Piggieback's new website

We're very proud to share with you our new website!! Check it out here: www.piggieback.com.au

Have a good weekend!

Piggieback

Scheduling social media posts

In this week’s Blog Post we introduce you to Hootsuite – a social media dashboard to manage your social networks.

It can be very challenging to find the time to manage and update all of your business’ social networks, let alone be inspiring, exciting and witty at the same time. Hootsuite’s creators identified a need for user friendly social media management in 2008, at a time when businesses were starting to discover the powers of social media.

Hootsuite has over 4 million users, including big brands like McDonald’s, Sony Music and Virgin.

It is very easy to use Hootsuite. You simply add your social networks to the dashboard (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) and create and schedule social media posts from the same spot. You can also activate a functionality allowing Hootsuite to send you an email confirmation when your posts are sent, and also to allow you to email Hootsuite to send out an update on your behalf when you are on the go.

We recommend our clients make use of scheduling tools either directly in the applications or through a third party application such as Hootsuite to prevent a fall in posting consistency due to busy work load or a community manager being on holiday. Hootsuite is a great option to see all of your social media tools in one place and schedule and manage their engagement levels all at the same time.

Until next time, have a great week!

Piggieback

How do I choose a web agency?

Hi Friends,

Every week I meet a new company or organisation looking to build a web presence. They often come to Piggieback with the following questions: "can you build us a website?" and "how much does it cost?".

These questions are valid, but are often met with the following from our team:

• Why do you want a website and what do you want it to do?
• Have you thought about how you are going to maintain this website in the long term?

A point of reflection:

How many times have you visited a website that hasn't been updated for a long time? How many times have you seen events advertised that have well and truly passed? How many times have you seen typos and grammatical errors?

Too many times, websites are created for an instant of time to push a particular promotion or to keep a C-level executive happy. The long term responsibility of a website is often forgotten. 9 times out of 10 junior staff are involved in the set-up and implementation and they often take the website knowledge, login details and passwords with them when they leave.

I encourage you to consider who is involved in the implementation of your website.

• Who is responsible for writing and signing off the website copy?
• Who is responsible for any website changes?
• Who will project manage the implementation and produce a handover manual for multiple staff to use in the event that contact should exit the business?

I also encourage you to think about the way in which your brand is positioned across your website for your prospective audience to see:

• What will they think of your brand based on your website? 
• Will they want to work with you? 
• Is it clear you pay attention to detail? 
• Are you using stock photography, clip art or do you use branded visual assets to market your brand to the online masses? 
• Does your website offer your audience a call to action and does it fit in with your brand? 
• Are you better off maintaining a blog?
• Are you better off building an audience through social media platforms? 
• Have you considered how you will integrate a blog or social media channels with your website?

Ensure that you choose a web agency who gives your business the power to maintain your website. 

There is no point for small businesses and not-for-profit organisations who need to be dynamic and scalable, to be forced to outsource any minor changes to the website. By having this power, you will also eliminate a lot of the maintenance costs associated with outsourcing changes.

Also ensure you work with your agency to choose a content management platform which has secure content hosting, an easy to use user interface, and is covered with a support network. This will mean any changes to the platform technology will be seamlessly rolled out with little input from you.

Don't make the mistake of spending tens of thousands of dollars on a website which isn't easy to update by you or your marketing team and forces you to update via your web agency.

If it sounds too cheap to be good? It probably is. Watch out for the fine print of some of the cheaper set-up website providers. What happens if you want to change your website template? How is that charged?

Can Piggieback build a website? Absolutely.

How much does it cost? Between $1,000 and $5,000 in set-up costs dependent on functionality, with the understanding that the content management system installed is easily manageable by you and your team. Ongoing outsourcing costs to Piggieback are $0 unless you CHOOSE to outsource changes to us. But that is entirely up to you!

Be smart about developing your website, and it will pay for itself tenfold.

Just like meeting a person, within the first 30 seconds of viewing your website, your prospect has made up their mind about what they think of you as a brand. Make sure you portray the qualities you want your brand to portray.

What has been your experience with building your website?

Have a great week,

Caitlin

Caitlin Davey
Director of Communications at Piggieback

Short guide to Google Analytics

Dear Friends,

Piggieback recommends that anyone with a web presence uses a web tracking service to analyse and improve website performance. Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google which allows you to report on the effectiveness of your website. Google Analytics shows you statistics on how visitors found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance their visitor experience.

1. Google Analytics can help you answer:

• Which marketing referral platform is more efficient?
• What trends/patterns in website visitation are there?
• Where does your traffic come from?
• What are your prospects and customers doing on your website?
• How can you generate more visits to your site?
• Why do people leave the site?
• Where do people leave the site?
• Is your current web design working for your website?
• What web content is interesting for visitors to read?

2. Things you can do on Google Analytics

• Customise and save your most significant analytics data on the landing page
• Learn which online campaigns bring the most traffic and conversations for your brand
• Determine where your best visitors are coming from 
• Learn what keywords people are using to find your site
• Visualize what people click on the most
• Discover your top content 
• Pinpoint your worst performing pages
• Learn where people abandon the website 
• Check if your brand is in need of a mobile friendly website or a mobile application
• Track revenue generated via your website
• Track campaigns with a unique URL to see how popular your campaign was. 

Website tracking can be tricky sometimes but it is definitely worth using. If brands can master some of Google Analytics features they are well on their way to successful website marketing.

At Piggieback we offer our clients services to help them make the most of their website tracking. We offer to help plan, set up, and implement website marketing strategies. Contact us today to set-up Google Analytics and make your website perform for you: enquire@piggieback.com.au

Start tracking!

Piggieback