Online Marketing Agency – No Social Media?

Online Marketing Agency – No Social Media?

October 2019 UPDATE: Out of the Box Innovations was registered in August 2015. This article was written in July 2017 to explain why we didn’t create any social media pages for our business. Now, in October 2019 we’ve set up new LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Here’s the quick answer as to why:

LinkedIn: Much of our prospective audience chooses LinkedIn to spend a lot of time online. Our networking and outreach efforts are starting to bear fruit there. It’s convenient for people who want to find out more about us to do it on the LinkedIn platform. They’re more likely to explore us there than take the time to search for our home site. If a social media network is working, spend more time on it!

Facebook: We’re in the process of creating a new service for our clients – Managed AI Chatbots! We’ve created the first couple in beta mode and will be adding one here soon. We’ve chosen Messenger based bots, to begin with, and will add other integrations over time. We need a company FB account to connect a messenger bot.

Twitter: Since we’re going to get more active on LinkedIn and Facebook, we may as well add Twitter, since many of our posts will get posted from a social media management dashboard. We see possible growth and collaboration opportunity on Twitter, so we can be in the third most important online ecosystem for our niche.

We’re leaving the original explanation below as to why we chose not to create social media pages earlier. Partly for posterity, to track our journey, but mainly because this page gets visitors who are in the same dilemma as to whether they need social media pages.

 

Why don’t we have our own social media pages?

Hi, this is Jason, the Founder of OOTBI. You might wonder why the connected Twitter and LinkedIn links at the bottom of this page, go to my profiles, not an Out of the Box Innovations company page? Surely every company needs social media pages – don’t they? How can we offer social media management as a service, when we’re not doing that ourselves?

This post will go over the reasons why we’ve decided to avoid having social media community or fan pages. Hopefully, you’ll understand our position, and perhaps it might help you in your business. While we may create some company pages later, for the time being, we see it as a net negative.

Here are the reason why:

Most of our client business is transient

Once we’ve created a new website for an oil and gas company or got a local solar installer to page 1 of Google, our job gets temporarily done. How many decision-makers in energy companies want to follow an internet marketing blog? Not many.

Our regular clients don’t want to learn how to do what we do

That’s why they’re paying us! They come to us to complete a contract, to their satisfaction (for a great price). They don’t want to know the ins and outs of SEO or web design.

Do you follow the Facebook page of your local dentist, to keep up on dentistry? Do you spend hours chatting on Twitter to the people who helped you to move house? Unlikely. For formal business arrangements, why follow on social media?

We’re too busy working on YOUR social media pages

Just like a skilled mechanic who drives an old car, we always put our clients needs first. There aren’t enough hours in the day to allocate some to what is a very labour intensive activity.

One day, we might have extra human resources and revisit the idea of running another bunch of social media pages. At that time, there are likely to be better avenues to deploy our additional capacity.

In the energy industry, people prefer to interact with people

Every industry is different, and then the same applies to each sub-sector too. We’ve noticed that oil and gas and energy workers are quite active on LinkedIn. They chat to each other though, and most company pages ought to have a background image of crickets or tumbleweeds!

If you came to us for a social media campaign, we’d look very carefully into whether it was even worth it for you. Again, it depends on what you do and for whom you do it. The most significant industry players have active social media pages because of the sheer numbers of people who know of them.

For most of the SMEs that we deal with, a paid & well-targeted social media advertising campaign might produce a high ROI. A fan page or a community page? Not so much.

Inviting you to connect with me personally is more appropriate

The majority of our clients work with us on a contractual basis and want the result, that’s it. A portion will become friends, and I welcome new connections. I receive direct messages through the social media channels for which my clients (and friends) have a preference.

Also, when someone is looking for an online agency, they want to know who’s behind the company and whether they’re accessible. You can connect with me, and message me through email, LinkedIn, Twitter or Skype. This strategy means that you always have access to the person ultimately responsible for the contract that you enter into with OOTBI.

So, does this answer your question?

Out of the Box Innovations is very important to me, and so are my clients. A personal relationship is welcomed, but not the most crucial aspect of what we set out to achieve. I am, and I always plan to be the face of the company and be extremely accessible and accountable to you.

If you want to connect, with me, scroll to the bottom of the page, and there are some links.

Cheers,

Jason

Is SEO a Waste of Money?

Online Marketing Services for Alternative Energy Companies

How Often Should You Post Online?

How Often Should You Post Online?

 

Introduction

Before we get into how often you should post online let’s explain the context. This article aims to help business owners who want to communicate their product or service offerings on the internet better. With online reputation management becoming increasingly important for employees, the same principles will be relevant. As individuals, we’re all the CEOs and founders of our own online presences, which will affect how our customers, employees, peers and bosses see us as well!

If you manage teams that create content for you, how often they post on your behalf is also very important. Finding that crucial balance between posting often enough to get noticed, of sufficient quality to be welcomed, without turning customers away is an art. This art should be mastered by you first before you can share it with your workers – and they share your message to the world.

Cutting my teeth in online marketing

I remember when I started publishing blog posts online, a dilemma was how to structure content production. As a budding internet marketer, I was keen to find out what all the online experts had to say. I understood how to communicate effectively in the ‘real world’ but somehow thought that it might be different online. After all, we don’t communicate to one person, or even five, we’re interacting potentially, with millions.

In the previous paragraph, there are at least four significant errors in judgement. Misconceptions that I still find myself falling into from time to time. By reading this article, you might be able to dodge these potential pitfalls and get focused more effectively.

Mistake #1: “… a dilemma was how to structure content production…”

If you don’t know what to say to people, then say nothing at all. If you’re unsure of what to write about, then don’t bother. If you force yourself to create content when you don’t know what to create, then the end product will be worthless.

I noticed in different online industries, that when people went ‘through the motions’, and followed a fixed structure or plan set forth by others, the result was terrible if the process were lacking in inspiration.

There’s far too much competition in the world, for second-rate content. If you don’t think that you’ve something to say or promote that will win over hearts, minds and wallets, wait until you do.

It’s not that you should avoid structure and planning, far from it. The point is that there should be no dilemma. If you have something worthwhile to share with the world, you will be bursting with ideas and enthusiasm. You’ll know what makes your offering special, and where your target audience hangs out online. You will instinctively do the right thing. If you don’t, then your idea was not sound, or you got attracted to the process, not the value that you have to offer.

Mistake #2: “… find out what all the online experts had to say…”

Most online experts will guide you through strategy, and they will often re-iterate the FAQ’s, guides and documentation that can be provided by software providers. Looking back, I wish that I had avoided all experts e-books, and just read the documentation from each online software service itself.

For example, you could buy two $99 e-books or mini-courses about email marketing and Facebook advertising. The chances are that you’ll learn better and faster getting started on the platforms, and reading the user guides provided by Facebook, MailChimp or anyone else. The manuals from the software providers will not be out of date either.

That’s not the only reason why we should often avoid experts. They’ll not be in your niche or know your clients. What works in one industry won’t work in another. You’ll get advice that leads you down the wrong path.

Another problem is that you end up spending too much time on consumption and not enough on production. It’s better to learn by doing, testing and scaling. The deeper you get into the ‘world of experts’, the further you get away from simple principles like this two step path to success:

1. Find one person who will buy your product or service.
   
2. Find ten more.

Another reason why gurus and experts can be overrated is the fact that many make their living by telling you how to make yours! They don’t walk the walk; they need a steady stream of new wannabe followers!

Caveat:

If you find an expert who will work for you and create the desired result, then you are paying for value exchange. The previous few paragraphs refer to ‘guru’s’ who do not do any work for you. If you want to hire someone to create a new website or run an ad campaign, then you’ll want an expert.

Mistake #3: “I understood how to communicate effectively in the ‘real world’ but somehow thought that it might be different online.”

We can communicate with bots better when we optimise our on-page SEO, and we can follow guidelines to fit in with search algorithms. When communicating with peers, bosses, employees or customers, there’s no difference at all between online and offline communications.

We should speak in the same tone, and about the same things as if our audience were sitting right across the table from us.

The main difference is that we can draft, create, edit and polish what we communicate before we hit publish. We can always be at our absolute best.

More importantly, what we publish can stay online. We will be at our best when being ‘introduced’ to strangers years from now, with no further time or effort on our part. That’s the power of the internet.

Mistake #4: “we don’t communicate to one person, or even five, we are communicating potentially, with millions…”

It seems intuitive but is entirely wrong.

While a viral post or fruitful article could be shared or seen by millions of people, if written in that tone, it won’t be.

Most people don’t want to be lectured or patronised. Something directed to millions will come across as aloof, disconnected, or even authoritarian.

Think about annual speeches or public announcements; there is a tendency for them to sound inauthentic. I don’t know about you, but when I see or hear these types of heavily spun speeches, my mind starts to wonder. I think things like “I wonder who wrote this?” “Huh, they are bound to say that, I wonder if it is true?”

Perhaps I’m a bit cynical, but that seems to be a hyper-growth market in itself right now.

The point is, there is a disconnect, and the message is not received correctly.

For those of you who came here to find out how often they should post online, and at the risk of sounding like the very guru that I’m knocking.

Since you did get all the way this far down the post,

Let’s answer it.

How often should you post online?

Let’s re-phrase the question, shall we?

How often should you talk?

If your mother is/was anything like mine, you’ll know that if you don’t have anything important/sensible/nice to say then say nothing at all.

Some gurus will say something like:

Your readers will want a routine, post three times a week, weekdays are better for traffic, and time them between 9-12 am. and 5-9pm because these will offer higher social media interaction rates. So, try Monday, Wednesday and Friday, split test between the AM and PM slot to optimise…

AAARRRRGGHHH!!

Talk about taking the art, pleasure and creativity out of your life. You’ll end up freaking out at 12:05 because you forgot to turn to update the split testing software and fear that you have to start the whole experiment from scratch.

Don’t be that neurotic, anal robot.

Post when you have something valuable, sensible or helpful to say. If you’ve picked a great industry to be part of, and are going to succeed, you’ll post often enough to get the job done. You’ll post about the right topics at the right time because you will be tuned in to the industry, and your audience.

The same applied to the length of a post. Twitter aside, don’t tailor the word count of an article based on a preconceived idea – especially one from a guru!

Write naturally; don’t count the words. Take as many words as needed to make your point. It could be 200, or 5000 it doesn’t matter. Never stretch a 200-word point to 1000, or a 1000 word post to 2000. What’ll happen it that you will lose your reader, either through adding fluff or filler or from allowing yourself to drop your creative standards and slip out of ‘the zone’.

If you shouldn’t pay too much attention to ‘Guru’s’, where can you learn?

I have three favourite places where I like to learn — areas where I experience the most valuable lessons and life-changing experiences.

In reverse order of importance, here they are:

1) The best Podcasts, Books, and articles from non-fiction and business sources OUTSIDE of the industry where I make my living.

That might seem counter-intuitive, and I do follow what is happening in my industry. When we read and listen to the information in subjects that we are already familiar with, we tend to hear the same things. It’s especially the case when we get to the stage of mastery; we are very likely to follow the words of those whom we share an opinion.

When we learn about new topics, we get ideas about how these principles can apply to our industry — cross-pollination of the best ideas from other areas.

If you’re one of the first people to bring a successful idea, technique or product to a new market, massive growth can occur.

2) My own mistakes, failures and experience

I’m the kind of person that seems to make every mistake possible, and always try to find the ‘hidden benefit in every failure’. It sometimes seems like I value this process so much, I’ll often make the same mistake repeatedly!

There’s no substitute for experience. You can only master a subject or skill once you have perfected it through action.

3) My Clients!

If you’re doing a lousy job, your clients will tell you. (Sometimes by cancelling). If you’ve created something that will suit their needs better, they’ll let you know that too.

If your clients aren’t saying anything, then ask them  – How can I make your life easier? They’ll tell you!

By working closely with clients on their projects, you get to understand their business deeply. You get into their mind and the minds of those that work with them. You can develop an insight that other similar clients might appreciate, as you grow your business.

How SEO Works for Oil and Gas Companies

This article is not going to discuss SEO tactics, but…

… More about how we approach SEO services for oil and gas companies in particular.

If you’re responsible for marketing for your company or are perhaps a senior member or owner, you’ll be familiar with the basics of search engine optimisation. You might have seen articles about keyword research, backlinks, and on-page optimisation. There are thousands of SEO practitioners in the world. Many put up a website, copy the offers and wording of other companies and – hey presto, they’re an instant online SEO expert.

At the other end of the scale are large companies that perform SEO services for every industry that you can imagine. These large firms tend to have equally sizeable minimum contract prices and term arrangements.

Then there are the short cutters, the ‘Grey hat’ or ‘Black Hat’ SEO people who are always looking for loopholes, or ways to game the system. Results vary and range from fast rankings that last a while, to tactics that not only do not work but get your website removed from search indexes altogether.

Perhaps you have a friend, associate or family member who is recommending an SEO service that is working for them? How do you tell if their niche is more or less competitive? How would they know whether shady tactics got used that could result in a penalty?

Maybe you have thought about doing the search engine optimisation yourself? Or at least some of it? But then, if you are doing the SEO work, who is going to do YOUR job?

What is the answer when there are so many choices, and you don’t understand the topic well enough?

The answer is in using a company that has deep oil and gas industry experience, and skin in the game.

OOTBI mainly provides SEO services for oil and gas companies

While we do offer our services to solar and local clients, we started in oil and gas. We currently spend almost all of our time working in the oil sector.

This focus means that we have already done many of the time-consuming tasks such as keyword research and competitive intelligence. We understand the nuances and industry jargon. We can write headlines, articles, alt tags and meta tags using words that the search engines understand, as well as YOUR clients.

We know that every industry has its tone and community. Did you know that SEO ranking factors vary between sectors as well? What works in health or travel might create an unnatural search footprint for your oil industry website. To Google, it could look like you are deliberately trying to manipulate their algorithm!

The secret to good SEO is to do it ethically and get a result that is acceptable to all involved — everyone ranging from your clients to your co-workers, to the general public. Importantly, we need to stay in good standing with the search engines.

Why are the search engines important? Because this is the topic of the job at hand. Search is the ‘S’ in SEO; we are not talking about customer satisfaction surveys or regulatory compliance.

In the world of SEO, your online footprint must look completely natural, and ‘survive’ a human review by someone in a search engine anti-spam division. Unfortunately, much of the SEO work that we see will not pass these criteria.

We have skin in the game

We want to produce great results for your SEO campaign, not just for the usual reasons that every company in every industry talks about (repeat business, referrals, etc.) but…

Because we are entrenched in the oil and gas industry, our MD and Founder Jason is also involved in a recruitment company and an O+G services company. We are currently maintaining some of the most established and respected websites in the industry.

The oil and gas business has a relatively tight-knit community. We know that a failure in one area will damage credibility and respect in others. We can’t afford to mess up your SEO work. We can decline the start of new contracts unless we are confident of a good result.

We are in the same industry group and have the same friends as you do.

Well, perhaps not precisely the same friends. (But it is possible).

In every part of your business, it makes sense to work with people who understand what you want, and what you need from them. From sales representatives to electricians, to accountants and lawyers, it is best to deal with people that have experience of the oil business.

We also have advantages in many of the areas where other SEO companies struggle. We can do many things more efficiently and effectively. For example:

One effective way of getting your message out is to write articles on respected industry websites. These are called guest articles. We can help you with that very quickly; we can ask our friends.

To get traction on your new social media page, an SEO company might get you 100 ‘likes’. Who are clicking these like buttons? Teenagers in Russia or China? Spambots? We can tweet or share your company news to our audience of oil and gas people!

These are just a couple of examples of why you should deal with us.

SEO Services for Oil and Gas Companies… BY an Oil and Gas SEO agency!

Why it makes sense to add a cookie consent button

Why it makes sense to add a cookie consent button

Our take on the cookie consent controversy

The cookie consent alerts, buttons and additions to a websites privacy policy are recent phenomena. The requirements are related to laws created in the European Union. The law says that visitors to your site need to be able to know that cookies are getting set, and what types of cookies might be tracking their visit.

To be clear, we at Out of the Box Innovations Ltd. do not have any authority or qualifications to offer legal advice whatsoever.

This article is simply a blog commentary on whether you should put the cookie notice on your website from a practical point of view.

SPOILER ALERT:

Since we’re going to recommend that you follow the EU laws in all cases, whether you legally have to or not, hopefully, we won’t get into trouble!

PS If any of you know of a barmy law that forbids people from telling others to follow the law, please let us know, and we will take the post down. Seriously!

So, should you add a cookie compliance button to your website?

Here are the types of questions/comments that I have come across on the topics, and my responses:

• My company location is outside Europe so it doesn’t affect me.

– If your customers are international, some are likely to be in Europe. If not now, then probably in the future. The EU is a big market that you wouldn’t want to miss out on if a crackdown and website was blocking at the country level in the future.

• The privacy issues that the public have problems with aren’t related to commercial websites but government prying. We’re getting extra hassle when we’re not the culprits. This policy should get aimed at ‘big brother’.

– Write to your local politician? Start a revolution? Rules and regulations can affect your business, whether you think that they are justified or not.

• They aren’t enforcing the rules, and the rules have been around for a few years now.

– Do you want your business to get caught in the first wave of a regulatory crackdown?

• Even though I have customers in Europe, they aren’t going to come to my town to prosecute me; I’m in a different country.
  

– As previously mentioned, to suddenly have a considerable market cut off from your business for the sake of a button and a few paragraphs of the new text seems foolish.

It makes sense to comply to the cookie policy even if it weren’t a legal requirement.

You should add the button and a few paragraphs even if we knew for sure that the law would never get enforced.

Ever.

That might seem like an odd stance for some, but here’s why:

Having the cookie consent button on your website is a quality signal that adds perceived trust to your site.

If you visited two websites to buy your next batch of online widgets and the price was the same, which would you choose:

… The site with the pretty pictures, cat videos and general product reviews?

OR

… Would you feel more comfortable on the site that had all the essential business-related details published? Phone number, company address, telephone number, company registration number, HTTPS padlock, Cookie consent button, privacy policy, terms and conditions, user login, anti-virus shield and green tick, name of the business owner…

ETC, ETC

These things can be called quality signals and each one helps a visitor feel more comfortable.

Some visitors may think that cookie laws are pointless. Subconsciously though, they’ll be happy that you’re playing by the rules.

The new generation of increasingly tech-savvy people likes to see bells and whistles on websites. While many of these pop-ups, downs, ins, or outs get discussed as being ‘annoying’ they all work very well to get a message across. Whether it’s an email opt-in pop-up, hello bar, welcome mat, live chat box or a cookie consent box, people love that stuff. It makes your website look modern, and up to date.

Some people might be genuinely interested or concerned about the use of cookies by the websites that they visit. While it is hard to imagine anyone reading every privacy and cookie policy on every site that they visit, anything is possible.

The great thing about web-based businesses is that over time, you can publish content that covers every topic. Any concern, question or enquiry that a potential customer might ever have. You only need to write each page once, and it is there permanently. This time frame allows the luxury of satisfying every visitor over time, regardless of which journey they take through your website. The customer is always right, especially when they are visitors who do not ask your direct attention, look after them all.

Is There an ROI on Social Media for all Companies?

Is There an ROI on Social Media for all Companies?

Tumbleweed marketing?

Many companies have inactive or dormant social media accounts. Sometimes one or two social media channels are so successful; the others get sidelined. When one social media channel takes over, it’s okay since they’re likely operating in a niche where their audience or network has a clear preference for a particular medium.

A professional photographer might find that people love their Pinterest or Instagram accounts, but ignore their Twitter or LinkedIn. That allows for focusing on what the audience wants and makes complete sense. This article isn’t for those companies.

This article is for those who’ve set up social media accounts, that all lie dormant with no posts or followers. That’s the worst scenario, worse than having no social media accounts at all.

That might sound odd, that making an effort to set up the accounts is worse than making no effort at all. The reason is concerning new visitors who don’t know you. If new people visit your empty and lifeless social media account, they’ll see that there’s a lack of interest from your customers. It also shows a lack of effort.

They see something negative, whereas if there were no social media accounts, they would’ve clicked somewhere else.

So, we need to either make some effort, or ignore social media

The problem in ignoring social media is that people are spending more and more time on it. Each new generation is spending increasing amounts of time on their choice of social media channels. That applies to people of all ages.

By not having a social media presence, it’s as if you are opting out on having your storefront on the high street. Instead, you’re choosing to have it in a back alley on the outskirts of ‘internet town’. You’ll be harder to find, as many of your competitors embrace social media and put in the effort.

There are no half measures if you have an eye on the future. You either make an effort or decide to place yourself on a back street, at least as far as new customers are concerned. A raving fan will always find you, but growth may suffer, and the opportunity for relatively cheap marketing will be lost.

What’s the ROI on social media?

That’s a common question and leads to a good point. Perhaps we ‘slave away’ for a couple of hours a day on social media, for what? How many new customers come through our social media postings? The answer depends on who you ask, what business they’re in, and how well they’re executing their social media strategy.

If you’re using paid advertising, and then track purchases or email sign-up rates, an ROI can be determined. If you’re using the unpaid options of posting, commenting and liking, an ROI can be harder to determine.

The same applies to many facets of a business.

What’s the direct ROI on:

• Office cleaning
• Staff team-building exercises
• Ongoing staff training
• Performance-related bonus schemes
• Hiring a public relations company
• Awareness advertising on TV or in Newspapers where there’s no call to action
• Sponsoring the local kids’ football team
• Extra maternity leave or paternity leave for staff
• Staff car parking facility
• A free coffee machine in the staff room
• Additional management training and certification

The list goes on. Unless there’s a specific call to action, or a hotline telephone number designated to a particular marketing scheme, most expenses won’t have a measurable ROI.

There are two crucial questions to ask, however.

How do we want to run our company?

As leaders, founders, or those responsible for sections of a company, we all have a vision of how the business ought to get run. Of course, we want our offices cleaned and our staff to feel clear benefits in working for us. We also want to keep up with the competition, especially in the eyes of our customers.

We want to be ahead of our competition, don’t we? If we’re genuinely rocking it on social media, and our competitors aren’t, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where they’ll overtake us.

This is because:

Social media allows direct access to the upper management in a way that cold calling, direct mail, or showing up at the office doesn’t. If you post a relevant question to the CEO of a company on their company social media page, you’re likely to get a thoughtful response.

Try getting through the bosses gatekeepers on the phone or in person, or try to send a cold email, your chances of a response are slim. This accessibility means that successful companies on social media are closer to their network and audience.

Your target audience can feel the intimacy and will reject competitors who only use the old fashioned communication channels. This closeness and interaction help you keep your finger on the pulse of the industry. You can also get instant feedback on how your company is interacting with it.

What’ll happen if we don’t do it?

• What’ll happen if you don’t clean your office?
• What’ll happen if you decide not to train your staff?
• What’ll happen if you decide to hold onto obsolete technology, when your competition is embracing the new?

Imagine that your company decides to still use fax machines rather than email? What if it determines that the new factory equipment that pays for itself in five years, then increases margins by 20% after that, can wait?

That is what you’re doing if you avoid social media. It’s not that critical for all businesses just yet, but if we extrapolate the trend lines, this is where it’s heading.

Forget ‘build it and they will come.’ Go to where they have built it.

Building an audience online used to be easier

In the early days of the internet, the fast adopters in each industry sub-sector were the only ones there. Many industries were not covered at all. Over time, company websites for each niche and set of keywords and key phrases popped up.

Fast forward to today, and we see millions of search results for every common keyword, these results change according to where you run the search. We know that typing ‘SEO companies in New York’ will yield a different set of results to ‘SEO companies in California’. Also, just typing ‘SEO companies’ will give you different results depending on your location.

If you want to consistently appear on the first page of Google for ‘SEO companies’ this would mean that you’ll rank in the top ten in the whole world. The amount of work, time and money involved to achieve this would be huge, and to catch up the existing leaders might not even be realistically possible.

If we equate this to the oil and gas business, to try to rank for ‘oil service companies’ or ‘oil and gas jobs’ will be tremendously difficult. Chasing these rankings will probably fail without a sound enough business behind your website.

Remember that your business won’t need to be good, it’ll need to be in the top ten in the whole world. You might need to be in the top five in the world because some of the results might be YouTube, Wikipedia, government or media related.

There was a time where just having a website was a significant benefit; this is no longer the case. Then we saw a time where your website could be quickly SEO’d to the first page. That can still be possible for geographic search results, or some lower volume search terms. For most good search terms, building a website and just trying to rank it in the search results will most likely lead to failure.

Build it and they will come

“Build it, and they will come” is a quote from the movie ‘Field of Dreams’, and has been used to describe the philosophy of creating internet property. The citation has been used to sell SEO services, where the company said that the people wouldn’t come unless you do some SEO.

Even just a few years ago, this was an option, and websites could get artificially inflated to the top of the search. Now the search engines are better at identifying clumsy SEO tactics and penalising the sites that have got raised this way.

Nowadays, having your website appear higher in search for terms that are useful to you should be a by-product of everyday business. An effect of everything else that you are doing online or offline. If you have a robust marketing strategy and are networking well within the industry, your website will start to appear higher in the search results anyway.

There aren’t that many oil and gas online marketing companies around, ones who specialise in this industry. While an internet marketing agency can be a great help, it’ll never be a substitute for the excellent work that your company does. The very best thing that you can do in your online efforts is to go to where they have built it.

Go to where they have built it…

Over time, your network will grow bigger, so too will the profile of your company online. Just by doing solid business and networking, you’ll see more traction online. If you’ve a new business or want your existing business to grow to the next level, how do you appear in front of more people?

You go to where they already are

Imagine that you’re a Star Wars or a Star Trek geek. There’s only so much traction that you’ll get if you open up a memorabilia store in your local town or city. If you then create a website, then there’s a chance for people from all over the world to find you. Online efforts can get boosted by the smart use of social media, where posts can occasionally go viral. Most postings don’t go viral, however, especially if your online audience is small.

Repeatedly asking your Facebook or LinkedIn network to help you to share posts can come across as a bit self-promotional.

The best thing that you can do is find where your target customer is already hanging out, and go there to join them.

In many industries, this can offer a lot of choices. In the oil and gas industry, there are few places to go and congregate. There might be a Facebook or LinkedIn group that you are part of, but you likely see a lot of spam there.

The best place for you to go at the time of writing is Oilpro.com.

UPDATE: Oilpro closed down for legal reasons, separate to the community, and points made here in the article. The principles behind our points are valid, though.

These are the benefits of spending time there that immediately come to mind:

• The community is tightly-moderated, I can’t remember the last time that I saw a spam post or comment.
• The community is laser targeted for our industry. Almost every person who hangs out there works in the industry. ‘Hands-on and boots-on-the-ground’. That’s different to the vast majority of online communities.
• The calibre of industry professionals is extremely high, with many world class experts publishing and commenting.
• The comment threads are often just as valuable as the posts themselves, as intellectual debate gets us closer to the crux of every matter. That’s different to the mainstream media troll, armchair analyst and political commenter.
• The width of readership means that new customers, clients, peers or friends can get noticed much more easily. Unlike other social media channels where there’s a tendency to see the same old faces and same old gripes.

Just as with a blog post comment, the whole world can see what you have to say on a matter, not only your 435 contacts, of which 90% won’t be online to see your post. Are you an expert in your business? Instead of preaching to the converted, let the world know about it.

Do you have a useful solution to an industry problem? Are you the best at what you do? Go to the oil and gas industries equivalent to the annual intergalactic Star Wars convention, not to the local social club.