Social Media & SEO: Home Sweet Georgia Campaign
Content marketing is a crucial element of audience engagement. For small businesses and entrepreneurs especially, informing your base with fresh, useful content is a skillful way to build audiences. My client, a Georgia realtor, was struggling to distinguish himself among competitors. I worked with him to build out his digital presence. Here, a mini case study on how we increased his web traffic and launched his Instagram.
Update: On December 2024, an influencer hacked and co-opted my client’s Instagram. The hack was reported; however, Instagram has not yet reinstated my ownership. If you’d like, you can contact me for IG image and caption samples.
All Instagram photography and copy by Hanul Bahm.
Above left, friends hiking in the North Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains.
A good starting point is inventorying your professional background. Prior to real estate, my client had worked for Samsung, ran a small business, and raised a family. He had domain knowledge about small and large businesses and the Southeast. We took perceived liabilities—age and ethnic background—and sought to turn them into value-adds.
Upon assessment, we saw that marketing to out-of-state retirees, multinational corporations, and mom n’ pops made the most sense. Among the audiences identified, he would be accepted as a peer; his expertise wouldn’t be met with skepticism. Though I’d never advise to limit your engagement based on your identity, it’s important to segment your audience. Of equal value is self-awareness of who might seek you. Knowing these will strengthen your editorial strategy.
If you address your audience’s unmet needs, you’ll be effective. Not every image on my client’s Instagram is beautiful, but each adds more specificity about life in Georgia.
On honoring
The South has a complex and brutal history, and my client, a Korean American male, occupies a spot in that history. Generations of Americans have made it their home, but many don’t get to feel fully safe there. Because of this, we approached image-making with caution. Not tokenism nor virtue signaling, but respect, which meant honoring boundaries, likenesses, and histories. Sometimes that meant photographing from a distance, or excluding people from the frame entirely.
From the window front of the Freedom Rides Museum in Montgomery, AL.
Microblogging with Pictures
After testing several methods, including paid search and print, digital, and inline ads, we determined earned options were the most effective. We concentrated on optimizing the web copy, a “twelve reasons to love Georgia” blog, and an Instagram essay of life in the Southeast. The goal was to market Georgia as a destination, so his prospects could picture themselves here.
Web Building and Hosting
When it comes to small business websites, focus on ease of use. The design should appeal to your target audiences without feeling dated. (Note: the cleaner and less complicated the design, the less likely it’ll get timestamped to an era.)
For those with no design background, a template-based site builder such as Wix or Squarespace can help. If you have web development skills, Wordpress is a cost-effective option with functional add-ons. For those with intermediate design skills and some HTML/CSS knowledge, Webflow is good. If the thought of building a site makes you want to stay in bed longer, you can hire out. At the minimum, it’s good to know how to update your own site.
If you’re short on time and outsourcing capacity, no worries! Integrated apps such as Mailchimp will help automate your web presence, social media, and email marketing.
Search Engine Optimization
To demystify the search engine optimization (SEO) process: Google crawls and indexes the web every few weeks, ranking sites based on usefulness and relevance. There’s a number of things small businesses can do to boost their search rankings. The closer to position zero, or the top search result, the better. Ideally, you’re in the top fold or within the first two pages.
Some tips:
Find popular search terms associated with your industry, products, and/or services. Google Trends is one tool. Ubersuggest is another. Weave these into your copy organically.
Once you update pages with new content, submit them for indexing. You can place a free indexing/crawl request using Google Search Console. Console also gives you simplified, user-friendly analytics.
If you’re affiliated with a large corporation, organization, or trade group, consider requesting reciprocal links. Ask high-visibility clients and vendors in related industries for site mentions. Backlinks from earned press, bloggers, and influencers are also helpful.
Social media links on your site boost rankings. An active presence on two platforms is all you need. Choose two you like and play to your strengths. I personally like Instagram and YouTube. Someone else might gravitate toward Pinterest and LinkedIn, or Reddit and TikTok. Instagram offers specialized business marketing tools. YouTube is the second most searched engine after Google. An embedded YouTube video on your site boosts rankings.
Leverage customer testimonials. My client is in real estate, so I asked his past clients to post reviews on Zillow and to cross-post to Google Reviews. If you’re a local business with a physical space or address, set up a free account with Google My Business and create a business profile. Encourage your clients to leave reviews on Google Maps. Once you’ve gathered five, your business will appear on Google Map searches.
If you’re committed to upping your web game, subscribe to Neil Patel’s newsletter for marketing and InVision’s Inside Design blog for design. They’re the best I’ve found and consistently good. {Update: InVision ceased publishing its blog as of 2024, but its archive is still super useful.}
Once you’re on a posting regimen, you’ll want to find an easeful way to keep it going. Luckily, apps are here to save the day. I use Hopper HQ for Instagram calendaring. Apps such as Later and Sprout Social let you plan and post to multiple platforms.
How frequently you post will depend on your content strategy. In my client’s case, my approach was documentary-esque: street photography, event coverage, and candids. I spent a year plus gathering images, so I’d have a year’s worth of images upfront, a kind of social media mise en place. I could always take more photos, but having a cache diminished production pressure for me. Someone else might prefer a more interspersed asset creation to posting schedule.
Analytics will help determine what times of day and week to post. Most calendaring apps come with them.
Social Calendaring
Content Creation and Design
Canva is a social media creation platform popular with non-designers. At $15 a month, it’s budget-friendly. If you’re comfortable using Adobe apps and have a higher monthly spend, I recommend a combination of Adobe Spark, Premiere Rush, Photoshop Camera, and Adobe Stock over Canva. Adobe Stock is especially helpful, offering quality, ready-made assets for campaigns and posts.
Designing an appealing Instagram grid is about pattern recognition and variation. Think Candy Crush or Tetris.
A good rule of thumb: try to plan posts as a row of threes, or a square of nines. I break this all the time, but adhering once in a while helps with visual cohesion. Just like notes in music, try not to repeat similar images back-to-back, unless done for emphasis.
Also, like good music and onscreen/onstage dialogue: make use of breaks and pregnant pauses! Let this be an outlet, not another obligation. The early internet got its start as a knowledge sharing forum, and that’s where it still shines. Take the strain out of posting if you can. And take breaks when you need.