Digital Marketing Q&A Panel
Our Panelists were Denise Casagrande, Robin Moss, Tony Wright and Lissa Duty was moderating.
Bloggers Note: Panels are incredibly difficult to capture well as a live blogger. I summarized the answers of the panelists for each question.
Q: Backlinks vs. on-page SEO – is one more important than the other?
A: Different people put emphasis on different things. The code will not make you rank but will keep you from ranking if it is wrong. Quality of links is more important than quantity.
More link building and more evergreen content. The theory ‘if you build it, they will come’ doesn’t work if you aren’t adding content. Google looks for continual content.
Any content that you are building, you want to get it on social media, as well as on your website.
Q: I work in the nonprofit sector, how do you use online tools/content to spark offline action?
A: Email marketing. New, fresh content. Find volunteers who can handle your social media consistently.
Look at your end goal and that will help prioritize what you want to do. For a nonprofit, the most important thing is probably to build, maintain your email list so that you can stay in front of the people who are interested in what you do.
Make sure you set firm rules on what can/should be communicated. Keep firm control of the accounts.
You should create an ad manager in Facebook and use that rather than boosting posts so that you can target your ad spend.
Q: When is the best time to start a website for a new business?
A: Find a WordPress developer. You need to understand what you want for your website, don’t expect them to read your mind.
You need to decide what your services are, start with a blog and then expand your website.
Create your marketing plan and branding strategy so that you’ll have relevant content for your website. You want it to be clear to people who come to your site what it is that you offer.
You don’t own the design on Weebly or Wix. Even if your WordPress designer quits or goes away somehow, someone else can take that over. If Weebly or Wix goes away, your website and all the content goes away, as well.
Q: How do you promote a book and get it out to a larger audience? (target audience is kids 7-12)
A: Instagram is a good platform for Gen Z folks. Tell your story and build out your brand on Instagram. Put out video content on YouTube. Find journalists on Twitter and pitch them.
If you do any speaking, make sure to be blogging about it and making video and get it out on social media.
Q: Is Google AdWords better than Facebook Ads?
A: That’s kind of like asking whether cake or pie is better. (Both! Cake and Pie are equally delicious!) You would get different results depending on what you’re selling, who your target audience is, where your target audience spends their time.
Q: How will new technology impact tracking? (Voice search, etc.)
A: There is new schema that will allow AI to read text out loud. We are still a couple years out from this becoming widely used so it’s still somewhat unknown how that’s going to work.
It’s really too soon to know what metrics will be able to be captured when using the new technology but it’s an important thing to keep in mind as you start using new technology.
