This time last week I was in Skipton at the castle for Google's #DigitalGarage digital skills training event.
“Why Skipton?” you might ask. Typically these kinds of events happen in large cities like Manchester and Birmingham. Well, Google explained that they’re touring market towns to help small business owners and traders take advantage of digital and promote their businesses better online.
They didn’t confirm the venue until a couple of days before the event, I had joked that it might be at the castle and was surprised when they emailed to say that was the actual venue!
After refreshments, and getting to know some of the other attendees, I sat down to listen to a talk on building a digital marketing plan. Then the speakers moved onto social media strategies and making your business visible on Google. The final two sessions covered digital advertising and using Google Analytics to answer questions about your business.
Even though, being a freelance marketing manager, I am already knowledgeable about digital marketing, I found the sessions very interesting and while some of the training just reinforced what I already knew I also learned a lot too.
Here’s my top ten takeaways from the day:
9 pm is the best time to post on Facebook, 7 am might get you a ‘like’ but that's probably about all.
Facebook ads are very cost-effective and you can advertise with even a very small budget.
Don’t spend money on advertising on LinkedIn unless you have a premium product i.e. your customer lifetime value is very high. It’s just too expensive.
Utilise analytics data to identify any issues, e.g. are there pages on your site that have a high exit rate?
Make sure you claim and complete your business listing on Google My Business. You don’t want anyone else using your free listing. Plus, keep it up to date and regularly add new photos.
Keep your social posts short, succinct and emotive with a clear call to action.
Check out the YouTube Creator Academy to learn how to grow your YouTube channel.
Other tools for learning the best keywords to use in your content, besides Google’s own keyword planner, are keywordtool.io, spyfu.com and keywordseverywhere.com
Website images that are too large i.e. above 300Mb can slow your site down, use a tool like tinypng.com to reduce them in size.
If you need hashtag inspiration, check out RiteTag,their suggestions are based on real-time engagement
You can book a place at one of the forthcoming training events, and see a full list of the tour venues and dates here: https://events.withgoogle.com/markets-tour-uk
I’d highly recommend attending, it’s completely free! A fantastic opportunity to help you learn how to grow your business using digital, or top up your knowledge if you’re already working in marketing.
