Coming from a web design background, the course has offered me a great insight into the world of search and social media marketing and how I can adapt the skills within my business and for my clients. I would highly recommend the course and I hope this blog helps you decide whether this it’s right for you.

SEO Key Areas

Having some knowledge of SEO marketing you would think, “Why is he on this course?” but after 9 weeks I’ve learnt that there’s much more than a few input of keywords needed to improve your marketing on and off you’re website. The key areas I found most helpful to develop my marketing strategy are as followed.
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Over the past 5 weeks on the Salford Uni course we’ve listened to our tutor and 5 industry speakers share more than 300 slides of the latest digital marketing goodness. Question is, how do we use these tools in the real world of limited time, people and budgets?  To investigate, I’ve done a digital marketing strategy audit.

My client Trafford Builders is a growing family business. They do home extensions, loft conversions and open plan living. My challenge is to use digital marketing gracefully to help them build their brand and win new customers through enhanced word of mouth.

And here’s the rub –  I’ve only got at most an afternoon a week to achieve results. Here comes my digital marketing strategy audit.

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Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search seems to be defined by crises – first came the dreaded Google updates petting zoo, then we survived mobilegeddon, and we’re currently living under the reign of King Content. But what’s coming next? And how can we prepare for it?

In this post, Rob from Provident Insurance shows us how we can forecast what’s coming next by looking back at what’s come before, and provides his top tips for future-proofing your site and its content.

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So you’ve heard the news, the digital sector is slowly taking over the world and the industry is now worth zillions of British Pounds. But how do you carve a slither, or maybe even a slice, of this big fat juicy cake for yourself?

Check out these free, simple and highly-effective digital tools to ensure you aren’t left with nothing more than a few crumbs and a grumbly belly…

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SEO for small businesses can be a challenge, working in a small business inevitably means you are

1. always short for time
2. always focused on hundreds of things at once
3. always passionate about what you’re doing

Even your job title can feel like a minefield – does Account Manager cover advertiser, marketer, receptionist, sandwich runner, tea maker, cleaner, product developer… etc. etc.?

So when you’re told that Social Media and Search Marketing will make big impacts, you inevitably want to throw yourself into it full throttle and full of enthusiasm. Trying to navigate it yourself however leaves you frustrated and disheartened. I’ve done 5 tweets today, why haven’t I had 3000 orders?!

That’s where the Search and Social Media Marketing Course came in. As chief Tea Maker, amongst many other titles, at Safer Surfacing, I was very keen to learn what impacts a small company could make with SEO. We’re all pushed for time, and time will always inevitably be money to the small business owner, but these five starting points should have you well on your way to that all important Return on Investment (ROI).

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Image copyright: (C) the Oddfellows

For younger people, documenting life experiences, sharing know-how and creating rich content to share on social media seems to be second-nature. This is less so for many older people. But knowledge held by older people is precious capital that must be shared, documented and transferred to other generations. We can’t let it become lost.

The University of Salford’s Search and Social Media Marketing course has challenged my thinking – how can social media play its part in helping us to achieve legacy and in enabling different generations to reciprocally benefit from the sharing of knowledge? And do silversurfers hold the potential to tip social media into a golden age of information exchange? Read more…..

Talks from tutors and industry guest speakers on the Search and Social Media Marketing course confirmed my opinion that social media benefits are growing. This is particularly the case if you want to grow a successful small and medium sized business in the UK.

Have you observed the size of the phone book recently? It is difficult to find a company today in the UK where digital marketing is not affecting it. For the majority of organisations, digital marketing is becoming a must these days and we’ve all heard the saying ‘Content is King’. This is so much so that people in the industry are reluctant to say it because it’s so overused. However, there is no denying that in 2015 this is what any type of marketing comes down to in order to capture your audience!

In particular if you are a small and medium sized enterprise (SMEs), online presence can show your business character and help you to differentiate from the corporate masses. The core of your visibility relies on your content and how you get that content to reach your target audience. You need to stand out from the crowd, so don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.

At present, one of the most effective ways of achieving this is through the channels of social media. From the manufacturing and engineering industries to the retail and construction industries and everything in between, social media is beneficial to SMEs as it builds on social capital and can help grow your businesses.

Image: Social Media Marketing (CC) Jerry Nihen

Below are 3 reasons social media is considered such a powerful tool:

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For any business using social media channels, it is important to know what makes your target market tick and to think about how you are going to engage with them.

I have recently completed the Search and Social Media Marketing course at Salford University which has given me more of an insight into digital marketing and some psychology behind the thought process of users on social media.

According to Jonah Berger, there are six STEPPS to creating successful content that is more likely to trigger people to share or engage with your content on social media.

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It was face down on the physiotherapist’s couch that I had my SSMM epiphany.

It was about week 4 of the course and the physio was talking about his own website and trying to improve its ranking. He had recently done some training in New York learning a technique that was not widely available in the UK. He obviously had the makings of some great content and I suggested he get it on his website and have a think about optimising it for some of the more unusual keywords. We also talked about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tricks in general and the many different tools out there that he could use to improve his website and in particular its position on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

It was good to feel that I was starting to make sense of a world I had only stepped into a few weeks previously! Read more…..

I have been writing news pages for my company website www.homes4u.co.uk for the last couple of years and dabbling in Social Media with no real firm plan in place. I knew that content was important for improving search engine results and was under the impression the work I had been putting in was good.

My posts read well and doubled up as press releases. It was only recently, when I was looking at our ranking on search engines, that I discovered we were no longer top of the page for what I would expect to be our key search terms.

So, the question was where do I start? 

My background is Estate Agency not marketing or web design. I like to think I am quite computer literate and I have a good understanding of social media but where my knowledge had gaps was Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). I didn’t want to be reliant on the advice of website designers so I decided to research a Search and Social Media Marketing course.

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