The images you post on your social media have a huge influence on how much people will interact with your content. Social media posts with images have twice as much engagement as those who don’t. Accounts with good images will get more engagement than accounts that have okay images. Here are some tips for when you’re picking out images for your social media.

Pick the Most Relevant

The most important thing to keep in mind is how relevant your images are to your post and your business. Don’t find just any random image you think looks nice or catches attention. For example: If you have an automotive business and are making a social media post about changing your tires, the best image you could use would be a high quality, well lit image of you or one of your employees changing a tire. Don’t just use some generic image of a mechanic. 

One rule of thumb for picking images: Whenever possible, use actual images of your business and employees, try to use stock images a little as possible, and don’t use images that blatantly look like stock images. For a clear example of this, check out the image below.

The guy on the right looks like an actual mechanic, he’s doing work, he’s wearing gloves that you can see are worn and used. The guy on the left looks pretty polished, he’s just standing there with his arms crossed and smiling. The image on the right feels more real instead of an actor posing for a camera. That’s the kind of image you want to use when making posts about you or your business.

Clarity

Not only do your images need to be relevant, they also need to be clear. When talking about images, clear can mean multiple things. The first meaning is that it needs to be easy to tell what the image is about. What’s the point of posting an image if no one can tell what the image is showing?

The second meaning is how sharp or blurry the image is. Take the image below for example.

This is a good picture, but which looks better, the left or right? The right one, it’s clearer, brighter, easier to see what the image is. You can pick out more detail. When posting on social media, go with something that is more like the side on the right. Pick something that is clear and bright, it will catch much more attention than the side on the left.

The two biggest points you need to keep in mind are picking images that are the most relevant and real for your business and picking images that are clear and visually appealing. Following those two rules will take your social media to the next level and start bringing in more engagement.

Reviews can be the difference between making a sale and scaring away potential customers. Getting reviews is just the first step, next you need to start responding to any reviews you get. You might think “Shouldn’t getting reviews be enough?”, in some cases it might be, but when you have several serious competitors, responding to your online reviews can be what it takes to drive a customer to choose you over your competition.

You show you care and are more credible

When you take the time out of your day to respond to your reviews in an honest and genuine way, you show your customers that you care about them and your business. You show that you’re listening to what your customers say. Your positive reviews are easy to respond to, they make you feel good, they let other potential customers know that your product/services are worth their time and money. However, the really important reviews to respond to are the negative ones.

Your negative reviews can drive away potential customers and even ruin the image of your business. By taking the time to respond to negative reviews and trying to solve the issue the customer is having you can turn a negative review into a positive one, or at the very least you show that you care enough to try solving any issues your customer has, this will increase your credibility far more than responding to positive reviews will.

You can show your personality/brand

When you’re responding to comments you have the opportunity to show your personality and brand. Don’t just copy/paste the same response to each review. Use the reviewer’s name, thank them for their feedback, and create a custom response to their review. The way you phrase things and the words you use can show a lot about your personality and your business’s brand, don’t let the opportunity to showcase that slip you by.

Improve your local SEO

When you have a smaller business or a ton of competition it’s important to focus on your local SEO. Google themselves have confirmed that responding to reviews helps your SEO. When people search for a business on Google, Google wants to show them the best results, the most credible businesses. When you respond to both positive and negative reviews it signals to Google that you are a credible business that people can trust, so they’ll show you higher in search results than your competition.

Responding to most, if not all, of your online reviews can really help your business bring in more customers and rank higher in search results. It can be a little tedious to monitor and respond to all the reviews yourself when they start pouring in. If you want any help monitoring your online reviews, Evermore Presence is here for you. Reach out for more info today.

Working with a remote team can be challenging or a ton of fun.  You need to be able to manage your time effectively and figure out how to collaborate with your team without being able to see them in person. There are a ton of tools out there you can use to make things easier. Here are some tips to help you out, with useful tools listed at the end.

Hours

When you’re working from home you need to have a set schedule for yourself, and you need to stick to it. This helps you get into and stay in a consistent routine, creating structure in your life and keeping a good work ethic. Sometimes a simple timer will help you stay on track and make sure you stay focused on a certain task for a period of time, sometimes you need a more complex app to help you out.

Distractions

Distractions can be a huge problem when you’re working from home, especially if you have children or pets. If your children are older, you can sit down with them and have a talk about how you need to stay focused while you’re working. If you have the room, you should create your own little office space, in a room where no other people will be, so you can work in peace.

For some people, their phones can be a huge distraction while working from home, especially with the temptation to check social media. The first thing you should do is turn off notifications for your phone, only let text and call alerts come through. Then set your phone to silent or vibrate, if you don’t have to worry about coworkers or your boss calling or texting you, just turn your phone completely off.

Meetings

Remote meetings can be a little intimidating. You’ve got a new software to figure out, will your coworkers be able to hear you? So many things can go wrong. But, they aren’t too difficult after you’ve had a couple.

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have the right tools for the meeting. You’ll need a program, like Zoom or Microsoft Teams. You’ll also need a camera and a microphone, so people can actually see and hear you. A camera isn’t always necessary, but it is highly recommended, being able to see each other makes the meeting feel more personal.

Before the meeting starts, have notes of what you want to talk about, it may be helpful to have some slides put together to share with your team. If someone is unable to make it to the meeting, reach out to them beforehand to see if they have any questions or comments they would like to share with everyone else, and send them a brief of the meeting after it is over. During the meeting, have everyone test their audio so you know everyone can speak and hear each other.

After the meeting, send out notes on what was discussed, or even a recording of the meeting, and notes on what need to be done next.

Tools

Rescue Time: Provides you with analytics on your daily habits and productivity, as well as allowing you to block sites that are distracting, for certain parts of the day.

Time: An AI app for productivity that helps you boost your accountability. It also gives you recommendations for how you can be more productive the more you use this app.

Zoom: A conference tool. Included video conferences, calls, and messaging.

Microsoft Teams: A conference tool like Zoom. Chat. call, and collaborate all in one place.

Flowlu: A task management system, free for basic features, paid for more in depth features.

Monday: Collaborate with your teams, track your work progress, turn video calls into actions.

Nifty: Create tasks, timelines, and assign projects.

Asana: Build road maps for projects, collaborate with teams, create calendars, track projects progress.

There are many ways to get ahead online, but with our three pronged approach, you can take your online presence to the next level. We focus on your local presence, social media and reviews. Here are some more details on how Evermore Presence can help you in these three areas.

Local Presence

Local presence is extremely valuable for any business, especially small businesses. You need to make your presence known in the local area your business operates. Here’s how we do this: citation sites.

Citation sites are websites like Yelp. They are websites that list businesses and often include reviews so that customers can find the right business for their needs. It’s important to be listed on these sites because when customers search for a business, these sites will often appear in search results above your own site. Listing your business on these sites will give your business more credibility and creates trustworthiness with your customers. It also greatly increases your reach and gives customers a place to leave reviews.

More trustworthiness and a farther reach means you’ll be gaining more customers. The biggest problem is that it can take a lot of time to find each citation site and set up your profile on all of them. Our clients save a lot of time with our team. We add your profile to 78 different sites and make sure all the information is complete and up to date so your customers can find you anywhere and know how to reach out to you.

Social Media Management

Having a website is good and listing your business on citation sites is great, but having social media can take your online presence to the next level and put you in front of a ton of new people who may never have discovered your business otherwise. Your social media needs to be consistent, up to date, and useful. Highlight the best parts of your business and/or services. Talking about your industry and giving relevant tips/tricks to your audience is also a good thing to include in your social media along with your products and/or services.

For further reach, you can create profiles on multiple platforms. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are three major platforms that can be utilized to promote your business. It can be time consuming to manage multiple accounts, post on them, and reply to comments. Clients who work with Evermore Presence save an average of 20 hours a week. Find out more here https://evermorepresence.com/social-media/

Reviews

Your reviews are one of the strongest ways to gain trust among potential customers and your target audience. 90% of consumers say that reviews impact their purchase decisions. Getting reviews aren’t the only important thing, you also need to respond to your reviews. Responding to reviews shows your customers that you care, makes you more credible, and improves your local SEO. Responding to negative reviews can turn them into positive ones and show that you are willing to right any wrong.

Reviews on your business can be left on multiple platforms, from your social media to your various listings. Evermore Presence can help you manage all your reviews and respond to them in a professional and effective way to help you improve your online image.

You can focus on your local presence, social media, and reviews on your own, or you can have Evermore Presence do it for you. Either way, just make sure you’re putting out consistent and correct information so your customers don’t get confused and respond to people whenever they leave reviews and comments about your business. Even a small amount of effort and planning can go a long way.

Social media can be a lot of fun for the casual user, but for businesses it can be a powerful tool you can use to bring in more customers and spread brand awareness. When you’re running a business you might already have a lot on your plate and might not have too much time to worry about social media and your online presence. So, if you want to free up some more time in your day, here are some of the pros and cons of hiring a social media manager to run your social media for you.

Pros

More Time

Time is money, the less time you have to worry about your social media, the more time you can spend working on your business and assisting customers. Instead of spending hours creating well crafted posts, responding to comments and likes, you can hire someone else to do it for you.

Professional Content

Not only will a social media manager be technically advanced enough to make full use of your social media, they’ll also know how to create the content that catches attention and gets your customers engaged. Professional content will give your business a more professional look online, making it easier to gain the trust of your customers. 

Experience

A professional social media manager will be able to apply what they’ve learned through their previous customers to you. This means a higher quality of content from day one instead of you having to take the time to learn what works and what doesn’t. They’ll also be able to give you advice and help you move your online presence in the right direction.

Analytics

When hiring a professional, they’ll give you updates on how your social media is performing. You’ll get good reports on your engagement, follower activity and more. You can get the right data you need to make good decisions about your social media and whether or not your money is being well spent.

Cons

The Price

One of the biggest reasons why people avoid hiring a social media manager is the price that comes along with it. Depending on who you hire and what exactly you have them doing, it can cost anywhere from a couple hundred to close to a thousand dollars to hire a professional. Be sure to do your research before deciding to work with someone. If you’re curious, you can find our prices here.

Limited Knowledge of Your Industry

This one doesn’t apply to every social media manager. They’re a third party, they don’t work in your industry so they may not know all the details. It isn’t uncommon for a social media manager to specialize in one industry, like law firms, mechanics, small boutiques. When you’re going to select one to work with, check and see if they have previous experience working with your industry, then they’ll know what does and doesn’t work for your industry and can better engage with your audience online.

Hiring someone else to work on your social media isn’t for everyone. But, if you can afford it, and you pick the right one, a social media manager can help you take your online presence to the next level. You can check out our prices here.

Getting a website set up is easy. Getting a good website set up is another story. There are plenty of awful websites on the web right now. Putting a little more effort into your site can make a huge impact on how effective your site is. Here we’ll go over some of the basics and discuss the easier mistakes to fix.

Too Crowded

You may want to stuff as much information on your site as you can, but when your site is too crowded it makes things more difficult to read and more difficult for your customer to find what they’re looking for. When a customer comes to your website and sees a wall of text, they aren’t going to read it.

Images

Your images can make or break your website. Poor images won’t capture your customers attention, large images can significantly slow down your site. Images can also help people remember something better or direct their attention to whatever you want them to focus on.

Images are fantastic ways to convey emotion, information, and direct attention. When you’re picking the images for your site, avoid stock images when possible. Use images of your actual business and products, but be sure that they are high quality. If you aren’t able to get high quality images of your business yourself, you could hire a photographer to do it for you. A professional will be able to take and edit high quality photos that can make a huge difference in your online performance. You can read more about that here.

Content

You may have heard the phrase “Content is king” that’s true. When you’re writing the content for your site, it needs to be clear and consistent. Good content will increase your SEO, keep customers engaged, solve problems, and bring in new leads.

When your website rank in search results is being determined, Google will go through your website and try to figure out what it’s all about. Google wants to deliver the most relevant and useful results to its users that it can. This means you need your content to be useful, clearly communicate what your business is about and unique to you. If you want to rank higher in search results, your content needs to provide more value than your competitors can. Don’t have generic text up just to take up space, communicate why you’re different and worth working with or buying from. The placement of your content is important as well. Don’t drone on forever about your mission on your homepage, save that for your “About” page.

Good content will keep your customer engaged and on your site. It directs them to do what you want them to do. Are you an auto mechanic business trying to bring in more customers? Highlight why you can solve your customers problems better than your competitors. Are you a cleaning service? Highlight how you can get the job done better.

Contact

If a customer wants to get in touch with you or is having an issue with your site or your services, you will want them to be able to get in touch with you. One of the most frustrating things can be spending a large amount of time trying to get in contact with you. This easiest way of course would be to have a contact page on your website or a contact section on your homepage.

Give them a couple ways to get in touch, like a form to fill out, an email and/or a phone number. Don’t make an already upset customer even more upset because they can’t figure out how to contact you and don’t lose leads because a potential customer can’t get in touch.

Responsive Design

There are multiple ways a customer will access the internet. A computer, a tablet, a smart phone. If your website isn’t displaying properly or designed to look good on multiple devices, you’ll be losing out on a lot of business. Today, about half of all people on the internet are accessing your site through their phone. The mobile version of your website needs to be properly designed to be easily used on the smallest of smartphone screens. Google is also using the mobile version of your site to determine your ranking in search results. If you have a good desktop site but a poor mobile version, you’ll rank much lower than if you had a great mobile site and an okay desktop site.

Website Speed

Your site speed is going to be one of the first things a customer will recognize. If your website takes 4 seconds or more to load, your online sales will be cut in half. People don’t like slow websites. One of the biggest reasons for slow websites is image size. Make sure your image is the proper size and properly optimized. Even changing the format of the image can drastically change the load speed. JPGs and PNGs will look about the same on your site, but a JPGs loads far faster than a PNGs. 

This is only a rough overview of some of the basic mistakes you need to avoid on your site. There are a lot of things you can do to improve your site. Sometimes doing something as simple as swapping out an image can improve your performance. Sometimes you have to do more technical things to improve your site. If you want to make significant improvements it will take time. You can either do it yourself or hire someone to do it for you, either way, don’t just throw up a simple website just to have something up. Make something that people will actually use and get you results.

Today, your online presence is more than just your social media and website. There are a ton of directory websites out there that you can take advantage of, like Yellowpages and Yelp. You have many sites to choose from, so it’s important to pick the right ones, and make sure your information is consistent on all of them. It can seem like a big task, but it’s more simple than you think, and here are some reasons why you should do it.

Expanding Your Reach

Yelp has 178 million unique visitors each month, yellowpages has 80 million, and Facebook has 2.5 billion monthly users. That’s a lot of people. In total, there are around 4.33 billion people currently using the internet. The more platforms you have your business listed on, the more people you will reach. If you don’t have a listing on Yelp but have one on Facebook, the people who use Yelp but not Facebook won’t find your business, and vice versa.

The more sites you’re listed on, the easier it is for your customers to find you when they search for businesses that have your services.

Increasing Your Trustworthiness

When a customer is reading through reviews and researching your business, part of what they are trying to do is verify whether or not you’re a legitimate business. Not only will you be able to reach more people with more listings, but you will also look like a more legitimate and trustworthy business. You need to put effort into looking trustworthy online. Anyone can put anything on the internet, but having clear and consistent information online as well as legitimate customer reviews on multiple sites shows that you’re putting more effort into your business and can give customers a clearer picture of your business, gaining the trust of your customers faster.

Revenue

The last reason you need to have your business listed on more sites is for your revenue. This ties into the two reasons above. With a broader reach and more trust, you’ll be bringing in more customers, and therefore more revenue. You also don’t have to spend a ton of money on getting your business listed on multiple sites. There are tons of free directory sites you can google and list your business on. Studies show that businesses who do get their sites listed on multiple directories earn up to 78% more money than businesses that don’t. That’s a significant difference.

Making sure your business is listed everywhere it’s relevant is just another part of succeeding online. If you don’t have the time to put in the effort to get your business listed on multiple platforms, you can find someone to do it for you. Here at Evermore Presence, we  strive to help you get your business listed everywhere and help you respond to and be aware of any reviews people leave for your business. Visit https://evermorepresence.com/local-presence/ to learn more or reach out to us here to get in touch today.

97% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses. That’s a lot of people. This is why it’s important to be aware of your reviews and respond to them whenever you can. Any negative review is an opportunity to show your professionalism and turn an angry customer into a happy one. If you’re still not sure whether or not you should spend your time monitoring and responding to reviews, or paying someone to do it for you, check out these reasons reviews can have a major impact on your business.

Reputation

Your reviews are honest feedback of what your customers think of you, so it’s no surprise that your reviews, and your response to your reviews, shape your reputation. For example let’s take two businesses, Business A and Business B. They both have the same rating of 4.5. Business A thanks their positive reviews, showing their gratitude for their customers, but ignores the negative ones. Business B also thanks their positive reviews. But, instead of ignoring the negative ones, they respond, asking the customer for more details on what went wrong and offering ways to fix the situation.

Which business do you think a customer is more likely to work with? Business B. By responding to negative reviews and trying to fix the situation, Business B showed that they care more about their customers and that they are willing to go above and beyond to ensure good customer service and satisfaction. This will have a far larger positive impact on their reputation than simply ignoring the negative reviews. This is especially important since 89% of customers will read a business response to a review. Take every negative review as an opportunity to defend or even improve your reputation and show your customers that you care about them.

Revenue

On top of your reputation, your revenu is also impacted by the reviews customers leave. 94% of consumers will avoid a business with a bad review. That’s a huge loss of revenue. In the example above, Business B would be losing less revenue by resolving situations with unhappy customers than Business A would.

When you’re a local business you can’t afford to miss out on revenue because of a bad review. That’s why it’s so important to reach out to anyone who left a negative review, so you can try to resolve any issues and maybe even turn it into a positive review.

Hiring

Your online reviews can also impact your ability to hire good employees. Your products and services aren’t the only things people can leave reviews for. Your current and previous employees can also leave ratings on the workplace through sites like indeed and glassdoor. A poor rating could stop someone from applying to work for your business.

Search Engine Ranking

The purpose of the ranking in Google search results is to deliver the best experience to customers. So it’s no surprise that Google will trust your customers more than you. Too many bad reviews will sink you to the bottom of search results, while having more positive reviews will boost you to the top. Have you ever noticed that when you search for something online, the businesses with the highest rating will display at the top?

Sources:

https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/

Social media can be time consuming and difficult to manage. You may have tight deadlines or a bunch of DMs you can’t get to. People make mistakes all the time, here are a few mistakes that can be easily avoided.

No Strategy

Having a clear, cohesive social media strategy can be one of the best things you can have for your business. A strategy will help you decide what and when to post. It will ensure that your social media is consistent and moving forward instead of just treading water. So, how do you create a social media strategy?

Start off with the “What”, what do you want to accomplish? More followers? More engagement? Spreading brand awareness? You’re “What” is the most important part of your strategy, you can’t work towards something if you don’t know what you’re working towards. The next step is to pick your “Who”, who is your target audience? You can’t create content if you don’t know who you’re creating content for. The last thing you need is “When”, when you will launch this strategy and when it will end. You can’t achieve your goals if you don’t have a deadline.

No Interaction

Interaction is huge on social media. When you interact with customers online it shows that you care and builds loyalty and trust with your customers. If you don’t interact with your social media followers, your competition will.

Some basic things you can do to increase interaction is to like and reply to any comments left on your social media. If you want to go further, you can host a Q&A about your brand or industry, sharing other people’s content, add relevant hashtags, creating polls and surveys, or creating competitions. There is a lot you can do to get your audience engaged. Try out new things every now and then and get creative.

Not Posting Enough or Too Much

If you’re only posting once or twice a month, that’s not good enough. If you’re posting more than once a day, that may be too much. People follow people/businesses that are active, but not too active. They want consistent updates from you, but not too many. Finding the right posting schedule may take some trial and error. Posting twice a day or every other day is a good starting point.

Boring Content

People follow people who are interesting, who can teach them something. If you want people to engage with you or follow your social media, you can’t afford to have boring content. Tailor your content to be interesting and relevant to your industry. For example, an auto mechanic business can have posts with tips on extending the life of your car or fun car facts.

Social media is a powerful tool, with some more effort and time, you can turn it into something really valuable and profitable. There are a ton of things you can do to bring in more engagement and spread your brand awareness. You can also visit https://evermorepresence.com/social-media/ for further help with your social media.

Google My Business (GMB) is a fantastic, free tool anyone can use to optimize their online presence and help bring in more customers. It’s easy to get started on the basics, but to really stand out, there is a lot you can do today to optimize your GMB profile and show how your services are better than your competition.

Set up your profile

If you already have a GMB profile, you can skip this step. Start by going to https://www.google.com/business/ and clicking on the “Manage Now” button. Then you’ll need to type in your business name, select your business and claim it. Sometimes your business information is already in the system, but most likely you will have to enter all your business information yourself. Google will then send you a verification code through the mail so you can claim your business and be verified on Google.

Choose a relevant and specific category and subcategory

When filling out your profile, you’ll have to select a business category and subcategory. This will help customers find you when they search for services you offer. If you have an auto shop that focuses on body work, select the “Auto Body Shop” as your category. If your primary service is removing dents in cars, select the “Auto Dent Removal Service”. If you have a business with multiple services, pick whichever service is your main one. From there you can add additional services to your GMB profile to make sure everything in your business is covered.

Add high quality images

Profiles with more images, and more high quality images get more clicks and calls than profiles that lack images or have images that are not good. There are a few categories of photos on GMB that you can fill out: Identity, Team and At Work.

The “Identity” category is the first group of photos you need to upload. It includes your logo and your cover. You should upload a high quality image of your logo. You cover photo is the photo that will be shown on your listing when people see your profile in search results. Pick a photo that best shows your business and/or your business personality. If you have a physical location, an image of the outside of your business is a good idea, so customers know what to look for when they go to your location. You can also show an image of you or your employees performing whatever services you offer.

The “Team” category is pretty self explanatory. Post professional images of you and the people you work with. If you have uniforms, be sure to be wearing them in the pictures.

The “At Work” is where you upload images of your work. Post the best images of your work and services. If you only sell products, post high quality images of the best products you have available. If any of your images include your customers, make sure you have the customer’s permission to post them.

If you don’t have enough images to fill out all the categories, make sure to get the “Identity” category filled out at the very minimum, you can add the rest later, just be sure to add them eventually. It would be worth it to look into a professional photographer in your area if you don’t already have beautiful images.

Write a good business description

You need to write an excellent business description in 750 characters or less. One of the things you should start out with is what sets you apart, why should people choose your business over your competitors? There are also a few things you should keep in mind and avoid adding to your description. Firstly, Google does read your business description and can reject it if it doesn’t meet their standards. Don’t add links in your description, this will get your description immediately rejected. You also need to avoid spelling errors, irrelevant information and listing prices. For more details on what is and isn’t allowed in business descriptions, visit Google’s official guidelines.

Link your website

If you don’t have a website, check out this article for why you need one. If you do already have a website you need to link it to your GMB profile. That way when people find your profile, they can easily find out more about your business by going to your website.

Encourage Reviews

Customers typically read at least 10 reviews before they feel they can trust a business, so it’s important to have reviews on your profile. Some customers will do this on their own if they’re really happy with your services. But, if you want to get a good amount of reviews you’ll have to learn how to properly encourage customers to leave reviews. Two very common ways to ask for a review would be directly on your website when customers are checking out with an item and by sending an email to the customer a few days after services have been completed or products have been shipped. Once customers leave reviews you should respond to those reviews with kind comments and a thank you.

Avoid penalty inducing offences.

There are certain activities that can get your profile penalized. For example, keyword stuffing. If you have multiple keywords you want to target for your business, only pick one to focus on in your listing information. An example of keyword stuffing would be “Arcadia: Hotel, Motel, Bed and Breakfast, B&B, Restaurant in London.” this could get your profile completely suspended. For the example above a better thing to do would be “Bed and Breakfast in London”.

The next thing to avoid would be ignoring negative reviews or arguing with people who leave negative reviews. This will leave bad impressions with anyone who reads your reviews. Never add fake reviews, that can get you banned from Google.

The last and most important thing to do is to make sure your information is consistent everywhere so customers don’t get confused or end up calling the wrong number. If you aren’t sure if  your information is consistent everywhere, visit our Free Online Presence Check to make sure you have consistent information across all platforms.

Google My Business is a great tool for promoting your business and bringing in more customers, if you can put in the time to optimize it, you’ll stand out among the competition and gain people’s trust far quicker.

Sources:

Google’s Official Guidelines

https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177#description

Customers reading reviews

https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/