Businesses of all shapes and sizes rely heavily on social media but don't control the platform so they're at the peril of who the platform determines should see their posts.   

On the other hand, they have complete control over their company website.  Blog posts and videos on their website aren't limited by the character count restrictions or video time limits of the social platforms. Those platforms though are a great way to lead more traffic to a companies website.

There are a few tactics to drive viewers' to your business's website so let's break them down!

Include a Call to Action in Your Profile

A call-to-action that is part of your company profile is important for potential customers who found your company page and is ready to learn more.  Don't make them search posts for it! 
There are a couple of options to consider for a profile CTA. 

Link to Your Home Page

A simple link to allow viewers to learn more about your company and more specifically, how you help your customers.

Link to Lead Pages

Lead magnets are a perfect way to get prospects into your sales funnel.  If you are trying to promote a specific product or service which requires nurturing, include it as part of your profile.  If you have multiple lead funnels, rotate out your offer as a way to test your offerings.

Create A Links Page

A common practice on Instagram profiles is worth mentioning as well - the "Links To" page.  If you frequent Instagram, you'll see a lot of businesses mention their "Link in bio" at the end of posts.  The link typically goes to a page that has a high-level introduction to their products and services along with links to their other social media accounts.  This is a great way to highlight various services or products that they offer in benefit/value.  Don't be the business that pays a 3rd party service for this service! 



A better strategy is to create a links page on your own website that drives traffic to your business's website instead of a 3rd party.  This can have a positive impact on search rankings along with the benefit of having your specific design and branding.

Promote Blog Content

So instead of posting content to only social media, post it to your website and use teaser posts to lead viewers to your website.

The key to this is publishing a social media post that makes the reader want to click through to your blog post.  A blurb or teaser that highlights exactly what they will get out of the post is a perfect place to start.  Tease them with a question that the post answers or a pain point they may have that you address. 

If the post includes a story, include an excerpt that compels them to want to know the whole story.  You don't have to start with the beginning either!  Sometimes a post that highlights the ending will make them want to know how the story started if it's one they can relate to.

Tip: If you are sharing posts on LinkedIn, do not add the link to the post itself. Not only does it count towards your character count (3000 characters as of June 2020) but it's been noted that your posts with links in the post. Instead, add the link as a comment to the post.

Concentrate on Sharing Visual Content

Posting to social media means fighting other businesses (and sometimes kittens) for the attention of your viewers.
Consider featuring a branded image that highlights the topics of your post and the benefits your reader takes away.
Is it about a product or service?  Use wording that appeals to the pain point or value that they desire.  A recent review of the product or service describing how it impacted a delighted customer is another great teaser.
Does the article include an infographic?  Include the high-level information that attracts a reader to learn more.

Make Your Content Easy to Share

While post-sharing features are common, it's worth a mention because so many businesses don't take advantage of this.  Don't make your readers work to share your content. 

Using a plugin such as Social Warfare makes these features easy to implement.  They have a free version that lets visitors share posts to all of the popular social media platforms while the paid version allows gives you the ability to share to more specialized platforms such as Houzz. 

The paid version also provides more control over which image is shared with your post.  For example, you can assign images that are optimized to individual platform specifications.

Before you go looking for it, let me break the bad news that Instagram is not an option for sharing your content. They have never intended the platform to be one you can share the content to.

Optimize Your Social Post Calls-to-Action

Don't leave your post reader hanging! Every post to social media should be with the intention of telling the reader what to do next.  Without this, they will just move on to that cute kitten photo.  Or worse yet, read a post from your competitor!

For posts that are a teaser for a blog post, the call to action is easy; send them to the blog post! 
Posts that are about a product or service could have a variety of CTA's that you can use.  Test different types and tactics to see what works best for your industry and targeted audience.

Lead Magnets

Lead Magnets are great for getting prospects at the top of your funnel.  Sending these links to specific landing pages on your site and offering ebooks, case studies, or calculators lets you start the nurturing sequence.

Book A Demonstration

Your content schedule should include posts that include information needed by prospects at any step of your funnel.  Posts that handle bottom-of-funnel topics can be used to drive viewers to case studies and even book a demonstration of your product or service. 

Schedule an Appointment for Service

When you run a service-based business, sometimes the best message is a direct one.  A great example of this is a heating and cooling company.  A post about an A/C unit that's not cooling a house should lead right to the scheduling page on your website.  

What Time of Day Should You Post? 

Every platform has its ideal time for posting to increase exposure.  CoSchedule has a post that advises optimal times for each platform.  If you're worried about remembering to post at a specific time, there are numerous services that let you schedule and automate posting to social media platforms.

If you have budget constraints, Facebook Pages have a post feature that lets you schedule posts for both Facebook and Instagram.

As an admin of a facebook page, you can schedule posts from the Publishing Tools link in the admin menu.
Set a date and time to publish your post in the future

Facebook posts are *limited* to a 63,206 character count but Instagram only allows 2,200 characters so you may have to schedule separate posts to each platform if your post is over the Instagram limit.

For additional platform posting options,  Hootsuite has a free tier that allows posting up to 2 different platforms if you want to start automating without being to a payment.

Engage with Your Audience Consistently

Once you've posted,  you're not done with opportunities to drive traffic to your website! Keep the conversation going with viewers who comment.  Answering questions and providing links to additional information increases traffic to your site and increases trust in your brand. 

There is a bit of strategy that you can use to increase post reach and stretch out the lifetime of your post by delaying commenting. As readers respond to your social media post, delay responding to some by 2-3 days.  The social media platforms will continue to display your post as long as it is active so the platforms see the additional commenting as the post being active.

Get That Traffic Moving!

Driving traffic to your website requires an investment in time to make it worth your while.  Having a content plan and someone whose responsibility includes implementing these activities consistently will pay itself back in the way of long-term exposure. 

The increased traffic will have a positive impact on your search rankings as well as your bottom line.

Most of our clients opt-in for our Care and Maintenance program but, we still provide them with the tools they need to keep their site secure and performing well if they don't. 

The key is staying on top of these tasks because vulnerabilities are found every day and hackers are quick to take advantage of poorly maintained websites. Businesses routinely approach us because their site has been hacked and need to restore it to working order. 

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Background

Digital Redefined was approached by Best Beach Getaways for a complete site redesign including implementing our WordPress Solution for Escapia Customers.  

Their previous site was struggling SEO wise because of their previous Direct Booking solution and performance mostly on the part of their hosting service.

Vision and Goals

Best Beach Getaways wanted to take advantage of the best practices that we’ve been putting to use on previous implementations.

For the design, we wanted to use BBG’s branding that they established over the last few years but introduce a more modern website design.

Easy to maintain

The previous direct booking solution required editing unit information in 2 places for each unit.  They wanted to streamline this process.  Our WordPress for Escapia Customers solution not only provides a single point to edit unit information, but it can also be used hands-off by activating the global synchronization feature.

Improve ranking for location-specific keywords

While we’re 4 months into the implementation the site is already seeing improvements in overall page ranking.  Through weekly monitoring, we have insight into which keywords are working and which need attention through SEO adjustments and additional content creation.  

Decrease page load time

This was accomplished through a combination of 

Strategies

Home Page

The home page needed to have a search form front and center that would start the visitor’s search.  

We included the primary attributes that visitors use on the search page.  Submitting from the home page sends them to the search page for results.

The home page also includes

Search by Community

BBG chose their top communities to highlight on the home page

Search by Amenity

As with communities, Best Beach Getaways chose their most requested amenities to include on their home page.  

Fun Fact: Pets Welcome and Golf Carts are amongst the fastest growing amenities requested for all of our clients.

Our Areas

Best Beach Getaways Our Area

Because of the wide area and number of units in Florida managed by Best Beach Getaways, they wanted to provide a way for site visitors to learn more about the different locations.

The Our Areas section of the site drills down to regions, neighborhoods, and unit types for display along with additional information.

While visitors can locate units using the search feature, breaking out this information provides two additional benefits.

We created WordPress short codes that give BBG the freedom to display their units by type(house, condo) for a specific neighborhood as well as displaying units by resort.

Provide More Information On Stay Location

The additional information helps visitors decide where they would like to stay.  

This is especially useful for guests who want to stay at a resort and are want to see all the options in an area.  

SEO and Keyword Optimization

A primary goal of the Best Beach Getaway site is to improve its rankings in search of vacation rentals in the individual neighborhoods and regions.  

Breaking out the units in this way is a great way to improve organic rankings.  Breaking out the neighborhoods and regions into cornerstone pages improves the chance of ranking when visitors start their search at Google(or other search engines) for Vacation Rentals in those specific areas.

Best Things

Best Beach Getaways Best Things

To help their guests plan their vacation, Best Beach Getaways wanted a way to highlight their evergreen posts of the best dining, activities, and places to visit during their stay. 

We created an area called “Best Things” that includes posts assigned to related categories.  When posts are created and assigned a related category, the post will show up in the Best Things area along with their blog.

Unit Search

Best Beach Getaways Unit Search

The search page includes all the elements of our recommended best practices with additional filters for Area and Resort. 

Best Beach Getaways wanted to keep the page clean and include just the essential information so units returned include just an image, the unit name, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and max occupancy.

Unit Details

Best Beach Getaways Unit Details

The unit details page sticks with our recommended best practices plus some enhancements.

Gallery and availability calendar front and center

Unit Type, Max Occupancy, Beds, and Baths were moved from the sidebar to below the unit name.  We at Digital Redefined decided to add this change to our default best practices layout.  

The BBG Site is the first to utilize our redesigned availability check which no longer reloads the page.  This speeds up the check time and eliminates repeated page load wait time

The site also uses the Escapia.NET discount code feature to give guests the opportunity to apply a discount to their stay total amount.

Booking Page

Best Beach Getaways Booking Page

We wrapped up the Direct Booking feature with the booking page.  While the page was designed overall with our best practices, we used Best Beach Getaways design language and added options for

Guest count  

To keep in compliance with localized occupancy policies, the site will not allow for booking more than the max occupancy set for the unit.

Cancellation Waiver

Gives guests the ability to choose an additional cancellation insurance option.

Apply Discount Code

If the guest didn’t apply a discount code on the unit detail page, they have a chance to apply one here as well.  

Results

While 2020 has thrown any use of year over year analytics out the window, Best Beach Getaways is already seeing a significant increase in direct bookings compared to their previous site.  

Mario Dacosta from Best Beach Getaways provided some feedback on the new site

Our rental company uses Escapia to manage over 400 rental units. Our previous website worked “Ok” with a previous Escapia WP Plugin, but our website was doomed with a few other upgrades that made it unstable and hard to manage. The Escapia WP Plugin was average and did the job, but was not exactly what we wanted, and to customize anything on it, not only was difficult but expensive ($100/hr).

After much research, we found Jim McDermott of Digital Redefined. He set up a test site using our Escapia API credentials so we could really see how the plugin and the new site redesign worked. Due to COVID, we were delayed in implementing the website, but during that time we continually worked on customizing the Plugin and the Website.

We implemented the new WordPress with the Digital Redefined (DR) Solution for Escapia Customers and immediately prospective owners noticed the upgrade and improvement.

The new website is much faster and user friendly. The biggest improvement was on the mobile user experience. Previously our old site performed very poorly in the Mobile displays. \

Also, our booking page is much more user-friendly and informative which has helped guests making that final decision to book.

The best part about working with Jim at Digital Redefined has been his willingness to take all suggestions to improve the plugin and implement them. 

The DR WordPress solution for Escapia Customers works flawlessly with Escapia and the best part is that Jim is reachable at a moment’s notice if anything is not working correctly. Usually, the issues are human error when entering data in Escapia, but nonetheless, Jim always got a solution.

We also moved our website to a new server and Jim was instrumental in helping us with the move to minimize any downtime. Due to the new server and the new website using the DR Escapia Solution our site is working faster than ever without any caching plugins.

Jim also helped us with our Google Analytics so we can track conversions for our reservations.

We are super happy with the services and continue to work with Jim on a regular basis to implement new features.

Mario Dacosta

Visit the Best Beach Getaways website

A common question that I’ve been asked from Vacation Rental clients is regarding optimizing images for the web.  I’ve run into instances where unit pages load slowly and the most common culprit are huge property/unit images hogging up bandwidth, making the page slow to load, increasing bounce rate and worst of all - lower rankings in search results.

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If you are new to our solution and want to learn more, visit our Solutions Page and read our post

The new release (1.6.5) of our WordPress Property Manager for Escapia plug-in has several enhancements and a couple of bug fixes.  Also, in the next release we will change versioning to coincide with the month of release (i.e. 2020.2 for February 2020 release).

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Our latest release was a total blast! We had so much fun putting this together for a great client. 

Santa Monica Brew Works was looking for an implementation of a fresh redesign that matched the vibe of their business. The redesign includes elements that immediately allure you to the beautiful beaches and surf that make up the Santa Monica community. 

(more…)

The vacation rental industry has exploded over the last 10 to 15 years. Being able to reach a broad market has never been easier. Managing properties with Escapia gives you full control over handling vacation properties. Sure, VRBO and other Network Partners puts your properties in front of potential customers, but you don’t have absolute control over the branding and you have to pay a “finders fee”.

WordPress Property Manager for Escapia Customers solution gives you total control over the branding and marketing of your properties without the unwanted extra fees.  

digitalredefined

A couple months back I was approached by a new client who had a site that was suddenly redirecting to a porn site - only when viewed by a mobile device. Further investigating, I found that the site was indeed hacked and whoever did it was taking full advantage of the site. On top the spam redirect, the site was sending out massive amounts of spam resulting in their email service being blacklisted. (more…)

WordPress released the 4.8.1. updates on 8/2/2017 and contains 29 maintenance fixes and enhancements(no security updates based on the release summary). The biggest items to note are fixes to the new Rich Text Widget and the addition of a Custom HTML widget.

Full rundown of the release is available on the WordPress 4.8.1 Release Post

First Blog Posts Can Be The Hardest to Put Together

...but this is going to be a great start for me. I wanted to just take a chance to introduce myself, the vision I have for Digital Redefined, and how I can provide some amazing value to my customers
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Marysville, OH 43040

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