How to Win With Your SEM Agency
Hire an agency? Take it in-house? What’s the best way to ensure a successful approach to improve the online presence of your company? These decisions can be tough, and there isn’t just one right answer. Of course, coming from an agency myself, I would love to be able to say that agency relationships are always successful. Unfortunately they aren’t. Unsuccessful engagements can happen for a number of reasons, but a good agency understands that their success relies solely on your business and website’s success.
It goes without saying that there are tons of sketchy and inept SEO/SEM agencies out there. Some rely on black hat tactics that could result in penalties down the road, some try to intimidate their clients with technical jargon in order to avoid accountability, some don’t understand your business and some simply overcharge for their services. In addition, technology and binding contracts can keep clients feeling as if they’re being held hostage by their agency.
With that said, there are just as many competent and ethical agencies willing and able to help. But in order to provide top notch service and deliver results, there are a few things that can be done on the client side to ensure a successful relationship.
A Few Tips
1. Communicate Objectives: besides increasing traffic, what do you really need? Have you identified your key performance indicators (KPIs)? It sounds obvious, but more visits aren’t necessarily going to impact your bottom line. What are the specific actions (conversions) you want visitors to take once they get to your site? What are the conversions that are most profitable? What is your lifetime customer value? What are your goals in terms of cost per acquisition?
2. Understand Resource Limitations: realistically, what are the resource limitations you are likely to face in undergoing optimization efforts? It’s important to understand what you’re up against so expectations can be set internally. From my experience, higher-ups are always eager to know if SEO “really works” but if it’s not communicated that additional resources will need to be applied, you might face disappointment and frustration within your organization. These limitations typically fall into three categories –
1. Technical: will your CMS or ecommerce database impede the ability to implement SEO best practices?
2. Human: do you have people to write content, make site changes, champion results, etc?
3. Financial: do you have the financial resources to dedicate to paid search? To transition to a new CMS? To hire new folks?
3. Provide Data: I know you have it somewhere. SEO’s love data. Almost everything in the online world can be measured and tied to ROI, so provide all relevant revenue data. Even offering offline data to better understand if a dip in online revenue is due to a site performance issue or if this is a larger, company or industry wide problem or trend.
4. Personality Fit: make sure you like the people you’re going to work with. It’s critical to be on the same page with both the agency (think corporate values) but also with your account manager (communication style, for example). Furthermore, choosing an agency with that additional value add in terms of strategic partnerships and ability to connect with prospective customers, press coverage and speaking opportunities will help to further a successful engagement beyond the realm of SEO related progress.
5. Educate Yourself: don’t just take your agency’s word for it. Attend webinars and conferences, read industry blogs, and informational articles on sites such as SEOmoz, etc. Developing a deeper understanding of how specific practices will impact your business will take your efforts to the next level.
-------------------------------
How To: Use Social Media to Get a Job
I graduated from college about two months ago. With unemployment rates through the roof, I was scared to be out in the real world. But thanks to social media, I landed a job in no time. If you’re utilizing social media to brand yourself (and you should be!), follow these tips to ensure success in your job search.
Tweet, Tweet, Tweet
Twitter is a great resource for job searches, not only because of the great keyword search functionality, but also because you can easily form connections with others in your industry across the world. The first thing you must do is complete your profile. Make sure you have a photo, link to your blog or another social networking site (perhaps LinkedIn) and a bio.
Then comes the fun part! Connect with friends and others in your niche. Do a Twitter search for keywords that pertain to the industry you are looking to work on. There are many job recruiters on Twitter who post jobs daily, so follow and converse with them. Also, if you tweet about your job search, you may come up in others’ searches for certain keywords. The people who find your tweets may be able to help you out!
Take Advantage of LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a professional social network that gives you the opportunity to put your resume online. Your profile is searchable by recruiters and companies, and then those people are able to message you to inquire more information. More and more companies are beginning to use LinkedIn to search for future employees.
To get the best results, be sure to request recommendations from previous employers and people you have worked with. This is a surefire way for prospective employers to know what kind of worker you are. Also, there are many niche groups you can join on LinkedIn that will post job opportunities available in the field.
Fix up your Facebook
Facebook is undoubtedly the largest social network in the world. If you have a Facebook profile, make sure you do not have anything on there that you wouldn’t want a future employer to see. If you have photos that could be considered inappropriate, you should take them off your profile. But there is more than just censoring your photos to making your Facebook profile foolproof. An online recruitment site posted their top ten turn-offs found on social networking sites, which include:
1. References to drug abuse
2. Extremist / intolerant views, including racism, sexism
3. Criminal activity
4. Evidence of excessive alcohol consumption
5. Inappropriate pictures, including nudity
6. Foul language
7. Links to unsuitable websites
8. Lewd jokes
9. Silly email addresses
10. Membership of pointless / silly groups
Begin a Blog
Setting up a blog and discussing topics in your niche will not only help you connect with others interested in the same topics, but it can help you get noticed by industry experts. Show your readers that you care about what is going on in your industry by carefully researching topics and writing thoughtful posts. Also, you can add a page on your blog dedicated to your resume with contact information and even a photo.
Once you’re up and posting, research other blogs in the industry you’re looking to work in and actively participate. Start up a conversation by submitting a comment about a post that interests you. Also, if other blogs you read allow contributors offer to write a post about something you are an expert to further brand your name.
What tips do you have for using social media to find a job?
No comments:
Post a Comment