Make your online presence sizzles with Yoda

After reading a lot of reviews on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I finally got the chance to watch it. In short, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is an enormous triumph, a return to the ways of the original trilogy, and, specifically, what made them so loved, and so good. And the best part, I still love the character, Yoda, the legendary Jedi Master. :p

One of Yoda’s most endearing traits was his ability to dispense sage wisdom. It turns out that many of Yoda’s favorite sayings actually have futuristic wisdom associated with them. Yoda may be long gone, but, thankfully, the little guy left a legacy behind in the form of quotes that will lead, and sizzles your online presence to the full potential.

This old Jedi Master would make a fabulous Chief Marketing Officer today and if he traded his position on the Jedi Council for a cushy desk job, he might have imparted these words of wisdom to his Padawan marketers.

How to make an online presence sizzles Yoda style

1. “Judge me by my [presence], do you?”

A strong [Marketing Automation] is the most important element of digtal marketing that local businesses can focus on : Half of all mobile searches are conducted with the intent of finding local results, and 61% of those local searches result in a purchase.

Business owners require a simple way to control their online visibility and promote their reputation effectively.

The main areas to focus on for establishing an effective online presence are as follows:

Online listings: Making sure listings are accurate and consistent across key sources
Online reviews: Generating and promoting reviews and addressing negative ones
Mobile-friendly websites: Providing an effortless browsing experience for customers
Social activity: Maintaining active social accounts on the most relevant networks with consistent profile data and engaging content

Without a solid social presence, a mobile-friendly website, and accurate listings featuring positive reviews, you may as well be waving your hand in front of Google and saying, “These are not the search results you’re looking for.”

2. “To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.”

Your online presence is your beacon. That includes your responsive website, blogs, social media accounts, comments/articles/posts on other websites – there is a never ending trail of your company online; it is up to local business owners to ensure it leads to success.

Content generation has become one of the most important aspects of strengthening your online presence. Ideally, everything you do online should be part of an underlying marketing strategy to strengthen your brand and position your company favourably with your targeted market(s). Your content should provide opportunity for your audience to engage with you and nurture a discourse that leads to a long-term customer/supplier relationship.

3. “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger… anger leads to hate… hate leads to [bad reviews].”

Getting a bad review can feel worse than being chained to Jabba the Hutt and forced to wear nothing but eyeshadow and a degrading space bikini.

The trick is to control your temper. Most consumers post negative reviews because they can’t connect with someone at the business who can solve their problem. Therefore, listening for feedback and replying in a timely manner can mitigate a lot of potential damage.

Of course, that won’t be the case for all negative reviews. The best way to deal with truly disgruntled customers is to apologize publicly (so others can see that you care about your customers’ experience) and then take the conversation offline.

4. “To answer power with power, the Jedi way this is not. In this war, a danger there is, of losing who we are.”

Like your mom said when you were a kid, “just be yourself, dear, and others will like you for who you are.”

Mom wasn’t always right, not everyone appreciated your ironic wit or your personal fashion statements, but she knew that people who were suited to be your friends would appreciate what you had to offer. Much is the same in how you present your company and brand online, if you have something of value to offer, be true to your brand and strategically find your market niche; trying to be everything to everyone and changing to please the diverse markets can be damaging to your company reputation.

5. “A Jedi uses [Marketing Automation] for knowledge and defense, never for attack.”

Marketing automation is like the Force : Most people use it for good, but some others are tempted by its Dark Side. The goal, of course, is to collect as much information as possible and put it into action without coming off like a stalker.

For digital marketing agencies that sell products and services to small and medium businesses, automation opens up a gold rush of opportunities. For example, imagine creating campaigns that deliver personalized content about the specific solutions your agency sells and sending them to your prospects, then tracking which ones the prospects engage with to spark phone calls and conversations with your reps.

Superior to cold-calling, right?

If you provide demo accounts or sample reports to each of your prospects with rich data about their businesses, you are guaranteed to receive higher opens, click-throughs, and overall engagement. And if you can surface that information directly to your outbound team so they can follow up with prospects the moment they interact with your message, then good relations with the Wookies—err… marketing team, you shall have.

6. “If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are … a different game you should play.”

Even proven tactics may not work for your company. It could be a bad fit for your market, bad timing, poor implementation, there are myriad reasons why a good idea may not work every time.

So, track everything you do, monitor its effectiveness and be prepared to tweak, hone, or even yank some tactic for another. There are many great online tools (we use our customised software to track rankings, analytics and even mentions in the social media) to help you implement, test, monitor and measure your online presence efforts. With these tools you can successfully guide your online initiatives and demonstrate ROI.

7. “No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”

This one’s self-explanatory, padawans. Post regularly to your social channels and work on delivering quality content that will resonate the most with your audience and sizzles your online presence.

I certainly understand wanting to test the waters. That is a prudent approach to trying any new marketing initiative and can be done strategically with the ability to expand as it proves successful. But, allocating only limited resources (budget or personnel) with no guidance and expecting results is foolhardy. Like any business initiative, the results will be directly linked to the commitment applied.

Make a reasoned, but sufficient, commitment to your [bad reviews] and it can succeed.

8. “Patience you must have my young padawan.”

One of the reasons that digital marketing and content generation is so hot these days is because of the exponential return. Imagine successfully leveraging your brand on the virtually infinite opportunity of the Web. It is open and active 24/7, provides limitless opportunities and communication vehicles, can have dozens/hundreds/thousands of people providing testimonials and referring you to others – it’s like having a robo-sales/PR person tirelessly knocking on doors for you.

However, it does take some knowledge, strategy and time. It takes months to build an online following and it is definitely not quick fixes to start converting that into actual sales. Effective marketing takes repetition but the rewards are great. Not only do you grow sales with typically long-lasting customers among from a much wider scope, but you have also grown your brand and sizzles your online presence that can be further leveraged.

So be patient. You are a farmer tending a cash crop; work your field diligently and you will reap your reward.

9. “Much To Learn, You Still Have, My Old Padawan. This Is Just The Beginning”

You might be a kick-ass business owner with all the textbook and street smarts in the world, but if you think you already know everything there is to know, that itself is the greatest mistake you could possibly make. Look for valuable lessons in everything that you do, hear, or experience. Every person you meet, every person you talk to, has a lesson you can learn.

10. “May the force be with you”

And out of the sudden, Darth Varder appears out of nowhere and say,

“I’ve been waiting for you, Obi-Wan. We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.”

Contact us for your free no-obligation consultation and make your online presence sizzles!