How Real Estate Virtual Assistants Help Realtors

Virtual assistant work is a relatively new field, where staffers work remotely to provide clerical, administrative, and marketing assistance for their employers. It gained greater focus thanks to the pandemic, whose imposed restrictions to on-site work meant that companies had to find ways to get some of their vital work done by other means. Their flexibility means extra savings for the employer (as they don’t need office space and gear, and they are working on a contractual basis) and the virtual assistant can work at their own time and from the comfort of their own home.

A large number of fields send out work to virtual assistants every day, as they cover a wide variety of vital tasks that don’t need onsite work to fix. For example, a real estate agency can hand off most of its administrative tasks, allowing the brokers to focus on closing deals. How exactly does a real estate virtual assistant help realtors?

Administrative Assistance

The field of remote assistants started out as an offsite alternative to secretaries. While the growth of this field has led to more responsibilities for these kinds of staff, administrative work still remains a core service for them. Virtual assistants can take of the most critical clerical jobs, which include:

  • Communicating with potential clients and keeping in contact with business-to-business partners
  • Handling appointments and scheduling
  • Recording and cataloging minutes of important meetings
  • Database management
  • Keeping property management systems up to date

Operational Support

Virtual assistants can diversify their skill sets to better handle the jobs that their employer assigns to them. Many real estate assistants thus gain the necessary skills to not only support the realty for clerical work, but for operational jobs, as well. This means that a real estate virtual assistant can

  • handle schedules of property showings or maintenance
  • assist in recruiting and onboarding new agents
  • data entry and management for new, featured, and sold properties
  • maintaining communication with current and potential clients

These skills can help reduce the workload of a real estate agency’s departments, allowing them to meet their quotas quickly and efficiently.

Sales Support

More seasoned virtual assistants can also cover tasks related to sales and leads. These types of assistants have a strong real estate background, understand real estate market trends, and are familiar with the customer base. Real estate virtual assistants with the real estate sales skills can handle customer resources management software, sales and performance report compilations, pursuing and cold-calling potential buyers, monitoring and tabulating seller performance, and keeping abreast of market trends.

Digital Marketing

Real estate virtual assistants can fill the important role of online marketing services to help expand a realty’s exposure to a digital landscape. Many of these staffers have the essential knowledge of SEO and content management to help bring more traffic to a real estate agency’s site. Others are more experienced in social media and can provide insight on how to establish and maintain campaigns on popular platforms like Twitter or YouTube. Veteran staffers with a coding background can also take over front- and backend support for the brand’s website, as well as their promotional material.

Planning the Workload

Real estate virtual assistants are flexible and can cover a lot of spots for a real estate firm, but they’re not invincible. They can only take on so many roles within a real estate firm before they fall behind or outright suffer from the strain. They may be getting jobs that would require at least a team of offsite staffers to handle.

Before hiring a real estate virtual assistant, consider the following:

  • which tasks are the most time-consuming
  • which jobs are the most difficult to handle with the on-site staff’s current workload
  • what is the aim of the potential hire
  • potential fees
  • location of offsite staffers
  • work experience and skills
  • amount of time that the virtual assistant will be needed
  • level of onboarding needed for the offsite staffer (a simple manual versus a full orientation)

Real estate virtual assistants handle many of the crucial in-between work so that realtors can focus on building up their client base. However, the partnership can work only if the realtor understands what type of virtual assistant they need. Ask a reliable real estate virtual assistant provider about what works best.

What do Remote Assistants in the Philippines Do?

The Philippines has a reputation for being one of the top sources of business process outsourcing services in the world. It continues to grow, with late estimates from the previous year even expecting the country to gain a larger share of the BPO market in the next few years. This growth isn’t just fueled by the popular image of call center agents, however.

In recent years, BPO work has expanded from simply being call centers to outright clerical work for companies. This role is now known as the remote assistant, an outsourced worker who handles secretary-like responsibilities for a firm without being physically present. What exactly do remote assistants in the Philippines do?

Offsite Secretary

In general, remote assistants can handle clerical tasks for their employers while working offsite. These include scheduling meetings and events, handling staff calls, overseeing staff emails, and the like. The main advantages this has over the traditional clerical staff include budgetary benefits (having an off-site worker means less money spent on renting floor space and office equipment) and flexibility (many remote assistants work from home and have less restrictions than a regular working environment). 

These advantages became more prominent because of the pandemic. Restrictions on travel and cost-cutting measures meant that many offices could not operate properly as they are both short-staffed and have only minimal access to their equipment. Remote assistants helped alleviate the crunch, providing some semblance of normalcy while keeping staffers safe.

Marketing Support

Remote assistants can also provide marketing support for a company to help them bolster their market share. They can handle historical research, audience tracking, and brand promotion to achieve this goal. A well-rounded remote assistant can work on

  • content creation
  • web design
  • market analysis
  • brand marketing
  • research
  • social media support

In some industries, remote assistants can generally fill in the role of a senior marketing staffer for a firm, for an extra fee.

Customer Service, Still

Despite expanding capabilities and job coverage, remote assistants are still generally expected to handle customer service work for the companies that hire them. However, unlike the more familiar image of a call center agent that spends a shift in a concealed cubicle or a row of tables with other staffers, remote assistants can handle the work in the comfort of their own homes. This provides a number of advantages for both the employee and the remote assistant:

  • as mentioned earlier, costs are kept low as there is no need to pay for office equipment and amenities
  • the assistant can do the work at any time, with flexible (and sometimes negotiable) work hours
  • there is less stress connected to travel time or office problems

 

Remote assistants provide new and expanding services for brands that can provide flexibility to their otherwise rigid business model. Keep an eye out for new offerings and services that remote assistants in the Philippines can offer you.

Five Other Types of Search Intent to Take Note of in Digital Marketing

The primary purpose of digital marketing is to help a site get more visibility when people search things online. A website optimized for certain keywords has a higher chance to show up on top search results, leading to possible conversions for the site owners. In general, digital marketing is meant the most common forms of search intent for users:

  • providing relevant information
  • providing directions about information found in specific pages (works for encyclopedic sites like Wikipedia)
  • promoting a product or service to potential buyers
  • facilitating purchases online

These aren’t the only reasons why people use search, however. Site owners should understand that many users go online to meet other needs; doing so can help them better leverage their brand and cover a wider audience more effectively. Let’s look at five other types of search intent that can be helpful in digital marketing.

DIY Information

One of the most common types of short-form content these days is the do-it-yourself instruction post. These types of posts provide simple-to-follow methods for everything, from simple handicrafts to kit cars. This search intent isn’t restricted to enthusiasts, either; just about anybody would go looking for DIY instructions if it makes things more convenient. You can look into this share of the search environment if your brand covers items like home improvement, self-care, food, and the like. If you can still find ways to make this relevant to your brand even if you don’t normally handle DIY topics, then it’s a plus.

Trying to Remember

These days, people would go online to find something that suddenly pops into their mind or is reminded of. For example, when they hear a random tune on the radio, see an interesting picture, or look at a landmark, they may immediately go to a search engine to help them remember what those items are. Things have become much easier in this regard thanks to improvements in search algorithms; just typing in a few bits of lyrics a person remembers from a song or giving a brief description of a place or landmark can easily lead to the right answer on the first search.

Get the News

People don’t need to wait for the late-night special edition newspaper or the morning radio to get their news. Everything is available hot off the presses at the press of a button. The continuously-evolving mobile environment also means that news accessibility on-the-go also continues to improve. You can connect with this segment of the search environment by using some of your blog post slots to write news relevant to your market. For example, if you’re an aftermarket car parts supplier, you can write some news items about car shows or new vehicle parts regulations from time to time.

Learn More

One can simply go online to learn just about anything and everything under the sun these days. Want to learn a new language? Curious about the history of a place’s name? Interested in international relations between non-country entities? All of that and more are just a click away. Your brand can leverage these through daily trivia posts, or you can go further and reserve a couple of posts a month to interesting facts related to your target market.

Connect the World

Translation programs are becoming more complex by the day. It’s becoming easier to convert longer and longer sentences, allowing for longer and more meaningful conversations between people from different cultures. Connecting people across the globe is easier more than ever, thanks to easier access not just to online translator apps, but to language resources and teaching materials as well. This can provide another avenue for brands to establish their presence in their market, via understanding what common translation queries people use. Knowing the local language norms can go a long way to better serving your audience.

 

Search intent comes in many forms, meeting a variety of needs for different people. If you can understand why people search for different things online, you can better utilize your digital marketing resources to hit the right audience.

Three Reasons How Internal Search Helps Your Digital Marketing

Internal search is a feature in many websites where users can type keywords to locate information within other parts of the site. With this feature, users can easily locate specific topics or items that they want, especially if it does not appear on drop-down menus and primary links. It is visible in everything from information sites to online stores.

What many website owners may miss is that internal search not only helps improve user experience. It can be an indispensable part of your digital marketing strategy, if you know where to look. Let’s read up on three reasons why, below.

Understanding Your Audience

As stated above, many website owners only include the internal search function for the convenience of site visitors. While a positive user experience does provide value to your marketing efforts, the way users utilize your search bar is of greater importance to you and your marketing team. After all, observing your internal search can you give an idea of:

  • where your top internal search queries are coming from
  • the frequency of certain search terms
  • related searches for particular items
  • topical searches (like holiday-related terms)

You can get a better understanding of what services or products your visitors frequently need if you can discern patterns from internal search data effectively.

Refining Your Site Architecture

Once you get a better understanding of how your audience utilizes your internal search system, you can readily improve how your site looks and operates. You can modify which categories get priority billing on your dropdown menus, move around pages to upper or lower layers, or cull links that most users find redundant. You can also determine how to handle event-driven link taxonomies, such as for local or national holidays.

However, it is advised not to go overboard, as attempting to cater to every feature that the internal search data suggests can lead to severe performance issues. Providing content for every source of traffic can lead to a glut in pages to index, which can potentially lead to site outages as search crawlers attempt to tally all your new pages at once. This type of combinatorial explosion would be more detrimental than ignoring the potential of internal search data.

Increasing Value

All in all, the purpose of understanding your internal search data is to help increase the actual value of your business. Ranking higher than your competition and being on the first page of SERPs do not mean much if you don’t turn a profit from them. You would gain more if you focus on understanding your site visitors’ search habits than chasing top ranks alone.

If you can capitalize on your internal search data by determining what items are most needed and where most of the search queries are coming from, you can easily leverage your resources to focus on these queries and improve the visibility of their target pages. This, in turn, can further drive views to related information within the site, and also attract more visits from new users. All in all, your site gains value naturally.

 

Internal search may seem like a no-brainer to some, but it holds a great deal of value in the context of understanding user interactions with your site. Take full advantage of the knowledge you can gain from internal search results to improve your services and gain a wider audience.

Three Free Tools to Help Your SEO

An effective SEO strategy often involves the usage of various tools and plugins to work effectively. These tools cover everything from performance monitoring to site optimization, ensuring that you are regularly updated about how your campaigns are doing. Many of these tools come at a premium, however, something that most newer startups may not have enough funds for.

Thankfully, there are a handful of alternative options which offer a good deal of support for your SEO planning without having to spend a pretty penny. There’s even a handful of tools that provide assistance without even costing anything. Let’s look at three free tools that can help your SEO, below.

Wayback Machine

Competitor research is an important aspect of digital marketing as it gives you a snapshot of what the others in your market are doing. Done properly, you can determine what keywords they’re targeting, the kind of content they go for, and what other methods they use to interact with their target audience. However, some sites can change their setups regularly; you may miss key changes that helped them grow in the past.

Fortunately, the Wayback Machine helps you backtrack for that. Originally designed to keep an archive of various web pages for posterity, it can also be used to observe how your competitors’ sites looked and worked during boom periods in their history. It can also offer you insights into your own website’s performance, giving you an archived reference point to see which of your older methods may be returned or reinvented to help with your current campaigns. Be advised that the Wayback Machine does not perfectly archive all pages on the web; certain gap periods may exist, or a website may not be on the database at all.

GoFullPage

Let’s say you simply want to check your competition’s frontend, or you want to see if layout differences between browsers affect your site’s performance. You can take screenshots using your keyboard’s print screen function or you can use a snipping tool to do the same. This can be painstaking work as you have to repeat it on multiple pages and subpages at a time, and in some instances your screen captures may be cut off.

GoFullPage solves the issue by allowing you to take snapshots of everything on your currently open window. Just choose a desired page and click the snapshot button; the resulting image will be saved to a folder of your choosing. This plugin can be used for both desktop and mobile clients, allowing interoperability and ease. However, it is only currently available as an extension for Google Chrome.

Docs Online Viewer

Researching content for your next SEO campaign can lead you to pages that have PDF extensions on them. In some cases, these and other related file types can be viewed online via their home site’s native functionality. However, many websites instead automatically send the file on a download cue once you click the link. This can be an inconvenience for users, especially if you are pressed for time, data, and space.

There are many extensions that allow users to view download-only files on a browser natively. One such popular extension is Docs Online Viewer, which temporarily hosts such links so you can view them online. Uniquely, it also offers previews of certain PDFs that need an email signup before becoming viewable. This plugin is available for both Chrome and Firefox.

 

SEO can require some extra investment in order to work well, but it doesn’t always have to be a financial one. Be on the lookout for more free tools to help your digital marketing plans more effectively.

Four Key WordPress Issues to Address in Your Site

WordPress continues to be the leading platform for site hosting across the web. A report earlier this year notes that it is the preferred content management system for 63.1% of brands online. Not surprising considering its ease of use, large selection of customization options, and sizable and very active backend community.

Despite all these benefits, WordPress is not an infallible system. Indeed, even the most user-friendly interfaces can suffer from hiccups that can severely impact site performance and user experience. Web designers should take note of at least four key WordPress issues that they have to address to keep their websites working properly.

Analytics 4 Integration

Google has officially transitioned its Google Analytics platform into the new GA4 standard back in July. The updated platform boasts improved metrics tracking to ensure that web owners have a better understanding of what their site visitors are. Official communication from the search engine stated that they aim to assist site owners by transitioning the analytics properties to the new standard automatically. However, this may not apply to all sites due to certain circumstances. As such, it is recommended that you check your backend and ensure that the Analytics profile is updated to the GA4 standard to continue being updated about your site’s performance.

Core Web Vitals

Core web vitals are performance factors monitored by Google to determine a website’s overall quality with regards to overall usability. These cover load speed (how fast a page fully loads its content), page interactivity (how fast a page registers a user’s click or interaction), and page stability (sudden changes to the page caused by tertiary page objects like pop-up ads). Many older sites fail the CWV test because they do not update their content to meet recent standards, which change frequently. To ensure that your site stays within the minimum CWV standards, keep an eye out on these factors:

  • Loaded images
  • Quality of the web hosting service
  • Utilization of a content delivery network to reduce load times wherever in the world the site is loaded
  • Caching systems
  • Front-end setups like theme and fonts
  • Comment pagination

Link Updates

Links retain a key part in driving traffic to other parts of your website, especially to pages buried deep within your sitemap infrastructure. In the process of updating your website to meet current standards, you may accidentally break many of your older hyperlinks due to changes in URL formatting and the like. In order to avoid future errors related to this issue keep an eye out for

  • Links in need of redirects
  • Link targets (opening a new tab after clicking a hyperlink, etc)
  • Broken links to pages that no longer exist
  • Contextual anchor texts

Sidebars

Due to the increase in mobile users in recent years, many web developers have shifted to the mobile-first mindset to cater to the large consumerbase. While this has led to innovations in interactions and user experience, this has also caused the deprecation of many website features, such as sidebars. While mobile devices don’t really support such features because of the reduced interface space, they still offer valuable internal linking options to help provide visibility to deeper relevant content for a page. Consider optimizing your sidebar even if you don’t expect mobile users to pay attention to it.

 

WordPress is not a trouble-free platform for your website. Nonetheless, once you learn to leverage its strengths and deal with its weaknesses, you can effectively use it to market your brand more effectively.

Three Myths Related to Link-Building

Link-building remains an important aspect of SEO, whether it’s for a small startup or a major world-spanning company. They continue to help drive traffic to a website, ensuring more eyes see whatever the site is offering. Internal link building also ensures relevant information from deeper within the site is also seen by visitors, increasing interaction.

Unfortunately, link-building is affected by many myths that make people wary of using them in their marketing strategies. These misconceptions, though easy to disprove, are so prevalent that it can be hard to counteract them. Let’s look at three of the more common myths regarding link-building in SEO.

Guest Blogs and Link Buying

There is a long-standing practice where website owners rely on guest bloggers to provide content with relevant links pointing to their site’s top pages. Alternatively, site owners prefer to purchase links in bulk to help drive traffic to their pages. The driving force is to save time and money by setting these up in large numbers to get traffic immediately.

Google has stated several times that such tactics do not help in increasing a site’s visibility on search results, or worse, can actively hurt site performance. The search engine even has a checklist to determine whether or not a blog entry is a guest post. Google encourages site owners to maintain a more organic method of link-building for positive traffic growth.

Site Authority

For years, marketing professionals have discussed the importance of domain authority and other related metrics for building links for your website. These metrics come from a variety of SEO-related marketing brands that cover various aspects of website promotion. It was claimed that an external link with a high domain rating or citation flow has a higher chance of helping drive more users to another site. 

Rather than looking at these arbitrary domain numbers, it is suggested to stick to looking at actual topic relevance when linking. Alternatively, consider a search engine’s actual scoring criteria over third-party metrics that may only cover a fraction of the detail. A low-DR blog post with comprehensive information for your page has greater value to you than a very popular online entry that only has a cursory connection to what you have. 

Internal Links

There are still websites out there that rely solely on dropdown menus and highlighted link buttons to show internal links deeper within the site. These links would be prominently presented in the UI in order to catch a user’s attention. The idea is that the visuals are more effective in catching a site visitor’s attention than reading through content and checking hyperlinks.

This misconception is fueled by a focus on expediency, especially for larger websites where products come and go regularly. Failure to provide contextual internal links to various relevant pages throws away a good deal of traffic. Optimizing internal links is a must if a webmaster hopes to establish a network of related pages for a site.

 

Link building holds a lot of power to improve a website’s SERP level, but it only works if it is utilized properly. Avoid the trap of link-building misconceptions and you’ll be on your way to an effective link-building process. Consult your digital marketing consultant to better understand how the process actually works.

The Benefit of Detailed Facebook Marketing

Facebook is undeniably an industry leader when it comes to social media. It boasts a whopping 2.89 billion active users from across the world in the second half of 2021, a significant number that overshadows many of its competitors today. The large and culturally diverse user base has made Facebook one of the most popular digital platforms for businesses and professionals who wish to expand their market reach.

Facebook marketing can be simple if you know the basics. However, many business owners who flock to the site to promote themselves often resort to the usual social posting, overlooking more appropriate channels that can increase their exposure exponentially. One such channel is detailed marketing.

What is Detailed Facebook Marketing?

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The aim of marketing is to expose a brand or product to the intended audience through the most effective methods and channels available. Failure to use the proper channels means that your advertising will not get across to the people you are marketing it for. For example, a business owner would create a page for their product, but would treat the page as more of a personal account; the posts would appear in general feeds and would not get the intended response and conversion.

That is what detailed marketing intends to avoid. Detailed marketing focuses on identifying particular audience features and factoring them into your posts, thereby grabbing the attention of the right type of user. By creating posts that are crafted to appeal to specific audience demographics, a business can easily achieve their promotional objectives with less effort and costs than traditional marketing. 

How It Works

Detailed facebook marketing image 2.1

The aim of Facebook marketing is to have a direct engagement with your intended market. It could be as simple as a like/share combination, or it could also include direct replies to your recent posts. The end result, of course, is for the target user to click or follow through on your marketing outlets.

Detailed marketing intends to increase the engagement and click-through rate substantially. An experienced Facebook marketer can create ads and posts for specific age groups, audience types, and locations. Instead of creating multiple general posts that can cost more time, effort, and money, a business can instead focus on a small number of posts aimed at certain focus groups, who can help spread brand awareness via word-of-mouth (and the occasional algorithm effects).

Why Detailed Marketing Matters

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In the current environment where businesses are still on the slow grind thanks to the pandemic, getting conversions through the most efficient methods is key for a higher ROI. Thus, knowing how to make Facebook content that focuses directly on the people you want to interact with is important for the success of your business online. To put things into perspective, here is an example:

  • A general type of post about a product is posted on a business’s Facebook page, and receives probably tens or at least a couple hundred likes, with a few comments mixed in.
  • In contrast, a post that takes into account which demographics it best fits with can expect at least three times more engagement across all platforms, with a similar increase in click-throughs.

Additionally, effective and focused Facebook marketing can expand your audience share for a fraction of a cost. Instead of spending big on ads and posts aimed at larger groups from the get-go, you can create fewer and more specific ads that are marketed directly to smaller focus groups, with a better chance of success. Take advantage of this feature and make the most out of your online marketing efforts.

 

Social platforms are a powerful tool to help promote your business and products to the world. Learn the know-hows of effective Facebook marketing and help expand your business further!

How TikTok is changing the game for content delivery

Back in September 2016, Bytedance, a startup company from China, created an app called Douyin. Within the first year of its launch, there were over 100 million users and billions of views. Seeing its potential, the developers explored the international market by officially launching TikTok in September 2017. The app did not start out big, but when Bytedance bought Musical.ly it became a rolling stone of success. TikTok’s success online is of interest to digital businesses and SEO marketing experts because of the viral growth it has achieved over the years. Let’s look at how it can help your brand gain a wider audience via its unique approach to content delivery.

What exactly is TikTok?

TikTok is a giant social media app that allows its users to share short 15 second videos that can be taken with just a cellphone. The videos were not content specific, meaning any one can make videos about anything. It also was a platform where users can interact with one another. It does have similarities with Snapchat, however, TikTok allows users to share their content globally. You do not even need to be a professional to jazz up your videos. The app comes with its own filters, stickers, and background music. Basically, TikTok provided a way for people to get creative hassle-free.

TikTok and content delivery

tiktok for content delivery section 2 There are a number of factors that influence what you see in your For You page. TikTok recommends videos based on (but not limited to): User interactions – videos you like or share, comment on, or the kind of videos you create. Your device and account settings – device type, language settings, and country settings. Video information – the background music, captions, and hashtags used in the video. Along with other factors, TikTok makes every For You page unique to its user and their interests. This unique algorithm actually makes videos reach more people. You do not need thousands of followers to have your video go viral.

Using TikTok for content marketing

tiktok for content delivery segment 3 Even though this platform is not even a decade old, content marketing has become increasingly popular on this app. TikTok’s platform has over 600 million monthly active users making this app too hard to pass up when you want to reach as many people as possible. TikTok users are usually of the younger generation. According to the latest statistics, roughly 50% of its users are under the age of 34 and spend an average of 52 minutes per day on the app. In terms of marketing, businesses can make use of the TikTok influencer marketing strategy to reach a younger audience. Because of the hashtag feature and how their algorithm works on TikTok, it has helped businesses reach their target market and get millions of views. This in turn was deemed good for both the social media app and companies who made use of this feature. TikTok isn’t showing signs of slowing down. It has a highly engaged community that produces limitless content. The best thing about TikTok is that they make their users feel valued because the app caters to their interests while also creating opportunities for companies to grow their businesses through digital marketing.

Opportunities and Setbacks when Marketing in times of Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a serious disruption in the lives of many people around the world. People weren’t able to go out of their houses much, travel was heavily restricted, physical contact was limited, and businesses and even some government services were shut down for safety. For a while, it seemed like the world stopped turning.

Nonetheless, things still continue albeit with a different kind of normal for the time being. The same thing goes for digital marketing; just because most businesses are closed down doesn’t mean people will not be out and about looking for things to purchase or services to avail of. Before going all in and intensifying your online campaign, however, you need to weigh the pros and cons of continuing such a campaign in a pandemic or similar emergency period.

A New Audience

One of the consequences of the global pandemic is the requirement for people to stay at home as much as possible to stop the spread of infection. This means most people were forced to work at home, or were furloughed if their jobs can’t be done off-site. With so many people stuck at home with few things to do, they would turn to other things to pass the time when they’re not working, like visiting the web. This means your digital marketing campaign has a larger potential market to work with.

With more people potentially going online either for work or leisure, you have a greater chance of increasing your exposure and expanding your market coverage. Putting additional effort on the traditional digital marketing channels like local SEO, email marketing and situation-relevant social media has a higher potential return of investment thanks to the wider potential audience. There’s also the possibility that your brand can be exposed to other locations that have been also affected by community lockdowns, helping drive further to you.

Cost-Cutting Galore

One of the critical issues that businesses had to contend with during the pandemic was the reduced income due to the lower number of clients that they received. As such, they may be forced to lower their projected growth targets and cut down on expenses. Business owners had to balance the books, finding ways to keep their now meager budgets floating while trying to keep a stable income. They’ve also had to worry about long-term prospects for their businesses even way after the pandemic is over.

This situation isn’t something that bigger corporations can get away with like in the past. With the global markets virtually going into a standstill, much of their regular revenue has been affected as well. It’s not only small companies and independent entrepreneurs that will have to be wary about ambitious digital marketing targets; even the more recognized brands will have to take a second look. Ensuring that their products have something to offer in these times can be helpful, but it’s not entirely foolproof, so they may scale down their marketing if it helps them keep their bottom line through the crisis.

Keeping a Balance

The pandemic may be over in a few more weeks at best, but digital marketing experts are split on whether things will normalize quickly after this incident. On one end, there’s a lot of potential new clients to market your brand to. On the other, your short-term growth may be marred by any long-term repercussions on both clients and employees, especially if layoffs or extended furloughs happened.

It is important that your online marketing team should strike a proper balance between taking advantage of the current pandemic-induced market trends and keeping a realistic forecast of how the prices will move in the next few months. Keeping it safe by maintaining a moderate online campaign could be a good start, but if you are confident that your local SEO or email campaigns have retained enough long-term clients, you should take your chances.

 

The global pandemic presents a lot of challenges and opportunities for the keen-eyed business owner when it comes to digital marketing. Just remember that times may still be rough after things have calmed down, so remember to keep your campaigns in moderation and your online marketing strategies are sure to succeed.




Limited Functionality for Google My Business During the Pandemic

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people were forced to stay at home, disrupting their lives and their livelihood. Many businesses either entirely shut down, make their staff work at home, or send them on extended furloughs (paid or otherwise), disrupting productivity and causing a slowdown in economic growth. It has affected companies at all level of the economy, and even a massive international brand like Google was affected.

Google was still able to provide key services to its clients thanks to work-from-home staff, but many of its key features were either scaled down or entirely disabled to match the number of available hands. One of these services is Google My Business; only key features were retained, limiting its current value for local SEO. Let’s look into Google My Business’s current situation and how it affects you as a business.

Only the Essentials

Google My Business features a multitude of options to allow businesses to better promote themselves online. Business owners can provide comprehensive addresses and contact information, give previews of their services and amenities, share news via the updates feature, and accurately gauge client feedback through the star rating, FAQs, and reviews functions. All these bits of information also appear on Search and Maps results, further increasing exposure.

With the work slowdowns, however, most of these features have been scaled down. New listing requests and verifications, as well as critical information edits are delayed, while other edits that are considered non-priority will have to wait for an extended period or even until the pandemic is over before they can be applied. On the other hand, business pictures, reviews and questions are slowly coming back to full functionality, but are nonetheless still experiencing delays as they work through their understandably large backlog.


How This Affects You

Many businesses these days rely on Google My Business to help improve their online presence and market their brands to a wider market. With the limited functionality, business owners and digital marketers cannot fully take advantage of all its features, thus reducing promotion potential.

With reduced features, business owners will not be able to quickly update any additional information they can use to improve their listing quality. Some reviews and questions that could help gauge how people feel about the business during the pandemic may not be published in time. Most importantly, new or moving businesses will not be able to verify their information or business claims until after the pandemic is over, making them miss the chance to market to the people stuck at home.

How to Work Around It

Google My Business may be a key asset in your online marketing campaigns, but its limited functionality doesn’t mean that you’ve lost your entire target market. You will just have to use other methods to keep you relevant in search results. This applies whether or not your site is currently limited due to the pandemic.

Emphasize your social media channels on your website to provide customers with alternative means to contact or search for you. Utilize other local SEO sites that offer related if not entirely similar features to GMB. Above all else, try not to entirely disable your website if your staff are directly affected by the pandemic; your data is still crawled by Google’s search crawler, so keeping your site at least partially active can help you stay up on search views.

 

Don’t let the currently limited functionality of Google My Business adversely affect your brand. Take advantage of this situation to look for more ways to promote yourself online, and gain a wider audience for your products or services.




Casual Narrative Writing for Web: How to Do It

Ever saw websites with casual narratives?

If you want to replace the old-fashioned content in your website and want to learn how to implement a more conversational narrative, you have come to the right place!

If you prefer formal and traditional narrative writing for websites, you might cringe when reading the content of modernist websites. But dislike it as much as you want, website visitors or users are more attracted to casual narratives, and they tend to stay longer in these websites. This means casual narrative has more SEO services and benefits to offer than formal narratives as casual website narratives are proven to reduce site bounce rates.

So, let’s say you’re convinced that your website should switch from formal to casual—how do you do it?

Story-tell, don’t sell

We know that the main purpose of your website is to sell your products and services. Guess what: your target audience and customers already know that too. Overexposing them to your desire to sell them products or services through formal, traditional, hard-sell, and pushy narrative writing for web will only drive them away from your site.

Tell a story - Redkite Internet Marketing

Instead of bragging about the things that would set your products or services apart from other companies’, share reasons why you think your products or services will be beneficial to your target customers in a warm, friendly manner. If possible, include tiny, authentic stories that show how much your products or services made previous customers and clients happy.

Remember to be human

What separates formal narrative writing for web from casual narrative the most is the tone. Through the years, the continuous and massive use of templated call-to-actions and passages made formal narratives and websites sound stiff and robotic.

Be human - Redkite Internet Marketing

 

When making narrative writing for the web, remember to sound human to achieve that casual tone. Remember to use words and phrases such as “Hey” or “Hello there” instead of “Welcome to Company X”, and “Oops! Sorry!” or “Oh no!” instead of “We apologize for the inconvenience”. Frequently use “us” and “our” as an alternative for the company’s name while addressing the visitors with “you” and “your” to give the narrative a personal touch and emphasize company-to-customer engagement. It also wouldn’t hurt to include something funny like jokes and puns—just make sure they are not offensive and are safe for all ages.

Personal touch - Redkite Internet Marketing

 

We all know how important SEO is, and we need to get those money keywords in there because at the end of the day, your website is for your business. You might be worried that casual narrative will make it hard for you to insert keywords. In fact, integrating keywords in casual passages is not impossible and is even easier than integrating them in a formal narrative. It’s actually even better because the keywords will not sound forced into the website content.

Natural sounding keywords - Redkite Internet Marketing

Turn the narration into a tour

Virtually, users visiting your website are guests and your website is a place for your guests to explore your products and services. To make it simpler: your homepage is the lobby and the other pages are the office rooms or exhibit halls.

Thus, it would make sense to approach the narration like a tour guide casually conversing with a tourist.

Now, it doesn’t mean that you should start using phrases such as “And now we’re in the Contact Page” and “If you look here, you will see our About Us Page”. It only means that your transition from one page to another or from one fold to another must be seamless, like the whole website has a consistent story flow. For example, instead of “About Us” as H1, use “Meet Our Team” or “Our Story”, like you are introducing a group of people in person or casually mentioning the beginnings story of your company during a stroll.

Make it a narrative tour - Redkite Internet Marketing

Another way to make a seamless transition is by using the phrases “Need more info?” or “Got some questions?” as snippets in the Contact Us Page to express the thought that if the users have questions after the “tour” or if they need to clarify some things up before availing your products or services, their inquiries are welcome.

When trying for a casual narrative writing for web, remember to keep it conversational. Your website narrative plays a part in branding through the creation of a persona. It would do good for your brand if your website visitors are able to feel the people behind the company, the face behind the brand, and the human behind the keyboards. When you show your company’s human side through your website, not only will they stay longer in your pages, but they will most likely come back because they positively enjoyed the visit.

If you need help with your website narrative, feel free to inquire about one week free trial. If you are unsure if casual narrative suits your site, we here are Redkite Digital Marketing Philippines offer free consultations—guarantee no hidden fees.