When it comes to your company’s website, what really matters these days? There are many elements to a website that companies have to consider. Depending on your business, product, or service, the website that represents your company should be unique enough to represent your brand while maintaining a certain level of standardization that matches your customers’ wants and needs, which is a fancy way of saying… your site needs to look cool, be on brand, and give the appropriate information in the right places.

Here are a few tips to consider when building your company website:

1. Mobile. Mobile. Mobile. Build your site with priority functionality geared towards mobile users.

More users are accessing content via their smartphones than ever before. According to one study, approximately 83% of the U.S. population are mobile internet users. That is about 274 million people who are accessing the internet via mobile devices. 

2. Great user experience always WINS. Content editing, navigation usability, internal/external links testing, HTML & CSS validation, and styling/scripting minification are all parts of the user experience that play a part in your search engine optimization (SEO)

User experience is the new search engine optimization. Tricks like keyword density and backlinking (while still important) have been mostly replaced with content relevancy, sitewide performance, and user experience. Search engines are getting to the place where keywords aren’t needed to determine the subject matter.

3. Your site can’t just look good… it actually has to work, too. Use BEST back-end practices.

Along with building what users see (the front-end of your website), it is important to use best practices when building your back-end. This includes data storage, security, server environments, and application monitoring. 

There are a lot more nitty-gritty subjects like content accessibility, cross-browser functionality, markup validation, JavaScript error management, site migration, digital marketing, GDPR compliance, and goal setting that all play a part in building and maintaining your company website, but we’ll stop there as our goal is to be helpful and not overwhelm. 

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be complicated nor does it have to consume your time as a business owner/manager. If you so choose, you can move all this stuff from YOUR plate to OURS. The BARK Firm has been building custom-tailored websites for our clients for over a decade! Along with front-end development, we build out a secure back-end that will keep your site performing for both users and bots alike. Keep it simple. Give us a call. We’re happy to help. 

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First, there was MySpace. Remember MySpace? Glittery GIFs met custom backgrounds and your favorite song of the moment playing in the background as your peers rushed to your “My Top Friends” section to see if they made the cut. It was our first introduction to social media (and if you were good at it, your first introduction to basic coding!).

Now, the social media world has exploded into a plethora of platforms with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn all vying for the attention of business owners and consumers alike.

Oh, and 2020 brought us TikTok. How the heck are we supposed to use TikTok?!

As with many other things, more options bring more decisions to make that can lead to more confusion, especially if you are by default a traditional marketer who “just doesn’t get this social media stuff” and doesn’t dabble in it on a personal level.

So stands the question: Which platforms should I utilize for my business?

At The BARK Firm, we emphatically encourage companies to live their brands, know their audiences, and stay true to their messages. In short, know your why.

And in that lies the answer. When you take a deep dive into the message you want to convey, the brand you want to embody, and not just the product you want to sell, you will better understand your customer and know which platforms are most appropriate to reach and connect with them. Here are a few things to consider to help you do just that.

How old is your target demographic?
Here’s a social stat you may or may not have realized: as of July 2020 the average age of Facebook users is 40.5, and the age demographic of 65 years and older is the fastest-growing group to use Facebook. On the other hand, Snapchat has a much younger key demographic of 13 to 29-year olds. When you consider which social accounts to create as a tool for your business, stop and picture yourself as your ideal client or customer, including their age. Then, do a little research to find out where, on average, people their age are spending their time online.

What content resources do I have on hand?
If you have an amazing photographer on staff, show off their talents with a dynamic, beautiful Instagram account that embodies what your company has to offer. Eyecatching drone footage or informational videos? YouTube and Facebook are great contenders. Recipes and inspiring designs? Let others aspire to recreate and/or shop your items on Pinterest. Take inventory of what you have to share, and choose the best outlet for the formats you have on hand.

What is your primary reason for utilizing social media?
If you are a social media user yourself, chances are you have specific reasons you go to specific apps–whether you realize it or not. Think about it! Pinterest: aesthetic and inspiration. Instagram: lifestyle photos and updates from friends. LinkedIn: industry news and job searching. Each platform is designed to share content in a purpose-driven way, so use those purposes to your advantage when considering where to plug your business in.

Where are my competitors?
We don’t endorse the copycat game, but it only makes sense to do a little auditing to find out where your competitors are and consider adding yourself to those platforms. This not only ensures that you are reaching the audiences that they are to create a fair decision-making process for consumers, but it also allows opportunity for friendly collaboration and support between the two of you. Imagine their surprise if you were to share an industry-related post from them on LinkedIn and say something like “Congratulations to our friends at ‘ABC’ for their recent accomplishment!”

That’s what social media was originally designed for, after all: a place for people and businesses to create, share, and collaborate.

So, there you have it. These three tips and a little deep-diving on your part should help to clear up the usefulness of the various social platforms available, and help in choosing which is right for your business. If the waters are still murky, or you simply don’t have the bandwidth to learn and implement these channels, we’d love to help. Give us a call today to learn how our social experts can set up and manage the best channels for your business.