SEO can be a daunting and time-consuming task, and often most businesses have don’t have the budget to invest in their digital marketing activities but that shouldn’t stop you from improving your website’s ranking. Google offers a simple yet powerful way to improve your rankings through Google My Business. What is the Google My Business profile? First things first, Google My Business is a free tool offered to business owners to help them manage how a business appears on Google’s search results. You can include relevant information that users will use to search for businesses, for example location and contact details. If you own a business, you should definitely set up an optimised Google My Business listing and we’re going to explain how to do that in this blog. Step one – create, claim or verify your Google My Business profile Let us start with the basics, the first thing to do is to create a listing or claim and verify your existing one, all of which can be done via this page. Start filling in all the relevant details for your business which are listed below: Business information An optimised Google My Business listing has all the below information filled in and updated on a regular basis including: Your business name Enter your business name as it appears everywhere else, this needs to be consistent across all channels so you can be found online from potential customers. Category You can choose one primary category for your business and another nine relevant categories, be as specific as possible about what your business is about. Address Enter and verify your physical address so potential customers can find you on local search results. There is also the options for those that haven’t got a physical location as well as for businesses that have multiple service locations. Phone number Include your phone number so that potential customers can call your business and if you are a local business customers feel more comfortable if they see a local number. Website Update your website information if you have one so that you can drive traffic to it and customers can learn more about your business. Opening hours Another important aspect of optimising your Google My Business listing is having the correct opening times on your listing and keeping them up to date on upcoming holidays. This is very important if you are a restaurant for example, where customers are searching for opening hours to visit you. Business summary This is where add further information about your business, products or services. Consider using your company’s elevator pitch so that potential customers can know what your business is all about, just don’t forget to use relevant to your industry keywords in that description. Step two – include company updates and news Google My Business listing offers something called Google posts, where managers of the listing can post updates about upcoming events, promotions, newsletters, news and blog posts. Google posts appear on Google search on the business knowledge

We were joined by digital marketing student, Hitam Hassan last for her work experience placement. Hitam worked alongside our digital marketing specialist, Tony and has written a blog on her experience with us. My name’s Hitam and I’m currently studying digital marketing at Birmingham City University. I recently completed a work experience placement at Digital Glue. During my time there, I’ve learnt so much about digital marketing and really enjoyed my time in the office, working with the Digital Glue team. I’d say getting work experience is incredibly important when you’re working towards a specific career. It looks good on your CV and puts you ahead of the game when you start a new job because you’ve already got the skills and experience from your placement. You will perform confidently as you will understand the aspects of the role you’re there to do. What I love about being on a work placement is that I get to learn and put my skills into practice, creating pieces of work which is a much more enriching experience. Here’s a snapshot of what I got to experience… On my first day I had a meeting with Tony, Digital Glue’s PPC and SEO expert. He wanted to find out what I already knew about digital marketing and we discussed what key areas I wanted to learn more about. Tony was my mentor for the week so I was given a desk right opposite him so that I could work with him. Once I was settled in I was introduced to the whole team. Every Tuesday, Digital Glue has a team meeting where the Managing Director, Javan, gives everyone an update on how the business is doing and the team share their successes, which was really nice to see. Everyone also shares what their key focus is for the week. It was really interesting to be apart of this because it gave me insight into what everyone does in the business, it was like a family-like workplace environment. They also had team lunch on Tuesday, where the company treats everyone to a nice lunch every fortnight and we all sit and eat together. Over the next few days I learnt how to manage Google Ads accounts for existing clients, set up a new account from scratch and create ads for Google, Facebook and LinkedIn. I didn’t realise how many factors there are to consider when creating ads, such as including the right keywords that you want to rank for, testing ads to check which one is performing better and on which platform, as well as monitoring the competition. During my placement, I needed some help coming up with some ideas for my University assignment so the team suggested we have a brain storm session, they spared time out of their busy schedule to have a meeting to discuss my brief and come up with ideas, just as they would do for a real client, it was a great experience. Getting first hand experience of working

Courtney Patrick is the Head of Creative and Web at Digital Glue. With a background in strategic branding, she brings a keen eye to the team in helping businesses of all sizes and sectors differentiate themselves from the crowd and align their team to create consistently amazing brand experiences online and in person. You can find out more about Courtney and connect with her on LinkedIn here. A fresh start isn’t just reserved for January, and it could not be more fitting that my time at Digital Glue starts during my favourite time of year: Christmas. As a US expat, you learn that in the UK there are a few things that are synonymous with Christmas: turkey, brussel sprouts, the infamous pudding, German markets, and, of course, the Christmas adverts. When the festive period rolls around, TV just wouldn’t be the same without Moz The Monster, Buster The Boxer and The Man On The Moon, however, it isn’t just John Lewis that steals the show when it comes to a winning Christmas campaign. Brands from every background strive to bring customers on an emotional journey in the hope it will ultimately bring them through their doors, both physically and online. With a background in brand strategy, I think the idea behind the Christmas advert is great. Christmas is the ideal time of year for your brand to reinforce the greater purpose behind what you do outside of selling. However, what should be an accessible opportunity for businesses of every size has now become overshadowed by big advertising budgets and celebrity spotlights. The reality is that Christmas, and the entire holiday season, is one of the most important times for your brand to build better connections with your customers. Whether it’s bringing in new faces, re-engaging old connections, or strengthening your existing relationships, Christmas provides a platform for your brand to reinforce the great purpose underpinning everything you offer. In short, if you can’t build a personal connection with your customers at Christmas, then when can you? How do you build a winning Christmas campaign on a budget? 1. Start with clarifying your brand’s story By now, you’ve probably seen the concept of having a clear ‘why’ come across your LinkedIn feed a few times thanks to the brilliant Simon Sinek. It isn’t just for show, there’s a reason why this is so important. Your ‘why’ should be the driving force that differentiates your business from the masses and sets out clear customer promises. This purpose is the foundation for everything you do and say as a brand, and should be the foundation of your overall brand story and your Christmas campaign. You can read more about brand purpose in our previous blog “What’s a brand without a purpose?”. What does that look like in action? Let’s say you’re an ice cream shop that’s overall brand purpose is providing customers better access to tasty low calorie options. You could take inspiration from Kevin the Carrot and craft a very compelling story

In our previous blog, ‘A beginners guide to digital PR’, we looked at what digital PR is, discussed its benefits and how to measure its success, and touched upon what to include in a digital PR strategy. In this blog, we’ll share our tips for building an effective digital PR strategy. Always start with the objectives It may sound obvious, but you can’t build a strategy without knowing what you’re trying to achieve. If you’ve already decided that you need to build a digital PR strategy, chances are you have already considered your objectives carefully. It’s likely you’ll be trying to achieve one of, or a combination of, the following: Increased brand awareness Improved SEO Increased lead generation (in this case, digital PR will likely be part of a wider marketing strategy)   Let’s say your objective is increasing brand awareness, for example. What does success look like to you? There are a number of ways you can measure increased brand awareness, such as: An increase in direct traffic to your website. Set a percentage increase you would like to have achieved by a certain point and use Google Analytics to track this. An increase in search volume. Again, set a percentage increase you would like to have achieved by a certain point. You can track search volume using tools such as SEMRush.   Social media engagement. The more aware people are of your brand, the more likely they are to be talking about you and engaging with you on social media. Measure increases in how many times your brand name is mentioned on social media channels, and analyse metrics such as reach, engagement, followers and impressions. Understand your audience Do you know where your audience are getting their information online? If you’re a B2B business, is it online trade press? If you’re a B2C business, are they more interested in less traditional media, such as blogs and vlogs? Before you kick off any digital PR activity, you need to understand not only where your audience are, but what they’re engaging with. If you haven’t done so already, create audience personas. What are your customer’s demographics? What problems can your business solve for them? Therefore, what are the key messages you need to be projecting? You can back up your audience personas by using the data that’s available to you. Google Analytics and social media analytics can tell you a lot about who your audience are and what they’re most interested in. What pages are they visiting on your website? What types of posts get the most engagement on social media? Understand your target media Now you hopefully know your target audience inside out, you’ll need to create a target media list. This could range from online publications to bloggers, YouTubers and Instagrammers. Whatever type of digital media you’re targeting, consider who you need to get in touch with. If you’re targeting an online magazine, for example is there an editor or writer who specialises in your particular topic or