Over the past few months, we’ve seen major changes in both the ways users consume social media and the opportunities presented to local businesses by new social media search functionalities. In July, we reported on Instagram’s new immersive map, potentially changing the game for local business discovery. Since then, it’s also been reported that TikTok is the go-to search engine for Gen Z, with 40% of Gen Z users preferring the video sharing app, and Instagram, over Google Search. Naturally, TikTok is jumping on product developments, improving its search functionality, and even testing a ‘nearby’ feed. We’ve also seen Twitter introduce Location Spotlight for local businesses, which displays important business information and integrates with Google Maps to help customers find them.
Social platforms seem to be putting more and more focus on search and local business discoverability. On Instagram, we’re seeing a push for users to find local businesses through creator and influencer content. Meanwhile, on TikTok, the everyday creator can go viral with their video content, which can include recommendations of local areas, businesses, or services. And now Twitter is now promoting local businesses through enhanced profile attributes. But what about Facebook? Well, Facebook has always presented itself as a strong promoter of local businesses. Businesses can create pages, which can act as local citations. Your business page shows up in search queries across Facebook and provides an additional platform for user recommendations, engaging followers with news, updates, and offers. Facebook’s online community groups also provide an avenue for local businesses to promote their services, or to get user reviews and recommendations. In future, we could see Facebook integrate with Instagram’s map search, and become an even more valuable platform for local businesses. As shown below, a simple search for ‘Brighton dog groomer’ brings up related local pages with their business info, followed by conversations taking place on local community groups. This demonstrates the power that user recommendations on local community groups have, especially as they show on search results. And then there’s YouTube: the ultimate creator platform, which we know consumers can use it search for almost anything. While YouTube is indeed a global platform, local keywords can still have an impact on business discoverability. For example, the search term “san diego restaurants” brings up food and travel vloggers providing their recommendations. It’s clear that, while some of the original tech players continue to boost local visibility through creator content, newer platforms are starting to embrace it even more. With these changes in mind, it’s important to consider how consumers are really consuming content in 2022. Video-first PlatformsSocial media channels have moved in favor of short-form video content. This has led to a change in how users, particularly younger people, consume information, through quick, visual pieces of content. If someone is looking for the best way to make a key lime pie, they might now watch a video, rather than read a written recipe. If someone is traveling somewhere new, they might watch videos of their destination, rather than reading travel blogs. For someone trying DIY, their go-to for information could now be in video format. In the below screenshot, you can see a search for ‘key lime pie’ on TikTok which brings up video tutorials and recipes to make a pie. When you think about it, doesn’t video make more sense for these kinds of content anyway? You could argue that this reckoning has been in the works for a long time. In many cases, video provides the user with everything they need to know in as little time as possible, in the most engaging way. Authentic and Trustworthy ContentSocial media has always been a place of fake personas, edited and filtered images, and carefully curated, aesthetically-pleasing content. This is now changing, as “young people have decided to share it all, from messy break-ups to professional failures.” TikTok creators are often their most authentic selves, and this hunger for realness, trust, and authenticity has spread across social channels. BeReal: A Case Study in the Appetite for Authenticity BeReal is one of the newest social platforms taking the younger generation by storm, now with up to 10 million daily active users. BeReal, which describes itself as ‘Your Friends for Real’, is a photo-sharing app with no functionality to edit or filter images. Every day, at a different time, users are notified that they now have two minutes to take a photo. The app takes a photo using both the back and front cameras on the smartphone, to give a realistic view of what the user is doing or seeing at that moment. No curated images, just an authentic peek into someone’s life, there and then. The joy of this is that you’ll most likely find everyone else is going about their day-to-day life, watching TV, cooking, working, or studying. Users don’t experience ‘FOMO’, or feel bad about themselves for not living the ‘perfect’ life we often see on platforms like Instagram. Users require authenticity as the number one trust signal: a TikTok user sharing their recommendations for museums to visit in Toronto or an Instagram travel influencer showcasing their most recent Miami Beach hotel stay might be viewed as more trustworthy than Google reviews—definitely something we’ll aim to explore in our next Local Consumer Review Survey.
In the screenshot above, we can see that a content creator has tagged the Miami Beach hotel in her photo, showing her experience at the location there and then. The hotel’s comment (highlighted) is an example of a great way to respond and engage with user-generated content such as this. Anyone viewing the post can see what the hotel may look like, what their experience might be when they get there, and potentially the promise of good customer service through the hotel’s online engagement. When it comes to search, users want to see real reviews and real experiences, and this is what video on platforms like TikTok and Instagram can provide. For anyone browsing nearby restaurants, for example, social search adds authenticity, from real and trusted content creators. With video, you can see the plated food, you can grasp an idea as to what the interiors and vibe of the restaurant would be, and you can hear about and see recent experiences directly from the creator themselves. Source: TikTok This example from TikTok shows food, drinks, interiors, and exteriors from Chicago restaurants, so that users can get a feel as to what the restaurants feel like, as well as what the food served will look like. Traditionally, a search result would rely on the Google algorithm, which can present potentially fake reviews, out-of-date images, and poorly-optimized websites —none of which bode well for a good IRL experience. Ultimately, social search showcases a more authentic, real-life world experience, rather than relying on content that’s been carefully, and likely artificially, crafted for algorithms. Why are social platforms making substantial changes for local businesses?This might be an effect of the pandemic, where more local businesses took to the world of digital in order to continue making money during lockdowns across the world. Social platforms are tapping into a market that is more digital than ever before, enabling local businesses to grow and increase visibility through their channels. If more local businesses advertise on these platforms, grow their followings, and become more active through social search, this naturally results in more revenue opportunities for the platforms, and so the imperative for them to develop more functions for local businesses grows ever more. Creating Viral Video Content for Social SearchThis might sound good for Gen Z users, or local marketers in industries such as leisure, tourism, or hospitality. However, social media, and in particular video, can be highly valuable for local marketers across a variety of industries, for older audiences, even in the most niche of places. Here are some great examples of local businesses causing a stir on TikTok, and reaping the rewards by doing so: The Pool Guy, a swimming pool engineer based in the UK, has gone viral for his pool-cleaning videos. These have led to increased discoverability throughout his local service area and beyond, and even celebrity bookings. This Manchester, UK-based hairdresser shares incredible hair transformations, and often finds that clients travel the breadth of the UK just to have treatments with her. TikTok isn’t just kids performing dances or lip-syncing along to popular music. It’s full of people giving advice on health and fitness, financial advice, home improvements, advice on plant-care—you might even find your local dentist on TikTok! While they might reach global audiences, you’d be surprised at how showing your trust and authenticity through TikTok can help boost your local brand awareness and drive customers from both your local area and from further away. Taking Advantage of Social SearchNow we know the power of social media video, and the rising importance of social search, how do local businesses take advantage of these evolutions in social media? First of all, increase your social media presence. Being active on channels like Instagram and TikTok could work well, especially for businesses with a visually pleasing interior, or a product or service they can easily show off through video. If you’ve got subject matter expertise in law, healthcare, or finance, answer frequently-asked questions through short-form video on these channels. You never know who your content might reach. Secondly, engage your audience to drive user-generated content. Get users who visit your location to tag you and share content from their experience. Engage with anyone who does share their experience on social and thank them! Your potential customers want to see authentic content from existing customers, and user-generated content is the catalyst for this. Reach out to local influencers and offer them a gifted meal or a visit to your location in exchange for creative content on social media. Make the most of content creators on social media, as these are the people shouting about your brand, and boosting discoverability through social search. In ConclusionSocial search is growing. With this, in turn, platform product developments and user behavior are now intertwining to become a force to be reckoned with. Users are engaging with, learning from, and searching for more video content, to help answer their questions, inspire something new, or be entertained. Now’s the time for businesses to start getting creative behind the camera to meet user needs. Through video comes authenticity and social proof from a range of creators across social platforms. Creators are showcasing their content in the most real and trustworthy way, and users are hungry for realistic content. Local businesses should make good use of user-generated content throughout their local marketing campaigns. While we might still be reliant on Google, the power of social media is always growing, and social search could have a huge impact on how you achieve your business goals. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/dvF8MUf Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/
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Got a question about local SEO for multi-location businesses? Join our next Local Search Clinic, with Ben Fisher (Steady Demand), taking place on Wednesday, August 31 at 9 am PT/12 pm ET/5 pm BST. Recordingvia BrightLocal https://ift.tt/XU9Qdb6 Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ How do consumers find the best places to buy what they need? To eat? To relax? To have fun? They search for ‘near me’ recommendations. When a user searches for something that Google believes has a local intent, it will show local results. And because users with a local search intent are looking for something they want or need right now, you want your business to show up in these search results. That’s why you should have a location page for each of your locations or service areas. These location pages are an important part of building a successful local SEO strategy and deserve a different approach to other types of landing pages. Our new BrightLocal Academy course--How to Optimize Location Pages—will teach you all you need to know about what to include on location pages and how to optimize them to make them truly effective. We’ve created this course in collaboration with Local SEO expert, Claire Carlile, who during the six lessons will teach you:
Here’s Claire with an overview of the course: Who is this course for?This course is for anyone that works with local businesses that have bricks-and-mortar locations or that service customers in a very hyperlocal context. How can I join?Whether you’re a BrightLocal customer or not, you can get access to this course. You can also be among the first to find out when new courses drop by enrolling for free. Here’s how… If you’re a BrightLocal customer , you can access the academy via your BrightLocal account. Simply log in, click ‘Learning Resources’ at the top of the screen and select ‘BrightLocal Academy’ from the dropdown menu. You’ll be taken straight to your BrightLocal Academy account page, where you can enroll on the ‘How to Optimize Location Pages’ course. If you’re not a BrightLocal customer , you can join BrightLocal Academy for free here and follow the same steps above to enroll on the course. Want to know more about BrightLocal Academy?Check out the official BrightLocal Academy FAQs here: What is BrightLocal Academy, how does it work, and how can I enroll? What courses does BrightLocal Academy offer and how long do they take? If you have any questions of your own, feel free to get in touch with us or leave a comment below. We hope you find this fresh new course useful, and can’t wait to hear how it’s helped you improve your local SEO skills. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/XmYobDn Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ Local searchers buy from businesses that not only have the best products and services but also, provide a great buying experience. According to the State of the Connected Customer report by Salesforce, 80% of customers argue that the experience a business provides is as good as their product or the service they deliver. A purchase happens in stages. By identifying what happens in each stage, you understand what a potential customer is doing, what they need, and their pain points. While working on your client’s local businesses, your efforts are focused on providing relevant information to potential customers throughout the customer buying journey. It makes it easier for them to make informed choices and, in the process, helps you maximize conversions and revenue. In this post, we’ll talk about how you can optimize your efforts to improve the results you’re getting. Whether you’re optimizing local SEO or your customer journey, it doesn’t require a ton of expertise or effort. Yet, this may be the thing that has a huge impact on conversions and revenue. What is the customer journey and why does it matter to local businesses?The customer journey is the buying process that starts with awareness of a service or product and ends with the purchase. The customer journey happens in five stages: awareness, evaluation, decision, loyalty, and referral. A local business relies on an offline and online presence to drive traffic and acquire customers. An offline presence benefits from word of mouth and a strategic location. However, the terrain changes when it comes to relying on your client’s online presence to drive traffic and conversions. To stay competitive, local businesses need to create a solid online presence by understanding and optimizing the customer journey and tracking conversions. Tim Brown, CEO, and founder of Minneapolis-based Hook Agency explains;
For local businesses, optimizing their customer journeys helps them identify different opportunities to help their customers have a better buying experience. For example, potential buyers who are in the decision stage want to know whether they can trust the business. And, as Tim pointed out, having trust factors responds to what these potential customers need. When growing the client’s local business, you want to make the best use of the resources available to make sure that you build a solid online presence for them. As you do this, you don’t want to direct the resources you have on initiatives that push you to spend more money without a guarantee of consistent ROI. Tim goes on to explain:
How To Optimize Customer Journey Stages to Grow Your Client’s BusinessThe collection of events occurring in each stage of the customer journey reveals what’s going on in the potential customer’s mind, and their behavior helps you predict the questions they have, and what they feel and think. Think with Google refers to these events as moments , stating that “consumers want what they want, when they want it and they’re drawn to brands that deliver on their needs.’’ Here’s how to be present, useful, and accountable: AwarenessThe awareness stage typically reflects “I want to know’’ and “I want to do’’ moments, where the searcher is looking for information to understand their problem better. While this marks the beginning of their customer journey, the information they find on their Google searches will determine how they proceed. If you’re relying on content to drive awareness of your client’s local services, you want to make sure that your content ranks in the SERPs. In addition to optimizing it for search engines, you also need to match the intent and context of the searcher. Amanda Jordan, Local SEO Director at RicketyRoo Inc explains why;
Content that matches the intent and context of the searcher delivers a great user experience. A spot check of the results a searcher gets when looking for lawn care tips reveals a featured snippet: video content: …and written content: These results show that searchers want content related to this keyword in different formats to help them learn more about how to take care of their lawns. If you’re only creating written content for your client, consider repurposing it to videos or images and get hold of searchers who prefer consuming content in different formats. Amanda Jordan, explains the rationale behind using different content formats:
By creating different content formats, these assets can then be repurposed for a number of different marketing channels today, such as social media and email marketing. This further increases the chances of boosting awareness of the local business. Still, on user experience, 61% of local searchers rely on their mobile devices to search for local businesses, so you want to make sure that your client’s website is optimized for mobile devices. Use a mobile-friendly checker or Google’s own tool to see how your client’s web pages show up on mobile devices. For written content, make sure it is easy to consume by avoiding lots of distractions such as ads and pop-ups every few seconds. Instead of trying to get hold of your readers at every turn while they’re on the page, make your call to actions clear enough so that readers know the next steps they should take. Evaluation and DecisionEvaluation and decision stages capture two moments: “I want to go’’ and “I want to buy”. During evaluation, the searcher has probably identified potential service providers comparing them with the competition. If your client’s content did a good job during the awareness stage, then their business has made it to the shortlist. In this stage, the comparison might include things such as features of the product or what buyers get with different service packages, pricing, and reviews. To stand out, create content around the high-intent keywords they’re using and demonstrate why you’re better than the competition. Tim Brown has this to say about content topics in these stages:
When you address these issues head-on in your content, potential customers will start setting the correct internal expectations around the brand, the service, and what to expect when they reach out. In addition to tackling spicy topics, share reviews from previous customers to demonstrate credibility and help them overcome any doubts they may have about your client’s service or brand. Brightlocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2022 reveals that 77% of consumers “always” or “regularly” read reviews when browsing local businesses so you need to ensure these trust factors are prominently featured on your website and other review platforms. Given that some of their searches will include specific locations, make sure that your Google Business Profile listing is accurate and up-to-date. You can also use a business phone service to set up custom phone numbers for different locations or advertising campaigns—letting you see how your efforts are influencing the customer journey for your clients. Loyalty and ReferralIt’s easy to pay more attention to what happens before a searcher becomes a paying customer, and seemingly fail to be proactive about what happens after the sale. The first three stages require you to provide content. The last two stages require you to interact with the customer and collect feedback from them. And once the deal is closed, then there’s less need to be proactive about customer interactions, right? Wrong. There’s a lot that goes into earning a customer’s loyalty, and great customer service is one of them. In addition to advising your client to be responsive to customer inquiries, make sure that the contact information that your client provides is accurate. Provide different channels through which they can get help in case they have any questions. You also want to have a consistent flow of feedback from customers so that you can use them on review sites and on different touchpoints, such as landing pages and on the homepage.. 98% of potential customers read reviews for local businesses, meaning that what other customers say about your client’s business has an impact on conversion rates. Optimize your Customer Buying Journey NowUnderstanding how your client’s audience behaves at each stage of the customer buying journey is the first step towards optimizing it to deliver great buying experiences. We’ve talked about key moments during the buying journey, how each of these moments fits in with the buying stages, and what you can do to improve your conversions. To get started with implementing what we’ve discussed, sign up for Brightlocal’s 14-day trial. Brightlocal offers a suite of local SEO tools for agencies, so you can track your client’s local rankings to help inform you of the next steps. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/qVDU8Hp Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ |
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April 2023
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