How Much Is Your Digital Presence Really Worth?

Have you ever wondered, hey, how does a digital footprint actually attract new business? And is it worth it to have a digital footprint? Or some people say, hey, Jeff, what is a digital footprint? Hi, my name is Jeff Harrison with swingpoint Media and this is the local voice and I want to share an idea with you because we were just at a meeting where one of our clients was sharing the result of some business that he said it had to be because of what you're doing, because before we had no real digital presence in the marketplace. And so what we did is first of all, what is digital presence? Well, this is if you go online and you can try this, I encourage you to do this. Put your name, if you're an individual or put your business name in and see what comes up. And if it's not filling up, at least the first page results on Google, you probably have what I'll call a weaker digital appearance presence. And what does that mean? Well, it means that you don't have a lot of content in the Internet world, if you will, and this can work against you. Now some of you will say, well, how do you get digital content into the Internet? Well, you can do it a couple ways. Like at swingpoint Media, what we do for our clients is we create content. So this could be blogs. The more you blog, the these are things that are picked up by the search engines. So when somebody searches, how do I do X, Y and Z? And that's your forte. Your article shows up. You can also add video. I would really recommend video because it tends to show up higher in the results. Because we have, it's been shown that we would rather watch a video than read an article because we can get more out of it. The other thing about that is it's very good for you from a digital standpoint because they're interacting you with multiple types of sensations. They see you, they hear you, they see your hand signals, the way you move your body. And all of a sudden there's a different connection than just reading an article, even if you add images. Although if you add images, make sure you put what's called alt text on there. And what that does is it helps define exactly what it is. So if you had, let's just say a cup of coffee as an example, and you're a barista, well, instead of just saying cup of coffee, I would put in there something about your business. In other words, this is, you know, XYZ coffee in this city and this is a piping hot cup of coffee. And so what that'll do and you can put the link back to your website. Well, what that does is anytime somebody looks that up, it will also populate that digital footprint. Well, in this situation, when you add this content, it makes your, I'm going to say, like your Wikipedia page. I know that's probably not correct, but let's say your presence, it grows. So now as you put more and more content out there, your presence grows. When I started out in this, in this particular short episode, we were talking about one of our clients who shared with me this morning that because of their digital presence, they won a nice bid on their services. And they explained that where it's located is in a, in an area that serves a large area, but it's fairly remote. And, and they looked at other companies in several different cities, but because of a presence that they had, they were selected. And here's the thing, the more content you have out there, the more questions you can answer, if you will, the more authority and validity that business has. So as an example, if I look it up and I find that you have one article and the article just tells me how great you are, but it doesn't do anything to explain how your service or product helps me or benefits me versus a competitor who might have 10 or 15 articles, a couple videos and some images show up. When I google their name, it's going to appear that they're probably more established and potentially more trustworthy. Now another piece of this digital presence is also in Google reviews. Now I'm not suggesting you go out there and stuff your Google reviews because that can get you in trouble, but gathering digital footprints in the form of reviews is very beneficial. And it's not just any reviews. I did a video about this a few back and I wrote an article about that on our website@swimpointmedia.com and we talked about not all reviews weigh the same. As an example, if you went out there and you said, hey, I just want my customers give me five star reviews and you get 100 five star reviews. But I do the same thing, but I kind of load my customers lips and say, you know, what was the best, what was the best thing you experienced? When I, and let's say I have a, I'm an H Vac company when our service technician came out and helped you and if you would please describe that. And so they give us a lot more. So I get five stars and I get a story behind it. Well again, that weighs much, much heavier. Just think about that. If you go to Amazon and you're thinking about Buying a book and you see a bunch of five stars but no written content on there, doesn't it make you kind of like, think twice? Like, I'm not so sure I want to buy that book or, or I want to read that book. But if all the reviews are really like, oh, it was great and I experienced this and I love the characters, all of a sudden it feels like, okay, I'm kind of invested, I can invest in that because I want to look forward to the same experience. Well, that's what your Google reviews do. If it's just five stars and that's all it is, that's better than nothing. But if you can get a story from your person giving you the reviews, that again, adds authority and validity, that you are someone that's trustworthy and that, again, I want to have that same experience when I call you for your service or your product. So when you stack all these together, all of a sudden you have a footprint. Now, some of you might say, well, what about social media? Yes, social media is a digital footprint, and it's not that you have to post eight or 10 times a day, but I would be consistent with that. Most of our customers, we post probably anywhere from two to three times a day, and that's a matter. Those could be still images, those could be snippets from videos that we create with shorts and. And then also on YouTube, they have content. I consider that a bit of a social media platform, but it really is a search engine. So when you again, you stack all that together, all of a sudden, instead of just having four or five listings show up, you might have, you know, a couple of pages or certainly if it's a single page, there's a lot of information. And the more there is on there, what happens is if I click into it, I want to know more about you. It allows me, if you will, kind of get a Netflix feeling of, I read this about you, I saw this about your company, I saw this about the product, I read these testimonials, I watched these videos, I looked at your posts online on social media, and all of a sudden I'm like, wow, this person really knows what they're doing. They're very good. That is a digital footprint. Now, this client I'm talking about, this one new piece of business pays for our service.

Every month for a year. Let me say that again. Every month, with the fees they receive from this new client, it pays for our services for over a year. In other words, just that 1 client, 12x what they pay for our Service for us. That's exciting because, you know, some people ask, well, hey, what's the return on your investment? Content marketing, which is what we do, is not always a straight line that we can say, hey, Bob and Betty bought this because they did this. It's usually they're stacking things on there like we've described. They're seeing some posts on social media, they're reading some posts, they're watching a video, they're reading some of your blogs, they're looking at the reviews on Google business profile profile. And then all that stacked together is evidence for them to go forward. So before you decide, hey, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna work on making videos, posting content on my website, I'm not gonna do blogs, I'm not none of that stuff. Consider that example.

12X their revenue. Excuse me, 12x their investment every month.

So basically, if our fees are $1,000 a month and they get $12,000 a month, do you think that's a good return on investment? Absolutely. And what is it? It's just being present. So think about that. Do something like we're doing here. Make a video, put it out, tell people about the story about what you do, and watch it start to snowball. And if you think about a snowball, when you first start, what happens? It's just a little thing. You got to pack it together. But the more you roll it around and especially downhil, it grows in size. And like, almost like a tornado, it creates its own weather. And in this case, it creates its own momentum because one will lead to the next. So today I've been talking about digital footprint and what will it do for your business? It certainly can help you attract new business. Now here is the final thought. When you create blogs, when you make videos, when you do social media posts, that stuff lasts for a long time. Now, just recently, I think Facebook said that they're going to start every 30 days. They're going to clear out your lives or your re and your reels only last, you know, 24 hours. But if you put stuff on YouTube and you put things on your blog, those pieces of content live forever.

I'm going to make it suggest one little thing every now and then, go back and audit those pieces of content you put on there. Because maybe two years ago when you spoke about that particular service or product that you offer, it's now been updated. When that happens, it sends a new signal to Google. And now they'll come in and they run little bots, little automated bots that Go through there and read your content and it updates the searches. So it makes your product, or, excuse me, your content even that much more relevant and helpful.

I said it was a final thing. When you make content the best type of content, and I really mean this wholeheartedly, the best type of content you can create is that type of content that helps solve the customer's questions. Those people you serve. It's not so much about telling us, hey, I've got a five year warranty. I do this and this is my server that's not really into it. Most of our customers, including my customers, they want to know, hey, what's in it for me? What's in it for me? So use that as a filter. When you make content, is it helping my customers? Is it solving a problem they may have? If it is, then post it. But if it's just what I call a chest beating piece of content, please don't post it. Let somebody else talk about your great stuff. Those come in reviews, but when we beat our own chest, you know, it's really tough to lean into that. We would rather lean into it. When somebody says, I'll give you one example here. We just recently started, we started the process of putting solar on our home. In that process, we looked at many different solar companies. And this morning in a meeting that I was in with other business owners, I mentioned it. And one of the gals there said, hey, can you please send me an email telling me all the good things about this particular company? She said, I need to show my husband that what I've been preaching is real. It's not some hokey thing. And of course I did. It was easy for me to do that because what is it? I'm telling her about the company I dealt with and how I made the decisions, or how we made the decisions, because it wasn't primarily myself, it was my wife and I. And then I shared it with her and also the savings. Well, that now is like a review, if you will, and it makes their decision easier to move forward or not to move forward. If you like this episode, do me a favor, please, please hit the like button. Share it with somebody you know and make sure to subscribe to the local voice. Until next time, I'm Jeff Harrison. Take.