they are the firm to trust, rather than the last place the receptionist went on holiday (OK, we are being a bit flippant here but we have all read those ‘about us’ pages that map out a person’s life from the cradle to retirement, and all the bits in between).

    The moral of this hint is thus – why customers should choose you, over and above everybody else. Appeal to the emotional aspect of the decision. We all like to know that a firm can be trusted…

    Hint no 3: And finally, saving the best till last, is your content boring or thought-provoking?

    But, when we say thought-provoking, we do not mean stoking the fires of controversy unless you are prepared to field the negativity that will come your way. It may get you noticed, but is this the right impression you really want to create?

    Grab attention with great headlines (this is a great piece about headlines and social media but the lesson is there for website content too – great headlines work! https://blog.bufferapp.com/shareable-content-social-media-research)

    The content of your website should provoke your reader (that is, potential customer) think about what it is they need, and how you can solve this need ‘issue’.

    You want to feed your kids happy, healthy meat, without nasty bits and cereal ‘padding’ – shopping at your local butcher is the answer AND, you are supporting the local economy too; double whammy and the job is done. And, you don’t want to scrabble to the supermarket and buy your meat in vacuumed, plastic packaging – your local butcher can deliver it!

    The moral of this hint – the content has identified the issues, layered it on to the consumer’s life and then presented the solutions. Fabulous!

    Is your website content a tragedy?

    If it is, you need to spend some time and energy creating better content that attracts visitors, maintains their attention and either generates leads or sales for you BUT, in your quest to tidy up your content and create super-duper info, please do not fall into another tragic trap – sell, sell, sell! That is off-putting too.

    How does your content make your customer or reader ‘think’?

  • We need to talk…

    Contact UsHaving a presence on social media is all well and good, but just sitting there, like a wilting wallflower at a rave is no way to go about attracting customers to your local, online business.

    Cast off the the paralysis of doubt and the cloak of inexperience, and dance your way to the centre of the dance floor – because if you are on social media (and let’s face, who isn’t and who cannot afford to be…?), we need to talk.

    You may have read in previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2) concerning your online and offline marketing activities, that being on social media is a little bit of a must for local businesses; with exciting opportunities around the corner with Twitter and CardSpring, soon enough the social media platform will be following suit.

    This presents one danger – that companies will just use social media to sell, sell, sell. Consumers are a little savvier than this, finding such gratuitous marketing not only off-putting but frankly, shallow.

    And so, companies and businesses, including you, are told/advised to use social media as a platform for conversations.

    We need to talk about this because, in a recent survey by Socialbakers, on a small proportion of customers have done this (13%) but – and this is the bit we need really talk about – is that only 67% of this very small group respond… eventually.

    Your physical business

    OK, you sell flowers. You sell them in a high street shop and online with a fabulous website. You invite comments and questions about creating the ‘perfect wedding flower posy for your big day’. You have 4 brides asking questions about everything from ‘hand ties’ to the flowers that will be available for a January wedding… and you don’t bother answering.

    If they were in your shop, and you didn’t answer their questions – this is, by the way ignoring them! – what would happen? Yup, they would leave, probably in a huff and make their way to the next nearest competitor who may just have a conversation with them, both in the shop and online too.

    Stop!

    Why would you treat a question from a customer or fan of your product any different online, as you would offline?

    The idea of being on social media is to connect with customers; and to connect you need to interact, hence this means having a conversation.

    A really good example…

    On my personal Facebook page I have a liked a page to do with garden sheds as next spring, I will have my own writing shed in the garden. It will restore my life/work balance and I will have to walk to work (67 steps. I’ve counted) hence, I will have twice daily exercise – there and back.

    The company regularly posts photos of garden sheds, potting shed, work rooms, summer rooms etc. that they have completed that week or fortnight so people can see their work. I like every picture out of jealousy but this is what I really like – people posts comments and questions and the company respond every time, to each individual comment or question. Sometimes a straightforward thank you to a positive comment, or they respond with prices etc. to questions but without the BIG sell, sell, sell!

    I like them. I will buy a writing shed from them. Because I know that if I ask a question, they will answer. They are interested. They are interested in my writing shed and they will build it with the same care and passion with which I will use it.

    Lessons to be learned in the art of online conversation

    1. Respond!
    2. Respond in a timely fashion – I think this local shed company has the right idea; they post every fortnight or so with a series of photos and a short status. People respond and they comment immediately. None of this waiting 24 hours (another thing this survey found was the speed to which people responded was also s-l-o-w)
    3. Post at times you know you can be online and active – so shoving a few photos on Twitter, asking a question or input from people as you are about to serve Sunday lunch to 12 people or enter a board room meeting for the next 4 hours are two examples of when it is NOT the right time to post…
    4. Monitor what’s happening on some social media platforms; get up to date statistics and data from https://www.socialbakers.com/twitter/country/united-kingdom/

    Did you know…?

    53% of customers expect to hear back from a company or business within an hour – see how important it is to pick your time?

    Of these respondents, 38% also said that they formed a negative opinion of companies that did not respond in an hour, with 42% (of which I am one) saying that this quick, swift and friendly interaction created a favourable opinion… however, the study stops here; there are no figures about how many people then went on to buy from this company, although a guesstimate would be that the figure would be high (think ‘Me and My Writing Shed-To-Be’ scenario).

    Companies and businesses from local to global say that they plan on doing more of this social media interaction lark – 80% of American businesses said they planned on doing it in 2013 but it never quite materialised…

    Content is great. Selling is great BUT, interaction with customers is also just as great. But do it properly. Apply the same rules of general niceness online as you would in a face-to-face situation as stop ignoring your customers!