There are plenty of strategies to get more likes on your facebook page.  Quickest and easiest is to buy your fans.   But not everyone has the budget or the desire to buy ‘likes’. 

You’ll keep your likers by posting interesting, quality content.  But how do you find them in the first place?  If you take a look at my ‘likes’ you’ll see there’s not many there.  I’ll be spending time implementing all of the recommendations in the post below, and with a bit of luck you’ll see the page ‘likers’ grow accordingly!

So I’ll take you through them, step by step and you can follow along and watch how well each strategy performs.  

1.  First off, Ask!  Post a status update on your personal page telling your friends about your new page.  Ask your friends to like it.   I’d suggest only using this technique once though, because if you do it more often, you’ll just annoy your friends!
2.   Be specific with your page name i.e make it clear what your page/business is about.  Don’t just call it “Scaredycat Media”, call it “Scaredycat Social Media and SEO”.  Think about the keywords that you are targeting, and try to work them into your page title as well.  Another way to make your page stand out is to be controversial, or express very strong opinions, but this can be risky so think carefully! 
3. Offer exclusive content for those that like your page.  The more valuable the exclusive content is, the more people will ‘Like’ your page.  Make sure it is worth their while though, otherwise they will feel let down and probably unlike your page immediately.  Examples of things you could offer include an exclusive video, an ebook,  white paper, or a discount coupon.
4. Contact admins of groups related to your industry.  Offer some content for them to post on their page that will be of interest to their community.  Most Admins will be glad of the content if it’s worthwhile, and you can offer to promote their group when your page reaches a certain amount of likes.   When the admin posts, each member of the group will be emailed about your content, and hopefully some of them will ‘like’ your page as well.
5. Install a facebook ‘like’ box on your website.  It’s simple to do – facebook gives you the code and all you need to do is paste it into your website.  Once that’s done, visitors to your website can ‘like’ your page without leaving your site. 
6. Leverage traditional media.  Most people put their websites and email addresses on their business cards and flyers.  Put your facebook page address there as well!  Include it on all your advertising and marketing materials.  
7. Include your page in your online promotions.  If you send out an e-newsletter, tell people about your facebook page and ask them to like it.   Put your facebook page in your email signature as well.
8. Post photos and tag them.  If your business runs events, or tours, or workshops, take photos of your clients at these events and post it to your page.  Tag them in your photos and your photos will then appear in their newsfeeds for all their friends to see.  It’s an effective way to introduce your business to your clients friends.
9. Post on other pages in your industry using facebook as your page.  As admin of a page, you can ‘use facebook as page’.  So now when you comment on another page, the comment will be made by the name of your business page, rather than your personal page.  Everyone who reads those comments will be introduced to your business, and everyone who has commented on the post will get an email about your post.   Make your comments interesting and helpful, and you just might get some people liking your page too.
10. Create quality, engaging, targeted content.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  And it is, in theory.  In practise it can take hard work to create of find interesting content for your community.  Your goal is to get people to ‘like’ your post.  When they do, it will show up in their newsfeed and all of their friends will see it and be introduced to your page.  Even better, when they ‘share’ your link, it will be posted to their wall for all their friends to seeIf you’re a good writer, it shouldn’t be too hard to your to write a blog and then link back to it from your facebook page.  Just make sure your content is relevant to your audience.  It’s amazing how many people set up a page to do with their business, then clutter it up with personal posts or completely off topic posts.  Make sure it’s interesting to your audience, and you’re not just putting up ‘sales pitch’.Another way to add useful content to your page is to read other pages in your industry.  When they link to a good article, you can share it to you page for your uses.  The owner of the other page will be happy you shared it too, and they may even like your page.

Driving traffic to your website is the first step to getting sales.  Converting that traffic to sales is what really counts, however.  Google analytics can help you understand which users are coming to your site, how they are getting there, and what they do when they get there.  Essential information if you want your website to be successful!

Google analytics is simple to set up – it’s just a small piece of code at the bottom of each of your webpages, within the closing body tag.

Information from google analytics will help you track user behaviour, and find out what they are looking for.  You can then better serve your customers and convert your visitors into sales.

Traffic sources

The first thing I look at is the traffic sources.  Click on “Traffic Sources  - Overview”.  You get a nice little graphic giving you a summary of three traffic types – Search traffic, Referral traffic, and Direct Traffic.

Search traffic is traffic sent to you by Search engines.  You can see on my site most of my traffic is coming from search engines (79.70%).  I’ve been doing some basic optimisation, and its clearly working.  Search engines like my website. 

Referral traffic is traffic coming from a link from another website.  I’ve only done basic link building so this being much smaller makes sense (11.28%).  When I do more link building I can improve this number considerably. 

Direct traffic is when people type your URL directly into the browse.  At about 9% of my traffic, that’s probably mostly me!

 Just underneath this info, and to the right, you’ll also find a list of keywords.  It’ll show you the top ten, but I’ve just copies the top 4.  This shows you what keywords people are using to find your website.  If you’ve been optimising for these keywords, you know your efforts are working!

 Content – Entry and exit pages

 The next thing I look at is the most frequented entry and exit points on the website.  After logging in to your analytics account, go to Content – Site Content – Landing Pages.

Top landing pages is where people enter your website.  These are the pages that are working for you, attracting visitors, and enticing them to click.

The graphic shows that most of my visitors are coming in on the home page.  This is great, the home page is clearly well optimised.  I could generate more traffic though, by targeting some popular keywords and designing a landing page for them.  But that’s another post.

Top Exit Pages is where your visitors are leaving your site.  By analysing these pages you can see where things might be going wrong in your sales funnel.

You can see that my home page is also the top exit page.  That means about half my visitors are getting to the home page, and no further.  So either they are not finding what they are looking for immediately, and leaving.  Or the site doesn’t engender trust.  I have recently improved the visual design of the pilates dvds website, so I’ll be watching this to see if the new visual design converts better.

Conversion goals and funnels.

Go to “Conversions” and “Goals”

This is particularly important if you have an e-commerce site.  Your goal page would be your ‘thankyou for your order” page AFTER your customer has completed the checkout process.

The ‘Funnel’ pages are the stages in your check out process.  Each page is a separate stage of the funnel.  Tracking where you are losing visitors, or where they are abandoning the purchase process, will help you streamline the process, and improve the buying experience for your customer.

I always check that the tracking is working, but doing a test purchase, then log into google analytics the next day, and make sure it has been tracked correctly.  Every order on your site should get tracked through google analytics.

And that’s the basics!  There is so much more information at your fingertips with Google analytics, but this will get you started.  Once you start exploring, you will learn so much about your visitors, what they want from your website, and how you can meet these needs better.  Good luck!

So considering that I already made my first sale, I should probably check where my website is ranking.  How do I do that?  Well, I could type in lots of search terms into google, then manually go through, page by page, until I find my website.  This would be the most accurate way to do it.  It’s also incredibly tedious, so I use an online ranking checker. 

My favourite is a Firefox extension – SEO Rank Checker (you can download it here:  http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/ ) 

It’s accurate, quick and simple.  Essentially you type in your url and a list of keywords you are trying to rank for, and it will run away and check google, yahoo and bing and tell you where you are ranking.  You can also set it up to check Google Australia, which for me is obviously more useful, as most of my customers will be Australian.

So where is my pilates dvd site ranking?

Firstly, lets go back and see where it was ranking at the beginning of December.  These are the keywords I was targeting and this is the report I ran with Ranking Checker on December 3^rd, 2011.

 And today, 7^th Jan 2012 – just over a month later.

 So I’ve reached page 1 for “buy pilates dvd”, “buy pilates dvds” and “best pilates dvds”.  I’m on page 2 for “pilates dvd” and “pilates dvds”.  And Page 3 for “best pilates dvd”.

Not spectacular, but an incredible improvement in only a month with minimal link building work.  My website is much more visible than I realised, and I should have been checking!  Also, January is the time of the New Year’s Resolution, so I should have realised this was a good marketing opportunity.  Many many people resolve to get fitter, and use fitness DVDs to do it.  Another lesson learned.

The next thing I need to do is check Google Analytics, to see which pages/sources are bringing in the traffic.

I suspect I won’t get any more orders until I make the website look more professional and trustworthy tho.  And it’s time that I tested the order process thoroughly and made sure it all works as it should.  Those will be my next steps.

This post was going to be about my plan for 2012. I was going to lay out my goals, and how I was going to achieve them. My very first proper post. I was going to explain my wordpress online store, how I put it together, what plugins I’m using, what online marketing strategies I’m using. Actually that was my first few weeks of posts, while I waited for my online marketing and SEO techniques to start working. But now that’s all changed.

My post has been hijacked because last night I got my first order!

Yep, that’s way too soon. And I’ve been caught flat footed. So instead of me explaining how the website came into being, and telling you about lots of wordpress and SEO resources, this is now about being prepared.

You see I haven’t ordered my stock yet. Stupid? Yes!!! And seriously lacking in confidence! Online marketing is supposed to take longer to start working! Apparently I’m better at this that I realised…

So I am going into damage control. I have called my supplier and they are overnighting the DVD to me. It should arrive tomorrow, and I will ship it out the same day. No problem, really. Except for that my profit will be zero. I will be in the red about $5, actually. Because I didn’t plan properly. I should have gotten my stock ordered and here as soon as my shopping cart was online.

Before Christmas, the website was languishing down around the 8th page of Google search results. Traffic was almost nothing. Looking at google analytics I figured most of it was me. Probably all of it, infact. There was really no way anyone was going to hit the website.

So back then I cleaned up the website a little bit. Installed some SEO plugins, and added the products I was intending to sell. (This would be the point where I should have actually ordered my stock!) I started doing a bit of link building and then Christmas hit, and I let it sit there. I knew it would be my New Years Project.

Come January 2, I got back to work and started getting things in order. By January 4 I had my first order! So incredibly exciting, but also very embarrassing. I wasn’t even going to admit to it, but it’s a good lesson. Don’t get caught with your pants down! Orders may come in more quickly than you expected. It may have been a google blip – I will go check on my rankings after I’ve finished this post. And I have already gone through the online shop and marked all of my products ‘Out of Stock’. I don’t want this happening again!

Today I will order stock in from my supplier.

Tomorrow I will have my DVD and ship to my first satisfied customer. The first of many!

The short and sweet answer is because its the best. Why is wordpress the best CMS platform?

1. It’s free!
2. It’s simple to install.
3. Its simple to use.
4. It can be extended with literally thousands of plugins and themes.
5. It’s popular. It has a vibrant developer and user community, so help is always at hand.

Welcome to Scaredycat Creative.  We do websites – well.  And we pretty much do everything to do with websites….design, coding, social media marketing, content writing, SEO.  When we build a website, we build it with all that in mind.  Properly.  The first time.