Best Practices For An Optimized Digital Strategy

     Below you will find best practices for establishing your business through digital platforms. These guidelines are a necessary step to ensure your business thrives in the digital space and is positioned to compete within the market. Haze Media Group generally aides businesses by handling all of the below development as part of our comprehensive brand management services.

Part I: Online Platform Development & Optimization

• Website Purchase & Development

1. Purchase both hosting & domain for your business or brand. This can be accomplished easily by visiting Siteground.
2. Purchase a WordPress based theme for simplicity and easy design. Visit Themeforest to browse many different designs you can use.
3. Place the website in development mode using either the themes included plugin or download a plugin via the wordpress platform.
4.  Load demo content onto the website.
5. Replace all textual elements with your business information.
6. Take note of all photos on the pages and their dimensions (i.e. 1920 x 1080 landscape) You’ll need these later.
7. Remove all extraneous page elements, additional pages, comments, broken links, etc.
8. Include at minimum 300 words of text per page related to your brand and fill with the 5Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why)
9. Include outbound links to other businesses and your digital brand platforms.
10. develop a contact or booking form and place CTAs on top of the page for reservations and booking as well as the bottom.
11. Ensure the page is SEO optimized through Yoast, Then check for additional issues using a third-party SEO optimization analyzer site.

• Third-Party Tracking Tools & Analytics

1. Create a bit.ly account and generate unique URLs for all of the social platforms noted below. Then place these unique URLs on the pages, buttons, and bios. This is important to measure where your audience is interacting with you.  www.bitly.com 
2. Sign up for the google suite of website tools: Google My Business, Analytics, Search Console, and Adwords.

• Facebook Page Optimization

1. Update all information and strip any existing low performing posts or unnecessary posts from the page. This includes low-quality photos & videos.
2. Turn off notifications so the audience will not be aware of changes in real-time.
3. Update the profile photo with a logo
4. Update the banner with a video banner sized correctly (1640 x 630) This can be done later.
5. Link all relevant social media accounts to the page including Instagram.
6. Switch the website to the new website & the booking button.

• Instagram Optimization

1. Redo profile bio to include relevant information about the business and a link to the new website via unique bitly link
2. Delete existing photos for now.
3. Ensure the account is linked to Facebook.

•  Create The Following Pages: Yelp, TripAdvisor, Bing Places, Youtube, Yellowpages, Open Table, Urbanspoon, AllMenus

1. These must be created and be completely consistent across the board with all relevant information about your business. Fill them out to the maximum ability.
2. Input all textual information and logos for all of them. Link all of them back to the website with unique bitly links per platform.

Part II: Content Creation To Feed Platforms & Website

• Interior/Exterior Photo & Video Shoot

1. Shoot appealing, well-lit, wide-angle shots of the space or location with a pro-grade DSLR or Mirrorless camera. Then shoot the textures, the furniture, the ambiance. Example: https://unsplash.com/photos/yuxr5ohFB-g
2. Shoot a high-end video of customers interacting with your brand or using your services/products. 4k minimum downsampled to 1080p for Instagram & Facebook Consumption. Use 120FPS for a more dramatic effect.
3. Aim for 10-20 landscape photos, 10-20 square photos, 4-5 videos

• Logo Animation & Splash for end of videos

1. Take a look at fiverr or additional third-party websites to have your logo animated for video.

Part III: Content Distribution & Replacement

• Facebook

1. Upload photos of space in an album, replace the banner with a video banner.
2. Schedule 15 posts per month, every other day, with relevant information all tagged back via bitly links to booking or reservations at your website.
3. Invite friends to like the page (all of your friends) then ask others to log into the account or log in to their Facebook accounts to invite all of their friends. Attempt to invite 5000 or more people. This can be done with about 10 people

• Instagram

1. Research relevant hashtags used by competitor businesses who are performing exceptionally well on Instagram. Compile 9 sets of 9-12 hashtags that vary. Use primary anchoring hashtags for your business in every post.
2. Post 9, 12, or 15 photos immediately with captions and hashtags, to fill out the account with high-end, polished images (the ones from the photoshoot)
3. The primary goal is symmetry in both design of the feed (how the photos are positioned) the color and mood and the types of photos.
4. Invite friends from facebook to link your Instagram account. Then plan to follow competitor accounts followers in mass. Roughly 100 a day minimum. At the end of the week, use a third party cleaning app to unfollow those who do not follow you.
5. Post consistent content that is in the same tone as the original 9 photos, every other day.

• Website

1. Compress all photos significantly using a third-party compression website or tool. This must be done to ensure the load-times of the page stay extremely fast.
2. Take note of the previously sized images from above and replace all existing images on the page with images and videos taken during the photoshoot. Ensure every photo has an Alt Tag that describes what the photo is and its purpose (SEO optimization)

• Remaining Social Platforms

1. Place relevant photos & videos with captions on all other social platforms listed above, including the menu. We want to ensure anywhere someone looks, they get the same message about your establishment and what they will get when they arrive. Transparency is key.