How roofing contractors can get more clicks on Twitter

Twitter is best used to broadcast and gather information. Creating a lot of interesting content to share with your followers should be your goal for the tool.

I was reading a blog post from Dan Zarrella last week and came across his research findings from studying how to optimize click-through rate of links that you include in your Tweets.

CTR: # of clicks on a link in a Tweet divided by total followers at the time

Without going through all of the details, here is what he found studying 200,000 Tweets containing links from highly followed Twitter accounts:

1. 120 to 130 (of 140 possible) characters is optimal.
2. Put the link 25% of the way through (at around the 30-ish character mark).
3. Tweet at a slower pace, with 1 per hour being best (I've made this mistake).
4. Use the words "via", "@", "RT", "please", and/or "check".
5. Check out paper.li - the phrase with the greatest positive effect was "daily is out".
6. Use more verbs & adverbs (action words), and fewer nouns & adjectives.
7. Tweet on the weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday had the highest CTR).
8. Tweet later in the day (2pm-1am had the highest CTR).

Honestly, I don't know if the results of this study relate to the roofing industry or not, but I thought it was interesting to share and definitely worth a try for a few weeks for those who use Twitter (by the way, I am @roofpal if you'd like to follow).

If you have any questions about this blog post, feel free to email me at Chris@RoofPal.com.

3 steps to determine if you need a mobile roofing website strategy

The title of this blog post is actually misleading. There are actually no steps involved in determining if you need a mobile website strategy for your roofing company - you do need one! The real question is, how much should a mobile website matter to you?

At a minimum you should have mechanisms in place to serve up content targeted at the someone viewing your site from a mobile device (smart phone, iPad, etc.). But how do you know what to measure to determine just how pressing a need this is?

Step 1: Turn on "mobile traffic" in Google Analytics

Every installation of Google Analytics has a custom traffic segment called "mobile traffic". Log in to your Google Analytics account and turn on this segment in the upper right-hand corner.

Step 2: Identify your % of traffic that comes from mobile devices

Browse over to your visitors tab. What percentage of your traffic is mobile? If it is higher than 1% you need to start thinking about a mobile website strategy. If it is higher than 10% you need to kick your mobile website strategy into high gear. If it is higher than 25% and your mobile strategy isn’t in full swing you are losing business to people who don’t want to navigate on a mobile unfriendly website.

Step 3: Identify the % of mobile traffic for new vs. returning visitors

Two other data points worth noting is new and returning visitors. What percentage of each is mobile traffic? If your returning visitors are using mobile devices to browse your roofing company's website in any serious way, then you are annoying them by not offering up a mobile option. If your new visitors are coming from mobile devices, then you may be turning away business and you don’t even know it.

There is a very good chance that search traffic from a mobile device is coming from someone who needs a roofer ASAP. Make absolutely sure that your mobile content gives the information they need in a hurry - an easy way to report a leak or request an inspection, an easy way to contact the right person for a project or service work, how to get to your office (if appropriate), etc.

If you aren't getting any mobile traffic at all, that should raise two questions: why not, and what should you do about it? As more and more internet traffic migrates to mobile devices you should see an increase in mobile traffic over time to your website. If you see none, that means you have likely done zero optimization for mobile and local search. At a bare minimum, register your website with Google Places and consider at least starting a free account (plus profile data) on Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla, and any other services that heavily promote mobile usage.

If you have any questions about optimizing your roofing company's website for mobile devices, please feel free to email Chris@RoofPal.com.

YouTube Videos Rank Higher in Google

Roofing contractors should use YouTube as much as possible.

Please watch my video podcast about using YouTube for roofing contractors

YouTube (purchased by Google in 2006 for over $1.6 billion) has now become one of the world’s most visited websites. Google indexes those videos and more often than not, you now find YouTube videos appearing on the first page of search results, sometimes outranking aged and established organic listings.

Since there is a clear priority by Google given to YouTube videos and because they are so well received on social media platforms such as Facebook, your roofing company should be taking advantage of all of the benefits.

It is very easy to upload a video to YouTube (accounts are free and simple to set up). Here are the basic steps:

Shoot Your Video

Create a short, content-rich video. Shorter videos are viewed much more frequently (under two minutes is best). Small HD video cameras can now be purchased for just over $100 and include software to upload videos directly through WiFi (or plug into your computer, save and upload the old fashioned way).

Video Name Keywords are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT

Include in the name of your video keywords that you expect people searching would use to find information about your services ("roof repair Dallas", "metal roofing Los Angeles", etc.). I can’t stress how vital it is to ensure EVERY word in the title of your video is relevant to your content. Do not include the date or time in your title and only the location if it is relevant to the search. Your video listing could be on page one of Google search within 24 hours.

Create Incoming Links To Your Video Listing

Anchor Link TEXT is the visible text in a hyperlink. Within your website and/or blog, link back to your YouTube video using your keyword(s) in your anchor text.  Also, you can ask friends and associates to link back to your YouTube video using the same method. By applying links to your YouTube videos (and having other sites do the same) it tells Google that your videos are relevant to the keywords or keyword phrases you have chosen.

Drive YouTube Video Viewers to your Website

Once people begin finding your video listings for the keywords you have chosen, you have created a lead generation path that will last for a long time to come. Mention your website address during the video or place a screenshot of your website and your website address at the start and end of your video so viewers know how to get to your website. I also recommend including a hot-linked URL (your website address with the http:// at the beginning) into the beginning of the description of your video in the "About This Video" section.

If you have any questions about or need assistance using YouTube for your roofing company, or if you are interested in learning more about the RoofPal Official Microcast Series which now produces video blogs that can be personally branded with your company name, logo and contact information, please email RoofPal@gmail.com.

Are you on the recieving end of your own social media marketing?

If you are looking for a good way to evaluate how well your social media marketing is working, try being a recipient of your own content.

Not only should you spend time being a consumer of your products and services, you should also be a consumer of your own marketing (including social media). Think of your marketing efforts as another service offering. Is your social media content really a valuable service iteself?

How often do you go back to check your own blog for something you wrote in the past? If you do, it is a sign that you have actually posted valuable information. If you never go back to reference your own blog yourself, it might not be valuable enough for anyone else either.

The same is true for your social media accounts. I store links on my Facebook page in order to reference recent relevant content for my marketing newsletter and podcast. In other words, I am my own customer (I go back to remember what I published). How often do you check your posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+? If the answer is "never", then maybe the content you are sharing isn't as valuable as you think it is.

Much has been made of influence scores (Klout) and re-tweet or like/share metrics, but the simplest metric of all is to look at your own behavior. If you never go back to look at your own content (i.e., you find no value in what you publish), chances are that no one else does either. You can begin improving your social media marketing by publishing things that are of value to you. Do that and you’ll automatically begin sharing information that are of value to others.

If you would like an independent evaluation of your social media marketing, please email Chris@RoofPal.com for pricing (it's not as expensive as you might think).