Engaging Offline?

This week's question: How can an industry use social media to engage their customers offline?


We all know how convenient it is to shop online. All you do is, click, click, and done! It's so simple that it can't possibly be a bad thing, right?

Well, you're right and you're also wrong. While shopping online is a good way to widen the number of customers reached, it can also hurt a business. Several big name brands often suffer because their online rates practically slaughter their in-store rates. This causes chain stores to close and people in retail to lose their jobs.

But big stores aren't all doomed. In fact, there a few ways one can save their physical store without a lot of stress. One of the best ways is hosting special events IN store, like special sales. 

For example, every year, Macy's has an early Memorial Day Sale that happens only in-store. Events like these are perfect for keeping people coming to your store. It gets audience out of the house and physically into your business. This way, they can save a little money and you can get the rates your business deserves.

SEO & Benefits?

This week's question is simply, "What's a SEO and why should brands care about using SEO?

A SEO is short for, "Search Engine Optimization". It's essentially the process of getting traffic from natural search results on search engines like, Yahoo or, Google. In today's modern world almost, if not all, businesses have a website for their products and/or services. But not all know about SEO and why they should use it.

There are a few reasons as to why it's important to use SEO:

1).  Increase in traffic for the brand.
When you go to search for something on Google, you usually go with the first few sites that come up. Those top sites are the ones that receive the most traffic and make the brand more popular. SEO usually focuses on producing informative and keywords that are relevant to the titles pages and descriptions of the website.

2). Cost Effectiveness.
Using SEO is one of the best ways to raise money for your brand. It targets users that are currently looking at your products and services online.

3). Brand Awareness.
Have your site on the first page of Google or Yahoo is a great way to get more exposure for your business. Users will more likely correlate your brand with those words. Plus, the top sites on the search results are often viewed as the most trustworthy. So your brand will be seen as a first choice when compared to other companies.

So there you have it. Most brands that do use SEO are usually the more popular sites and the ones that usually show up on the first page of a Search Engine. By using SEO, a business is more likely to have larger traffic turn-outs than those who don't use it.