jamie, Author at Sokada

What are you waiting for?

With Instagram being one of the most visited social media platforms, it is imperative that your business cuts through all that noise.

And if you have a shop, then why on earth are you not on Instagram already? Having Instagram shoppable tags on your posts now make it even easier for your customers to buy from you. And what is great is that you can actually see where your customers are coming from (with reporting facilities such as Google Analytics).

So what are you waiting for?

Shoppable tags (or product tags) are like tagging a person in a post, according to Facebook. Once you’re set up for product tagging, it’s a one-click solution to highlight new items for viewers to purchase.

Make sure you have a Business Profile

First off, make sure your Instagram page is a business profile.

Go to your settings
Tap the Sign up for a business profile
Tap convert existing account
Connect your Instagram to your Facebook page
Navigate to set up your Business profile & review your contact information
Invite your contacts to like you!

How to set up Instagram Shoppable Tags

It really is very easy to set up and can increase the ways in which your customers can buy from you. Instagram should be linked to your Facebook business page, where you can set up your shop. You can only do this if you have physical products to sell.

A bit of Facebook Housekeeping First

You will need to agree to Facebook’s merchant agreement where you will be prompted to add a payment method. “Check Out on Facebook,” “Check Out on Another Website,” or “Message to Buy” are three standard options — or you can build it out by connecting with an existing Shopify or BigCommerce account.

Having set up your products in the Facebook shop, you then need to make sure your Instagram account is connected to the Business Manager associated with your Facebook page. Once you have connected the two you need to create a new catalog or identify an existing one so that you can use these products with shopping on Instagram.

In Business Manager, view the large menu via the top left button next to the Facebook logo. Select ‘all tools’ if you don’t see the full menu, navigate your mouse over to the assets section and select catalogues. You should see a list of catalogues containing all the products you’ve added to the Facebook shop. If not, you can add one with the ‘Create Catalogue’ button to the top right of the page and add products this way.

And then onto Instagram…

Once you fulfill the above requirements, your account is reviewed for access to the feature. This may take a few days, but you should eventually receive a notification to turn on product tagging in your Instagram Settings.

The final step in the process is to select the product catalog in the ‘shopping’ settings in your profile. Once you have done this you should be able to start tagging. If you don’t see the ‘shopping’ option, your account may still be under review.

So now you’re ready to start tagging. Simply start to draft a post – add the caption, effects and so on. Don’t forget all your hashtags – find new people who want to follow you!

Then tap the products in the photo you want to tag and share away!

Be creative

You can afford to be subtle. All shopping posts will have a little tote bag in the lower-left corner that confirms for the viewer that at least one thing in the post is for sale. So your product doesn’t have to be the main focus of the image. Be subtle or be bold – your choice!

If you are not used to using Instagram, then please see our previous post on how to be succesful.

About Me

My name is Jamie Hall. I’m a 24 year old website developer from East Sussex. I’ve always been playing with code since I got my first computer when I was 9. It all started out as a pure hobby, creating silly little websites for fun and learning photoshop. I started to get more serious about website development when I was 12 years old and received a gift of “Zen of CSS design by Dave Shea”. I read this book over and over; at this point I knew I wanted to be a website developer.

My hobbies outside of work are playing PC Games. I’m super competitive when it comes to them and have played in many online tournaments and teams. I’ve been playing poker since I was 18 and really love the strategic side to it. Last but not least I wouldn’t be a true developer if I didn’t say I enjoy experimenting with code and learning new languages. I’m currently learning Vue.js and hoping to increase my skillset to showcase these skills on websites in the near future.

Before Sokada

I’ve worked for many agencies; run an online business; worked on small websites; worked on big websites; worked for small companies and worked for the bigger companies and I can safely say I love my job!

Life at Sokada

At Sokada, each day is different challenge for me. I’m either creating the next website for our newest clients or creating additional features for our existing websites.

I enjoy building the front end of a website and exceeding a clients’ expectations on delivery.

Why Sokada?

I’ve worked for a few website agencies and Sokada is one of the only agencies that I agree gives the customers the best service possible. Since I’ve known Julian, he has always expressed his passion to help businesses grow, using the best web methods available.

There are just too many companies out there not giving the service they promise.

A typical day at Sokada

A typical day at Sokada for me is a mixture of project managing and developing. I try to get myself as stuck in as possible, offering any knowledge I have, towards helping customers and ensuring the work we deliver exceeds the clients expectations. All this fueled by regular amounts of coffee and cake!

What is a Featured Snippet?

It is a daily struggle to keep up to date with everything that is Google. Updates are published that only the most tech savvy have a clue of understanding. Different text boxes, images and links pop up at the top of Google on a weekly basis! One of the features that has been around for a while now, however, is the Featured Snippets section. It is an “answer box” for questions when they are asked online. An ideal way to get a quick answer and they are great on mobile devices. But who gets to have their links listed as answers to these questions? Here are some ideas on how to get seen on Google’s Featured Snippets, what you could do that would work well with your own website.

If you are searching for an answer to a question, then the chances are the answer box that may show up could be Wikipedia. This, along will other major websites will most probably take precedence. However, if your website ranks well and you include questions, bullet points, videos and images that are relevant to someone’s question, then you stand a slightly better chance of being seen. And this power is great for getting people finding you online. You only have to start showing in Featured Snippets and this will increase the strength of your own website.

Keyword Research is a MUST

If you rank in the top ten for your keyword search, then this will definitely go in your favour. So find a way to gain loads of great longtail keywords that may not even be that competitive – a great starting point for ideas on what to write about as well!

And research shows that it will be a concise answer to a question that will help to get you seen. A paragraph of text that answers the question asked. So think about the sorts of questions that will be asked for something in your industry and answer them well.

But don’t think you post or page must just be one paragraph. Google is clever and will spot an answer within your text. Ensure that you have the question as your sub heading and you have one paragraph for the answer. Try and keep this in mind with all your content writing. Google loves a question and answer, so be innovative, be clever and keep writing about what is relevant for your products and your market.

Videos also do well

Videos will work well on Google’s featured snippets, but not so much with images. Below is an example, (this is a weird analogy for an example we know) – it was the first thing that popped into our heads! (After how to tie a bow tie…)

Is your SEO effective?

Ensure you have all your SEO (search engine optimisation) in great condition. Make sure you have relevant SEO titles, meta descriptions, labelled images and lots of lovely strong keyword within your text. But do not stuff the text with irrelevant wording – this won’t help your website at all! You bring your ranking up with a great online marketing campaign and this will go towards being seen in so many ways.

“People Also Ask” Section

This is yet another section that Google have introduced, which gives you variations on your search enquiry. If you click on one of the questions, then it will keep offering other listed ideas. So just because you may not appear in the top Featured Snippets Box, does not mean that you won’t appear. If you have lots of relevant information on your website, appertaining to what you do then you will become a great knowledge in your field and potential customers will keep revisiting.

How to Get Seen on Google’s Featured Snippets

A summary:

Our easy ways and suggestions on how to get seen on Google’s Featured Snippets are as follows:

Keyword rich blog posts and pages
Title your posts with something relevant
Use sub headings that are keyword rich
Keep your answers concise, interesting and informative
If possible, include videos within your website
Always ensure your SEO is at the top of it’s game

As with all that relates to organic marketing, sometimes whatever you do doesn’t quite hit the mark. But keep going, as your knowledge will grow and you become more and more experienced in what you do. Product knowledge for what you are marketing will shine through on your blog posts and people WILL return to see what else you have written.

As we say, Google is always updating what you see, how you search and the way it formats its answers. It is no wonder people get confused! The whole aim of what we write at Sokada, is for people to understand these changes, in an easy to read way. Please get in touch if you have any questions or comments about what we write. Thanks for reading!

Here are our top 5 easy link building strategies. Not all are that easy and they can be pretty time consuming. But it is definitely worth dipping your toe in the water and having a go. If there is anything here you don’t understand then please get in touch with us and we will help you through this. Our aim, at Sokada, is to educate our clients to get the most out of their website. We work with many clients on a regular basis. We carry out these strategies and keep them up to date. However, if you are marketing your website on your own, then a few extra tips from us could be cool.

Broken Links on your website

Some businesses who have access to the back end of their website like to keep everything nice and tidy – so they delete unused pages! However, there may be pages that influential websites are linking to and this could lose you valuable strength to your website. Reclaiming broken links is a great way to get back links in a short amount of time, with very little effort. Always make sure that if you remove a page, then you direct any strength to a new page by adding a 301 redirect. This will push the authority of the page elsewhere. Ensure you are set up on Google Webmaster Tools and you will be able to see the errors you have.

Sponsor a charity!

There are some amazing local charities around. Why not sponsor an event or part of the charity. But always ask them for a link to your website! Another very easy way to get an inbound link.

Who is talking about you?

You may have been mentioned on lots of other websites. However, not all businesses see the value in linking to you. Always worth asking them though. This is an easy link to gain…

Local listings

Make sure you are up to date with all your relevant information on any local listings. There are lots to find. Not all are as good as each other, but still worth a look. Make sure your name, address and telephone number (NAP) are always the same. This should give you a number of links into your website.

Work you have already carried out

Whatever business you are in, there must be clients you have worked for. Ask them to add a link on their website to you. Whether it is on their supplier page, in a blog post, or perhaps a case study. Anywhere that a link can be added, as long as it is in the right context, will mean you get a bit more strength to your website. Unfortunately, many businesses do not have access to their website, but it is always worth a try to ask them.

Next steps

These are just 5 easy link building strategies. There are many more, but we are hoping these will all be achievable for you. If, however you want more help, then please get in touch with our marketing team at Sokada. Either fill in the contact form, email us or call the office on 01435 817226. We look forward to helping your business grow…

A Really Clever Marketing Angle

Instagram is all about getting your name out there. Posting interesting photos, either to promote you, to just have fun or to promote other products. Well @securitykev does all of these!

@securitykev, AKA Mike Myers is Ed Sheeran’s bodyguard. A beefy guy who, apart from being quite a big bloke, actually looks pretty normal and not very security-ish. In the last couple of months, his Instagram account has taken on a different angle though, where each photograph includes both him and Ed Sheeran, in one funny scenario or another. Perhaps this has evolved by accident, but it has grown and grown, with followers rushing to keep up with these great pics – you can see the likes of the most recent posts far exceed photos from previous weeks.

This Instagram account is the most amazing way to promote Ed Sheeran. On this page, Ed is able to poke fun at himself, in one natural pose or another. You can see the entertaining and hilarious time both guys are having, whilst taking the photos. Ed will sometimes be waiting on Kev, or looking after kev and the theme running through it all is fun. But they aren’t selfies. Probably it started off like this. However, now you can tell they are taken by someone else, so it’s not such a natural Instagram account – it’s a marketing ploy to give more publicity to this fun loving duo!

securitykev has made himself into a celebrity, by always having Ed in his photos. And Ed Sheeran gets to have photos posted of the pair of them, getting up to all sorts. But they don’t have to appear on his main page – perfect! They are obviously great friends and are very natural together and Kevin Myers uses lots of great social media hashtags, such a #bae #imthedaddy #viralsensation #alwayswatching…the list goes on. And it’s great fun to see them together!

Ed obviously has his own Instagram account, as well as the millions of other accounts that are the die hard fans or people looking to make money off the back of him. But this new Instagram account is a great marketing ploy. Having over 749,000 followers, it is being talked about online. Even in major publications, such as the Daily Mail, which has further enhanced its coverage.

What’s Your Social Media Angle?

So what’s your angle on social media? Do you have a theme that runs through all your posts? If you can think of one, then you will immediately have something to work towards, increasing your exposure and making yourself more marketable. Obviously, this could prove a bit of a challenge as you probably won’t have Ed Sheeran to back you up – but if there is a way of promoting yourself or your business in a certain way, then this could prove very successful for you.

Just take a leaf out of @securitykev’s book – make it fun!

The 25^th May is looming…

The deadline for being compliant with the new GDPR legislation is the 25^th May 2018. From discussions with a lot of our clients this is something that is confusing, a little scary and something they are struggling with. There are a variety of experts out there with a variety of opinions, largely because the legislation has not yet been tested in practice and the guidance is developing on a constant basis.

How is it affecting us?

Well it appears there are two terms to describe people or businesses who hold data, a Data Controller and a Data Processor. Luckily for us at Sokada we are both… perfect!

We are a data Controller for the information we control; ie the names and contact details for our clients and their personal data.
We are a Data Processor when we process data for our clients ie your client’s customer data, which we can access to our clients’ websites.

This has meant extra work for us as we have had to update our Terms & Conditions, which all of our clients will now have to sign, agreeing that they will comply with our GDPR policy and are managing their data properly.

Getting the right policy

One of the key requirements seems to be a GDPR Privacy Policy. We are not sure how many businesses actually write their own policies, and whilst we do not condone the practice in reality, we all know many organisations “borrow” a policy from another organisation and “tweak” a few bits and believe their work is done. This may not be enough for GDPR

In the past we have had a EU Cookie law which seemed almost as useful as an overly bent cucumber or chocolate that isn’t chocolate… EU law for the sake of it. But GDPR seems to be much more detailed. We are not sure how they will ever police many of the issues, but it has to be taken seriously. It’s also VERY important that we manage personal data properly.

So, the Privacy Policy now seems to be even more important. It should be used to detail and set out how personal data is processed as well as how it will be managed going forward. A bit like a Health & Safety policy where you have a plan for specific events; “in case of fire go to the fire door…”

Your Privacy Policy could state that once an online order has been processed you will delete any personal details within a specific time frame. Obviously one of the key elements to this is sticking to it and actually managing the data how you have said you will.

No one can you tell you exactly what 100% GDPR compliance looks like, as it means many things to many organisations. However, having a GDPR privacy policy is a good place to start. Just having a policy in place and keeping to it will be a positive thing and will reflect on the business favourably if there are any issues with GDPR.

A few simple tips to developing your policy

Firstly, sit down and work out the many different ways you process personal data, this includes, customers, employees, consultants, and suppliers. We have been looking at this from a website point of view as that’s one of the key areas where we process data.

Here are a few things to consider:

Website forms
Shop orders
Emails

Yes we know they are pretty obvious, but one thing we discovered is that a lot of our clients don’t really use the CMS (Content Management System) on their website. What our clients didn’t know was that when someone completes an enquiry form it stores a copy of that form online in the CMS. The same goes for online orders from the shops we manage. The client receives an email when an enquiry or order is placed and they just assume that is it. Even though we go over the CMS with them when we launch the site and have trained them in how to use it.

So, many customers are storing customers data in places they weren’t aware of. If this is you…. you will need to think about how you will be managing this data under GDPR?

How are we trying to help?

At Sokada we build our clients’ websites using WordPress in the same way that we designed our own website; we use very similar systems. We should be processing similar data and have the same issues. We have been trying to look at GDPR in a practical way that will enable us to help our clients.

To enable Sokada to comply with GDPR we need our clients to comply with GDPR. To assist our clients we are therefore permitting you to use our revised T&C’s and our GDPR privacy policy as a template to base your own T&C’s and GDPR policy on. If you are interested in using them please contact us. This is not legal advice from Sokada and you will need to amend them to reflect your specific needs and of course continually manage the data in accordance with the policy, but it’s a good start and better then starting from scratch.

Your GDPR policy is not set in stone, it must develop as your business does, diversifying and growing alongside it.

Sokada is committed to managing its way through the minefield that is GDPR and we are supporting our clients to achieve the same.

Why Network?

As a small business, it is vital that your brand is getting as much coverage as possible. You need to know that other local businesses a: know about you and b. know what you can do to help their business grow. Networking is a great way to do this as it puts you directly in front of many potential customers. As soon as you bag your first customer it will really prove the importance of networking!

A lot of Sokada’s business comes from networking. It works perfectly, as we can connect with many local businesses, building a network of people who may be able to take advantage of the tools we have in our arsenal for business growth. And it can also be an ongoing cycle – we work well with one business, they will hopefully refer us to other local businesses. One opportunity will definitely lead to others; exciting times!

Shared Knowledge

It is also about shared knowledge. One thing we love to do at Sokada is help other businesses grow. And the customers we have worked with on both their websites as well as ongoing SEO, will vouch for us (we hope!). By networking within an effective group, you can get feedback on your work, share information as well as seeing things from a different perspective. Current legislations can also be shared, such as GDPR, SSL certificates, health and safety etc etc. Find out lots of ways to help your own business, by everyone helping each other.

Give Something Away

Make an offer to your fellow networkers. Give something away for free, to show you are an expert in your field. If people try you and you are good, then they will use you again, or refer you to someone else who needs your services.

Be the “Go To Guy”

Grow connections within a networking group – but see who they know too! Get your name out there as the “go to guy”and then people will come to you. They will start to know who you are, recognise your skills and you will receive increased credibility in your specialty.

Meet new people, grow in confidence and realise you ARE good at what you do, you CAN stand up in front of 20+ people and you WILL push yourself more in business.

If you are looking to connect with new customers by networking, you may have to have a few early morning starts, but if you pick a good group then it is so worthwhile and really proves the importance of networking.

If you are local to us and would like to start networking with other like minded people then please get in touch.

Instagram Shoppable Tags