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The 2nd Page Of Google Effect – Part 2 – 19/02/2019

In our last blog, we discussed it was so relevant to have your website on the first page of Google along with some top tips of how to help your website rank better for free. Following on from that popular topic, today we’re looking at how social media also suffers from the “2nd page of Google effect”.

Being mindful of trying to make sure Forest Traders offers the best service to its customers and wanting it to be effective for them, trying to keep up with the way business happens is paramount to us. For a while, this has been through using social media to find referrals. Historically, word of mouth has always been the best form of advertising and that’s not about to change but it is adapting. Why would you not trust your cousin who says X has done a fantastic job when the other option is to pluck an unknown person out of the phone book? However, what happens when you don’t have anyone to ask or they haven’t used anyone themselves? First it was paper directories and newspapers, then the internet started taking over so it was all about search engines but now its evolved again. The others still work and are super important but as technology gets better, we are depending on it more and if we’re all honest, we have become lazier as a result. The more power we have in our fingertips as each new gadget upgrades, the more reliant we are on information being easy to come by. Yes you can fight this change, you can rebel as a business and refuse to conform……..but technology is going to continue to grow. The current young generation will become the old and phones/tablets/laptops will be in the blood and make up of the babies who are born today.

So what does this mean for social media? Social media tagging has become increasingly popular. Facebook went through a period where it became less social and more of a selling platform; at that time pages worked incredibly, everything was free and it was easy to use, why wouldn’t you make the most of it? However, they felt that this was a breach of the whole idea of Facebook, after all, it’s meant to be a “social” media. This is when pages started to feel the force of a loss of coverage, paid ads were becoming necessary and businesses were having to try to be smarter with its use. Upon these adaptions and to try and regain its popularity to be “social”, Facebook quickly noticed how people were using the site to ask questions, particularly recommendations. The new “searching for recommendations” bar came up and suddenly, everyone started using their status’ and groups to ask for exactly that. Can you blame them? After all, if i’ve got a radiator that isn’t working, I could easily spend 30 minutes looking at the first 10 plumbers that come up on Google, checking out whether they are “Gas Safe”, what are their reviews like and do they cover my area? Then i’ve got to either ring or email each one individually to ask for a quote, there goes another 30 minutes of my time. OR I can head onto Facebook, jump into the local group where I am and say “Hey, I need a plumber to change a radiator in Cinderford, anyone know anyone good?” Boom, within 10 minutes I could easily have 5/10 different plumbers with comments like “My dads a plumber, his company is X” or “we had X in to do ours, was brilliant and excellent price too”. If i’m lucky, they might have even tagged the business page and the owner will have replied with “we’d be happy to give you a free quote, give us a call on X to arrange”. Actually, the same plumber has been mentioned by 4 different people, he must be really good so i’ll contact him. Excellent, all sorted within 15 minutes and I didn’t have to do a thing.

Fantastic right? Imagine if your business is the one mentioned 4 times? This comes from brand awareness, this comes from people like us posting on these sites, this comes from your friends, customers, family and colleagues doing the same. These posts are becoming more and more popular by the day, you don’t want to miss out on them because no one is mentioning your name. This is exactly where the 2nd page of Google effect comes in, within 5 minutes there might be 10 different plumbers recommended. If you post on it 24 hours later, it’s old news, they probably have got someone sorted for a quote or may even have had the work done. Time is of the absolute essence here, just like on Google, if you’re not in the top 3/5 in the long list they’re going to have, you might as well not be on it.

“I don’t have time for that” I hear you shout, and I don’t blame you. Social media is an absolute time hoover for the most minimal work but it’s worth keeping an eye on what’s going on, not just to post about yourself but to support your fellow businesses too. Don’t forget if someone mentions you to not only thank your tagger but to respond to the initial poster too – offer them help, give them contact details. The ones who take the time to interact are the ones who are utilising this service. Don’t sit back and assume that your name being there will get you the lead – you have to do some of the leg work yourself, after all, the whole message within this blog is that the world is getting lazier.

We have secured really good leads and even completed work for our customers thanks to our posts across social media platforms. It does take time, there are moments where it’s extremely frustrating and there are ‘duds’ that nothing comes from BUT they do work! Therefore help your friends and colleagues by shouting about them, you’ll make them very happy 😀