Boost Your SEO 💪 by Using Emojis in Google Searches

Emojis are a fun way of communicating 🤗 and some people even prefer them to words. But do these familiar little characters have any impact on marketing and do they provide any advantage to your SEO and PPC strategies that could help your business?
Many people don’t realize that when emojis appear in a piece of metadata, they can also be included in the title ads on Google Ads. Because of that, if you search for a specific emoji, such as “🌼 delivery near me” or you can get accurate results just like a traditional text-only search.

Using emojis in your rich snippets will help boost your page ranking in search which will increase your chances of being found by new searches. In fact, the use of emojis in your Google Ads tiles can increase your click through rate by 30%.

Using an emoji in place of text will show similar results. Searching for “🌼 hicksville” returns a #1 rating for Hicksville Flowers and a map to their shop.

In addition to boosting your web traffic, 🚗 emojis also make your business 🏪 more relatable to customers who regularly use emojis on a daily basis. They can also enhance your trust factor and make your content more relatable.

When used correctly, emojis can boost click through rates and improve your SEO. But it is important to remember that Google’s policies aren’t often clear 🤔 and their inclusion of emojis in Google Ads tiles has only happened in the past few years, so things can (and likely will) evolve as the use of emojis in search becomes more common. Because of that, it is better to consider the use of emojis as a small investment in your overall SEO strategy than to rely on them to boost rankings and increase results on their own. ❤️️

Whether you need help boosting your SEO or driving traffic to your website or social media channels, Bloomerang has the solutions to help your business thrive. From custom websites to Google Ads marketing, Bloomerang can help take your marketing to the next level. Call us today at (941) 806-1911.

Keep Customers Engaged with $20 Tuesdays and Other Online Specials

When many people buy flowers, they go to the supermarket where you can get a nice looking large bunch of flowers for about $20. But, what if there was an option for people to receive flowers from your shop - wrapped and delivered for the same $20? Who wouldn’t do that?

Despite some delays and shortages caused the coronavirus pandemic, flowers are still readily available in most areas, and the quality in supermarkets and big box retailers has greatly improved. So why should customers continue to shop with their local retail florist instead? The answer is something we all need to focus on - which is service and the ability to deliver.

When the occasion arises for a customer to consider sending flowers, we need to pull out all the stops and be sure they feel they can shop with us, the local florist. That’s why promotions like $20 Tuesdays (and $30 Thursdays) make sense, not only because they give the perception that our prices are reasonable, but also because they attract a broader customer base. You may not like this idea, and that’s fine, but where do you think those customers will go?

Most likely they will continue to search, or they will go take the extra time to pick up the bouquet at a supermarket and feel they saved so much that they have a workaround. Why give them that opportunity to leave and go away? Losing repeat customers is never worth what you hope to replace them with - we must keep customers with us.

The bottom line is that $20 Tuesdays make your shop approachable and show you are listening and affordable. We need to focus on transactions. Think about it, is it really worth losing a customer here?

Retailing in 2020 is all about connecting with customers

#1 Service

The easier you make it to order with you, the more dependent the customer
becomes on you. They depend and trust you because you have earned it.

#2 Convenience

Everyone is on their phone today. If you can keep customers directly connected to you, you reduce the chance of having them stolen online by your competitors. You can engage with them on social media and even notify them of your deals when they drive by your shop. What more could you want?

#3 Value

Value doesn't mean cheap - it means more for your money. If your customer can feel you achieve this with them then you will win the battle to earn their business and trust.

In closing, the two most obvious ways people are earning orders are online advertising and social strategies. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, as well as Pinterest, are no longer for kids anymore. Customers use the platforms to learn more about businesses as they prepare to decide on who to use for that next big order or wedding.

Finding qualified people to run social media for your business is the greatest challenge. You wouldn't trust a kid out of high school to run your business, would you? Then why would you allow them to run your social? Leave it with professionals and judge them on how they report back to you with results from their efforts. Are they earning engagement? Well, if they are, how about orders? It's all there and growing.

Our industry is going through great change and while some shops get it, more shops don't. Don't let your competition get ahead of you. Call us and allow us to show you our GUARANTEED results packages. Guarantee means just that!

-Art

Personalized Content is Critical for Your Branding on Social Media

Facebook uses a number of factors to determine what content to show in a user's news feed. It’s typically based off multiple factors like who you follow, where you comment, and where you spend the most time on Facebook.

Another factor to be taken into consideration is Facebook’s algorithm analyzes each image posted by a page to determine the quality and who to show it to. One of the main points it looks for is a unique image taken randomly by an individual randomly instead of a stock photo that appears on many sites.

That’s why we try our best to make sure we can get custom images from florists because we know that it works much better when posting to Facebook but some either just don't find the time or don't believe it’s an important aspect of social media.

Below are just a few examples of the difference between seven shops that send us consistent photos of arrangements, classes, and everyday scenes inside their shops and seven shops that don’t send us any.

Both of these examples have close to the same amount of followers and times content is posted per week. The difference is the kind of content being posted. The more personal, original images do exceedingly better than ones we have to pull from a catalog, florists website, or a stock image library.

On the left is the total engagements for the seven shops that send us great content and images on a consistent basis. It’s almost eight times the engagement of the shops that don’t, over on the right.

This is the total impressions for both sets of shops. Impressions aren't as important as engagement but this still gives you an idea of how many eyes have been on your images. On the left is little to no images sent to us and on the right is consistent images. Another thing you can notice here is that we paid for a very similar amount of impressions but the shops that sent us personalized images did much better organically and with their virility.

We always try our best to stress the importance of providing this content to have the best reach and engagement across your social platforms and hopefully this look inside the numbers gives you a little more information on why it’s crucial on social media.

Do you need help with your social media accounts? Trust the experts at Bloomerang Solutions to keep your accounts optimized while you turn your attention to the holidays. Give us a call today at (941) 806-1911 or drop us a line below to let us know how we can help your business bloom!

Everything You Need to Know About Using Solar Energy in Your Home

If you are considering solar power for your home but do not know where to begin, this guide should help clear up some confusion about the wide variety of options that Innovative Solar has available for your home.

If you are unfamiliar with the solar industry it may seem intimidating and difficult to navigate but the reality is that solar energy is more affordable than you may think – in fact, many solar systems pay for themselves in as little as five years. Best of all, it is easy to get started.

In simple terms, a solar system absorbs energy generated by the sun. The solar panels provide power to your home during the day in conjunction with traditional power from the ‘grid’ that helps provide extra electricity when needed at night or during times with low sunlight or increased power usage.

The solar system in comprised of the panels you see on the roof along with an inverter which can either be a string inverter attached to a wall or a micro-inverter attached to the back of each individual panel. The inverters are responsible for converting the DC electricity generated by the solar panels into AC electricity suitable for household use.

Choosing the correct system

In order to determine which solar system is most appropriate for your home, you need to start by measuring your current electricity usage. Next you will need to determine how much space is available for solar panels, as well as an idea of how much energy you expect to utilize in the future.

Choosing a solar system for your home is not a one-size-fits-all option because everyone’s power needs are different. The average suitable size for most household solar systems is around 6,000 watts, but customers wanting more power or who choose to go all-electric with battery storage may be better off considering a larger system. In fact, a larger system is likely to bring even greater long-term benefits than a smaller system, which instead usually reaches payback more quickly.

How solar panels harness the energy of the sun to power your home

How much does it cost?

Installing a solar system in your home probably costs less than you think. Especially when you consider that a typical home gets an average of 4-5 hours of peak sunlight per day on an annual basis. Every square meter of solar panel captures, converts, and delivers 0.8 to 1 kWh of energy to your house, so the more panels you have, the more energy you generate.

A typical American home uses about 30kWh of electricity each day, so 30-38 square meters of panels would be adequate for generate enough energy for that home. This system would require between 300-400 square feet, which is roughly equal to one-sixth of the size of the average home. These newest, most efficient solar panels from Innovative Solar require less roof space to generate the same amount of energy, so your installation cost goes down as well.

According to recent research from Lawrence Berkeley Labs, the average cost of solar panels per watt in the US is $3.34 per watt while prices from solar cost comparison marketplaces like Solar-Estimate.org show the actual average residential solar panels cost is now $3.18 per watt. That means a complete 6,000W average-sized residential solar power system will cost about $19,000 to professionally install before the federal solar tax credit which reduces the total price by about $500. The final cost will obviously vary depending on where you live.

The benefits

The are many great environmental benefits of using solar power instead of fossil fuel-generated electricity. Not only is solar energy a 100% renewable resource, it also produces zero greenhouse gas emissions when created. But in addition to the terrific green benefits to solar power, it also makes smart financial sense to consider powering your home with the sun. Most modern solar systems pay for themselves in just five years or less because consumers use less grid-sourced electricity and are also compensated through feed-in tariffs for exporting excess energy back to the grid.

If you would like some more information on powering your home with solar energy, give Innovative Solar Systems a call today at (828) 424-7884 and we will be happy to discuss your options and set up a free estimate.

Understanding the Digital Road Map

Understanding how information flows and turns into digital content is important for people who are trying to increase their digital presence. But it’s not as simple as making up and idea and throwing it up onto your website like so many people try to do.

So, we’ve created this road map to show how we how we take the questions, concerns and ideas you have about your website and transform them into valuable content that will work for you. The video below will show you how.

First we start with an idea

When an idea is formed, it’s something you thought would be great for your company. Instead of throwing that idea onto your website to see where it ends up, the proper process begins by create a blog post about it. This is where you are able to:

• Build the content

• Gather the ideas

• Create all the links

Get something that is going to compliment your website and your digital presence. Now remember, the idea is still the idea, it just turned into digital version with a lot of linking and reciprocal linking and organized content.

Social Distribution

Once that happens, we then go over to social distribution. The social team manager will take that and review it and see where that content belongs. Is it optimal on Linkedin? Should it just be on Facebook? Maybe it’s a great image? Or maybe it’s a do-it-yourself idea that’s best served on Pinterest?

Whatever that might be, we’re going to design and create and move that information to that department. For example, it might be Google My Business, that’s going to be another department that will take that information or that picture or that content and turn it into something that’s going to be beneficial. When that’s all done, it finds its place to your website and that’s where it’s going to end up growing.

Making your ideas work for you

Now it’s time to put everything together where it belongs in your website so it can nurture and grow. What does growth look like?

• Citation Implementation

• Meta Tagging

• Reciprocal Linking

• Name Address Phone (NAP)

• SEO

All of these factors encompass that idea which has now evolved into digital content. When it all comes together, your website will increase when it’s treated this way, Because now that this is being done correctly, it all happens behind the scenes,

Now when someone is searching for your business, your industry, or any content that relates to your online presence, you’re going to appear higher than most unless they have paid advertising that they’re using to push themselves above all of this work that wasn’t happening

If you questions about this please call me on my cell anytime at 941-544-5000.

- Art