You work hard during the week, and you should take your time to relax on the weekend. However, if you are like me and all you think about is how to improve, increase, engage traffic to your website and create additional value it can be hard to set down the laptop emerge once again into the daylight.
The good news is that whether you share more in common with a cave troll, or if you cannot stand the idea of becoming one with your desk, you can do five simple things – even on your day off that will improve your website and SEO.
Monitor
This method of SEO preparation and improvement is super easy to do once you set it up. Several simple tools exist as phone applications, custom made to allow you to see how much traffic you received over the weekend. You are going to be checking Facebook. While you are doing it, switch to one of the many data monitoring apps that connect with your Google Analytics accounts and start getting used to how traffic interacts with your website.
You might find that posting blog articles at different times of the day. Posting blog articles at various times of day may also result in a drastic impact on your traffic. Whether that impact is good or bad would require looking into the data a bit deeper though. A great blog ghostwriting firm can help you with this as well.
Plan
SEO & client engagement is built off establishing and carrying out a good marketing/SEO plan. Not too surprising there – in general, successful marketing approaches and businesses are predicated on having a plan. If you do not already set up some time to create a plan for your upcoming weeks, you may be surprised to find out how much more productive it makes you on Monday morning.
In fact, making a good plan changes many habits you have during the week. On Monday you can jump right into whatever you had planned out over the weekend. The weekend gives you leisure and perspective. Once you are in the trenches on Monday morning, you often lose perspective, and it becomes a “gosh-by-golly” approach to work.
“I will just check my email and see if anything in there requires me to do something..”
Core Values Consulting uses Wunderlist to Create Quick Notes
Planning does not have to be anything more than a couple of notes as they come to mind about what to do during the week. A note to write an article about five things you can do for SEO on the weekend perhaps? Wunderlist is a fantastic tool to use for this. It is simple, and you can use it to remind yourself of things you want to accomplish on certain days, weeks, or on individual projects. You can create sub-folders so that your notes for one topic stay separated from another. Moreover, it syncs between all your devices and computers.
Engage
“But didn’t you just say this was a few simple things you can do over the weekend – while I am leisurely and stuff?”
Yes, that is the idea still. So, let’s walk through this. How can you engage your customers or website visitors over the weekend? How can you improve their website experience, and make them want to see your content more than your competitors? It comes down to being innovative as well as creative.
The first thing you should do is never let a message go unanswered for a couple of days. Remember, it creates lots of anxiety for people, and business owners, to reach out to you. They usually will look at your info several times over the course of hours or days before calling, and once they have called, emailed, or texted they just want the call to be over (initially). Also, if they are reaching out to you on the weekend, this puts you in a tight spot. You are sure as heck do not want a customer call interrupting your 7-year-olds birthday party.
To solve this, it depends on which medium your customers reach out to you on. Hopefully many mediums, but that is a topic for another day. Let’s cover a few ideas below.
Telephone
This approach is as simple as leaving a message, but in that message consider leaving instructions for alternative ways to contact you. Text, instant message, Facebook, Facebook messenger. So consider asking for alternative ways to communicate. Many people screen their phone calls, and you are still probably going to be an unknown # when you call back. Phone tag is a death spiral. Offer and capture alternative ways to contact.
Text
Prepare a simple response. “Hey, [name]! Thanks for reaching out to me about [thing], I have a family event today, I will get back to you first thing Monday morning, is that ok? Alternatively, is there a better time to contact you?” A formulaic response does not have to be informal. It can sound as if you are having a conversation with someone, and one like this has the added benefit of seeking their input on your plans. It helps put the whole conversation at ease come Monday morning.
Instant Message/Facebook Messenger
Most of these have the option now-days to provide an auto response to all messages coming in. Be deliberate and be conscientious in creating an auto response. Something like, “I will get right back to you” should mean you are already picking up your phone to get right back to someone. A broken promise and an unanswered message are both in the same realm on this topic and lead to no business for your efforts. Consider something to the effect of “Thanks for your message, can I get back to you shortly?” … Then make sure to get back to them – maybe by adding it to your notes in Wunderlist 🙂
Again, auto-responders are great in that they create engagement, passively. However, saying “Sorry I cannot get back to you right now, I will get back to you as soon as possible.” sucks. If I send you an email on Friday at 5:01 pm, and get this, I have written it off long before Monday. I kind of figure you are not going to get back to me. You can, however, offer alternative ways to contact, or even guaranteed times to respond to their email.
You might even consider going through a service like vCita to provide customers and clients the ability to schedule a phone call appointment with you.
Alternatively, provide your text number or messenger info in your response email and have them reach out to you there. If they send you a text or message, respond with the above responses, and it will both provide a more personal response, and demonstrate to your clients/customers, several different ways for them to reach out and contact you.
Browse
This idea boils down to if you use the internet at all on the weekend. If you do, it takes little effort to identify a couple of competitors and also someone who is doing everything right. Take a look at the “doing everything right” website and take mental notes of what you would like to see on yours. Also, look at your competitor’s websites, with a critical eye. Take note of any differences, some of what they are doing might be working for them. Also, take note of the similarities, how can you provide similar info but differentiate yourself?
Use your mobile phone for this. Seriously! If your website or any of your competitors is not showing up best here, you are killing opportunities.
Watch Weekend TV or Read the Newspaper
You are reading this article from an internet marketing firm. We want to provide solutions for you to make sure your customers know that you are the people to solve their challenges. However, internet marketing is not the only game in town, nor should it be.
The goal of everything is to create “stickiness.” Potential customers should see your website, and be compelled to visit your Facebook, explore your YouTube, refer to your Blog, and during all this, they should provide many options for reaching out to you. It is a lofty goal, but when accomplished you can keep them bouncing between content you created (or paid to have created), and you will be the voice of the solution to their challenges as long as they stay in that customized user experience.
TV and Print, know this that is why they always reference a website or Facebook page on their copy. They want you to visit them there. If you do, do you think you will see a video advertisement of some sort (you bet) – they are trying to be sticky too! Point being, think about what motivates you to go from one source of ad copy to another, newspaper to a website for instance. Look, learn, and incorporate those methods into your printed material (even if it is a flyer), use it on your Facebook autoresponder, add it to your email signature.
The gist of this simple thing you can do is to learn, even when passively paying attention and enjoying a Sunday program.
Are We Missing Anything Obvious?
Do you use a process, shortcut, or application to increase productivity while allowing you to rest on the weekend?
Reach out to us with your thoughts, and we will cite you in our next article.
