Your Digital Marketing to-do list for friday afternoons
There are some digital housekeeping activities that are so important to do and can make such a big difference to your web and social media presence and yet we never have time to do them because we’re too busy creating and publishing new content and running ads. I allocate Friday afternoons when I’m feeling a little lazy, to doing these tasks all at once. Some of these tasks only need to be done infrequently, some every week. Some might benefit you in the long term, some will help you out RIGHT NOW.
Here we go
WordPress:
• Update all your plugins Out of date plugins could be slowing down your site, check that the updates do not break your site or reduce speed or functionality.
• Audit your plugins and decide if they’re still needed, too many will slow down page speed. Delete the ones that are no longer needed, don’t just deactivate them.
• Update your web theme and version of WordPress.
• Put descriptions and links in your categories. Furthermore, make sure your blog categories are Google-friendly and use keywords you want to be ranking for. Instead of using categories like ‘beginner’ make sure you are using ‘tips for new runners’. This article explains why and how in more detail. It’s also necessary that your website is neatly organised with tags and categories in the first place.
Websites in general:
• Size down any massive images that are slowing down your website. You can use a plugin for this. I use Smush. It’s worth sacrificing image quality for page speed, yes, even if you are a photographer.
• Your images can help with SEO. Make sure all images have images and descriptions that will help you win in search. Check out my blog about this – best practices for uploading images to WordPress.
• Check your website speed through GTmetrix and implement the recommendations for areas you score low in.
• Check for dead links on your site that could be affecting your SEO negatively using Dead Link Checker.
• Do your contact forms work? You wouldn’t believe the number of times someone calls me up saying they’ve tried everything, are spending a fortune and haven’t got any leads. It’s the first thing I check when consulting with a new client. Save yourself a lunch meeting with a marketing expert and make sure your form is working first.
• Check for typos, there’s usually one lurking somewhere no matter how many times you check.
• Check your content too, does that still sound as good as when you wrote it? Do some things need to be updated to keep with the times? Or just deleted?
• Uploading a Facebook Pixel and Google Tag Manager to your site can help lower your websites spam score, even if you don’t really use it.
• Check your backlinks on Google Search Console. Someone may have blogged about you and linked back to you that your Google Alerts didn’t pick up on. I’m going to hope you’re already signed up with Google Search Console and are regularly checking out your stats.
• If you haven’t set up Google Alerts to monitor mentions of your business (and if you’re ruthless your competitor’s businesses) – do it now.
• Check how your website is looking on tablet and mobile. Ask your Mum to give it a once over too.
Social media management:
• Check your Facebook posts and click on to see who has ‘liked’ them. Invite the people who have liked your post but not your page, to like your page also. They may not, but it’s worth trying.
• Unfollow people on Instagram whom you don’t really engage with. It’s good to keep your following count down so that you can engage with the people who are super into your content. There is no reason to be following celebrities like Kim Kardashian on your business Instagram or Twitter account unless you plan to repurpose their content on your own stories or retweets. Whenever I take over a new account, this is one of the first things I do. You yourself aren’t a celebrity so make sure you’re following back people who love you, and take the time to give them a like now and again. The great thing about social media is it can give potential buyers a feeling like they have a relationship with your brand, just from little details like this. I don’t care how big your band is, you’re there to engage with your customers, not to be admired like an 18-year-old glamour model. /rant
• Open Instagram and Twitter and throw out some likes and encouraging comments on your feed. If you follow community hashtags you can reach a new audience. You should reply to comments directed @you as and when they come in.
• Follow new people. Suggested followers can really be quite useful on Instagram and Twitter, I find that the algorithms do find people who are very relevant to the account I’m working with. Following people can alert them to your presence at least, and if they find you relevant to the micro-topic they’re working with, they usually give a follow back. This expands your audience but also, curates it so that you can create a better ‘lookalike’ audience on ads.
• Remove followers who are NOT relevant to your product or audience. I don’t want irrelevant people such as Malaysian plastic surgeons following my food brand. I want foodies, mums, chefs, food bloggers and home cooks following my profiles. Why? Well, I wrote about that here.
