James Reynolds continues his resident guest expert appearances on Dubai One television and is interviewed about content marketing and social media strategy in 2014. Presenter Greg Fairlie asks the question. Check out the interview below.
In this Video:
00:29 – The Status of E-commerce today
00:50 – Online purchase statistics
01:05 – What Online Businesses Need To Be
01:24 – Social Media As Utilised By Businesses Now
01:53 – How Veravo customers Use Social Media
02:21 – Standing Out in the World Wide Web
Greg: Businesses today especially SMEs want to get more traffic on their website and make more sales. Search engine optimization is one way and often talked along with Google Adwords which help companies determine what keywords are most valuable to their business. James Reynolds is with us and can update us on the rapidly changing phase of internet marketing. James, great to see you with us again!
James: Great to be here Greg.
Greg: Is running a business on the internet getting easier or harder do you think as customers particularly become better informed? James: I think certainly what worked in the past no longer works today because there is such a wealth of information out there. Often consumers are better informed about the products and services that they’re buying than the sales people actually trying to sell it to them. In fact, about 70% of a buying decision will be made by a prospect researching online before they even contact a business so the shift of power moved right back to the consumer. As businesses to be able to influence consumers now, we have to be able to inform, educate, and inspire using content marketing to build up our trust and authority in the marketplace and being with the challenge of doing business.
Greg: Are companies making the most of social media and how in itself is that platform evolving?
James: I think many businesses are becoming too reliant on social media, especially small to medium businesses and that’s a really risky strategy. Just recently Facebook updated their algorithm so that Facebook page posts no longer see the 20% visibility that they’d had in the past; they’d probably be seeing between 1% and 5%. If you are a business relying on that channel, that’s far less visibility and a far huge impact on your own business. So what I advise my customers to do is to use social media as an outpost and to use their website as home base; and what I mean by that is engage with prospects on social media entering in to the conversation but always move those people back in to your website where you put your very best content, you develop that conversation, and you do it there because it is an asset that you control.
Greg: Some good advice there. Now how can companies stand out as the internet itself just becomes a lot more crowded?
James: That’s a very good point. Yeah, there is somewhere between two billion web pages online right now and I think that number doubles every few months. As businesses, we actually are not in competition just with our competitors, we also are in competition with our prospects, friends and family on Facebook and also monkeys falling out of trees on YouTube; we are just being interrupted constantly throughout the day. So to use an interruptive type of marketing and a buzz style of marketing really is not going to cut the cloth anymore because there is so much noise. What businesses should really be doing is using informative, engaging content that is valuable because then prospects will really hold them close just like they would do friends and family so by the time they actually need that product or service, you’re going to be at the top of the mind as a business.
Greg: Great! We’ve unfortunately run out of time. We appreciate your time today, James Reynolds. Thanks a lot!
James: Thank you Greg.
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