When you own and run your own business, spending much of your time working toward its success, you realize the importance of building a team of employees who will support your venture with enthusiasm and drive. The process of attracting, finding, and hiring qualified employees needs to be approached methodically and carefully, so that you will be successful in building a productive team to support your business.

You’ve tried job boards. You’ve tried word-of-mouth. As a small or medium sized business owner, you may wonder what campaigns or methods will actually work best for attracting excellent job applicants. This guide will help you explore the options and processes that yield the best recruitment results — and that go beyond the job board.

Social Media As a Recruitment Tool

There’s a reason social media is sometimes referred to as the modern-day town square — it’s all about spreading messages to large groups of people at one time. If your company has a social media channel – whether Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn or all of those — one of the first, no-cost steps is to publish a post letting people know that you have an opening on your team. This can be particularly beneficial if you already have a strong number of followers on your social media channels.

Join Social Media Groups

According to Scion Insights, recruiters can even join relevant groups and communities to be in the same sphere as potential candidates, which is a great way to organically build a community of people who may be strong additions to your business.

Learn LinkedIn – An Important Social Media Platform for Recruitment

While it is definitely worthwhile to post a job opening on Facebook and Instagram (and can often be successful, depending on the type of company you own), one of the very best social media platforms for recruitment is LinkedIn. LinkedIn provides access to an extensive network of professionals. Running a LinkedIn recruitment campaign allows filters to be applied to industries, locations, and even salary ranges. Companies and individuals on LinkedIn can indicate in their profile, bio, and feed that they are hiring for a role. Professionals looking for a new role can indicate that they are looking for work and will often scour LinkedIn posts in their chosen area and industry on an almost daily basis.

LinkedIn also serves as a great platform for recruiters and candidates to initially connect. If a professional is interested in an opening, they can easily comment or directly message the recruiter with further information — and vice versa.

Use Hashtags Wisely

When posting a job on LinkedIn, remember the importance of using relevant hashtags as tools to categorize specific content. In addition to general recruitment hashtags, like #hiring and #interviewing, use industry-specific hashtags, so potential candidates will know who you’re looking to hire.

Interact on Social Media

If you see a candidate with interesting and relevant experience, you can strike up a conversation by directly messaging them on LinkedIn or Facebook. Sending a personalized message, such as pointing out something on their LinkedIn bio that piques your interest, can lead to a meaningful conversation and submitted application.

Embrace Geofencing and Google Ads As Recruitment Tools

Utilize Google Custom Intent Audience

According to Google, a custom intent audience refers to a specific group of potential customers identified by their online behavior that shows they are interested in products or services similar to what you offer. As an employer, you can use Google custom intent audience ad campaigns to target people who are currently searching for jobs like the ones you are offering. Targeting options include relevant keywords, competitor URLs, and even competitor apps, which helps employers reach the job candidates.

Utilize Geo-Fencing

Messaging only matters when it is reaching the correct audiences — which is why geofencing is a vitally important tool to use when attracting the right employees for your business. A geofence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area.

You can develop great digital ads that communicate your company’s open position and use geofencing to reach people in your area who may be interested.

• Use relevant keywords in your ad copy to ensure your ads appear in searches related to the job position.
• Cast a geographic net that makes sense. Depending on how many people you think you need to reach, determine a geofencing radius that will reach enough potential candidates in the locations where the job is available. Examples of fences for recruitment ads include:
• Your competitors – Their employees have the skills you want, and may be interested in a new employer.
• Testing centers – Locations like CDL testing centers can be great places to find job candidates with the skills you want.
• Schools – Colleges that offer the training your employees need, like CNA certification, are a great option to fence.
• Write compelling and concise ad copy that highlights key job details and benefits to attract the right candidates.

Write Engaging Job Descriptions

The recruitment, interviewing, and hiring process is a two-way street. While you are looking for the best candidates, remember that the best candidates are being particular as well. When candidates are searching for jobs, whether they’re browsing or actively and regularly applying, the copy that goes in a job description is the first impression they get of the role, the company, and the people that they would be working with. Therefore, it’s critical to write copy that is smart, detailed, and appealing to the type of people you’d like to hire.

So, what exactly should you include in a job description?

Outline Responsibilities and Expectations

First and foremost, potential candidates will spend more time reading a job description if they see the list of responsibilities and expectations are aligned with their skills and experience. Be honest about what you’re looking for — but don’t get too far into the details. In an interview or follow-up conversation, you can discuss the minute details. According to CIO, an extensive list of requirements, even if you call them preferred qualifications, isn’t always the best idea. Instead, omit expectations for specific or advanced degrees that are not truly necessary to the role.

Showcase Company Culture

Now more than ever, candidates on the job hunt are interested in learning more about what a company’s culture is like. According to statistics surrounding recruitment featured in TeamStage, company culture is an important factor for 46% of job seekers. More specifically, married candidates value culture more than their single colleagues, and 94% of entrepreneurs and 88% of job seekers say that a healthy culture at work is vital for success.

It’s clear many candidates want to know about your company’s culture. But what exactly does that mean? According to RecruitingDaily, including information about your company’s mission, goals, and values in a job description can give them a better sense of what it’s like to work at your organization and how they’ll fit in at the company. A small or medium business with an entrepreneurial spirit can be a major positive for certain candidates.

Do you value flexible working hours? Hybrid schedules? Vacation time? These can all catch the eye of top candidates who know what they value as well.

Feature Amenities and Benefits

Perhaps even more important than highlighting your overall company culture is a list of the amenities and benefits that your employees can expect from the job. Ongig has an ultimate list of 60+ job description benefits to consider featuring if they are relevant, including health insurance, retirement savings plans, paid time off, parental leave, professional development opportunities, education assistance, volunteer opportunities, and more.

According to IBM, workers placed work-life balance (51%) and career advancement opportunities (43%) at the top of their list of priorities, with compensation and benefits (41%) and employer ethics and values (41%) following close behind.

According to LinkedIn, salary, career growth, and meaningful work are the top three priorities when deciding to take a new opportunity.

Use your job description copy as an opportunity to feature what makes your company such a great place to work.

Highlight Potential Career Paths

Not only do you want to attract fantastic employees – you want to retain them as well. You’re more likely to have excellent team members stay on your team if there are clear opportunities for career advancement and professional development. For extra-motivated candidates (who you want on your team), featuring this on the initial job description will be an extra draw. Mention in a job description specific professional development opportunities – such as paid courses or the ability to attend workshops or conferences – and use this as a talking point during an interview to further sell a candidate.

Be Clear and Straightforward

It will save everyone’s time if you are honest and upfront in the job description copy. Are you looking for an employee who is in the Lancaster area full time? Clarify that in the job description. You may get fewer overall applicants, but more of them will be worth an interview when the expectations of location, hours, and the type of work is clear from the very beginning. If you are honest with candidates in the application and hiring process, it will establish a basis of trust throughout the rest of the working relationship.

Highlight Company Successes

Top candidates prepared to bring success want to know that they will be working with equally motivated colleagues. Highlight a recent win or point of pride for your company — this can also be a great point of discussion and elaboration in a future interview.

Embrace SEO Words and Action-Oriented Language

According to Predictive Index, it is important to write a job description that will get noticed by search engines. This means skipping tired terms like “rockstar” that people don’t actually search for when job hunting. Instead, use words and phrases that will excite the type of candidate you want to hire. Action-oriented words, like “plans,” “coordinates,” and “organizes,” can positively connect with people who have been spending the whole day browsing job descriptions and can give them more insights into what their work days would look like.

Use Photos For Authenticity

In addition to writing genuine copy that connects with job seekers, including photos in a job description can pique job seekers’ interest. However, avoid the use of stock photos because they do not provide insight into your company’s culture. Instead, use real photos of your current team on the job or volunteering together. This glimpse into life at your company will increase candidates’ trust and interest. Using photos can also increase engagement and help your company stand out from other businesses looking to hire.

Use Print Marketing To Your Advantage

The best way to recruit is through a varied but strategic approach. In addition to utilizing the digital tools discussed above, remember that print marketing, especially for small and medium sized businesses in Lancaster, remains a remarkably effective way to reach job seekers.

LNP hosts spring and fall jobs every year, attended by over 600 job seekers, and, at each fair without fail, job seekers bring physical copies of the print newspaper as a reference.^.

The following print promotions are great ways to reach and make an impact on job seekers:

• Daily LNP newspaper —we deliver to 40,000 households daily, many of which may be passive job seekers or may know people who are job hunting
• Front page placements—we run multiple ads on the front page of LNP to reach both active and passive readers.
• Classified section—we run ads on the front page of classifieds as well as a section within.
• Pocket—this publication is delivered to over 80,000 LNP non-subscribers throughout the county. With an ad in Pocket and in LNP, you can reach almost every household in Lancaster.

When you are able to successfully campaign for job applicants you will be able to prove to potential candidates that you care about hiring the right person for the job. Most importantly, this approach will increase your chances in hiring a candidate who is the perfect fit for your business.

Connect with LNP Media Group today to optimize your marketing and recruitment strategy to keep your pipeline filled with applicants and decrease your open-to-hire time. LNP Media Group will provide you with campaign reports and keep you updated every step of the way. Call 717-291-8831 or click here to contact us.

TL; DR: A varied but strategic approach, including social media, geofencing, print advertising, and compelling copy with authentic photos will help you reach, attract, and retain the best candidates for openings at your small or medium sized Lancaster County business.

« Back to Blog

Charitable giving is always something that can bring value to your personal life — but did you know it can benefit your business as well?

Will My Charitable Efforts Make An Impact?

As a small or medium sized business owner, you may wonder how much of an impact your charitable giving can make on your business. The answer? Quite a lot.

According to SCORE, the nation’s largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors, approximately 75% of small businesses donate an average of 6% of their profits to charitable organizations annually. Compared to larger businesses, small businesses donate 250% more to local nonprofits and community causes, often in the following ways:

• Giving to local charities
• Supporting youth organizations
• Donating to local first responders
• Supporting local religious organizations
• Aiding local service groups
• Donating food or volunteering in soup kitchens

When you work with LNP Media Group, it’s easy to combine multi-channel marketing with charitable marketing because LNP Media Group is part of WITF.org, a non-profit public media organization. WITF is a regional affiliate of NPR and PBS, and provides educational services to teachers, community members, and to local schools. By associating your business with LNP Media Group and WITF you will be working with a trusted local non-profit with a mission to provide local news and education services.

How Exactly Can Charitable Giving Positively Benefit My Business? 

Attract Customers Aligned With the Cause You Support – And Increase Sales

As a business owner, earning sales and reaching your goals each month is likely your constant, top-of-mind priority. But did you know you can get closer to your bottom line by prioritizing charitable efforts? When potential customers see that you support nonprofits or causes that are important to them as well, their perception of your business will change in a positive direction — and they’ll be more willing to purchase your goods or services. Customers are also more likely to be loyal to a business that prioritizes the values that they align with. When customers feel connected to your businesses’ values and charitable efforts, they will feel that giving you their business is also making a philanthropic impact. Purchasing from your business is linked with the same warm feeling people feel when they donate their own time or resources to a non-profit. According to Platform Magazine, a study revealed that nine-in-10 millennials reported that they would switch to brands that are associated with a cause they support. Further, research by Accenture looked at factors that attract people to buy from certain brands over others and found that 50% of consumers were influenced by whether the brand “supports and acts upon causes that we have in common.”

Read our blog about Cause Marketing for more information on how cause marketing can help your business can stand out in Lancaster County.

Enhance Your Brand With Authenticity

According to an article from Business.com, companies are no longer judged solely on their bottom line, but also on the role they play in the community. Customers are genuinely committed to seeking out brands that are charitable and honest about their values. When you establish philanthropy as a part of your company’s mission, it becomes a part of your brand story. Both returning and potential customers will associate your company’s name, logo, products, services, and employees with philanthropy when you make it a recurring and prominent part of your organization. This will be most successful when it’s done for the right reasons — because you want your business to make a true difference in the charities and causes it supports.

Build Team Camaraderie

When an organization is focused on helping others in need, it helps employees put day-to-day work into perspective — which can boost morale and productivity. Your employees will feel positive about working for a company that cares for others. A particularly great way to build team camaraderie and boost morale is to set up volunteering opportunities that double as a team bonding experiences.

Consider asking your employees what volunteer efforts they would be most interested in – you can even take a vote and pick a new cause to support each month or season. Likely, your employees will suggest volunteering with causes close to their hearts — and if they feel their work is able to support something they care about, they’ll be more likely to work with enthusiasm. As an employer, a best practice is for you to pay your employees for the time they spend volunteering; this really demonstrates your support for volunteerism.

Attract Top Talent For Open Positions

It isn’t just customers and current employees who will be interested in your philanthropic efforts — it will also appeal greatly to potential future employees.

According to a study from 2021 featured by the University of Cincinnati, 8 out of 10 employees say it is important for company values to align with their own. Further, 75% of workers expect their employer to be a force for good in society, and more than 50% of workers say they would quit their job if their company’s values did not align with their own.

In a 2023 study by Fidelity Charitable, an independent public charity and the nation’s largest grantmaker, in an ongoing tight labor market 86% of employees say it’s important to work for a company whose values align with their own, and 81% of employees want to work for a company with socially responsible business practices. This is particularly true among Generation Z and millennials. It’s abundantly clear that many employees are valuing, more now than ever, working for companies with strong values.

When your business advertises its open positions, you can include photos that show your team volunteering together and include copy that describes what charities are important to your business. In interviews with job candidates, you can discuss the prioritization of charitable efforts, which appeals to potential employees who are looking to be involved as well.

Look Into Potential Tax Advantages

While motivation for charitable efforts should come from a place of wanting to help others, it is wise to be aware of the potential tax advantages that may be available to you. According to LifeLongLawyers, deducting qualifying charitable donations reduces the amount your business pays in taxes. Talk to a financial expert about which donation strategies make the most sense for your business.

If you do itemize your deductions and claim charitable donations, your donations will need to meet certain requirements, including the following:

• The charity must be tax exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. You can check an organization’s eligibility to receive tax-deductible charitable donations using the IRS’s search tool. Individuals, social and sports clubs, political groups, most foreign organizations, for-profit schools, and other types of organizations do not qualify to receive deductible contributions.
• The three basic types of charitable gifts that can be deducted are cash, property or equipment, and travel expenses that result from helping a charitable organization. Donation limits apply, but they are quite high (generally 30 to 60 percent of your adjusted gross income, depending on the type of organization).
• You should keep track of your donations with written records in case you are audited. The IRS also requires you to obtain written acknowledgement of the donation from the recipient for any contribution of $250 or more (including cash or property).
• You must fill out an IRS form for each noncash contribution that is more than $500.
• The IRS has special rules for some types of donations, such as automobiles and inventory. There are also rules for determining the value of donated property.

Improve Your Community

While some large-scale causes can be beneficial to give to, for small and medium sized businesses, often the best way to be philanthropic is to help in your own community. When you support schools, clubs, or religious organizations in your own backyard, you can forge a genuine connection with the people and organizations in your area. When you make a point to prioritize charitable efforts with small organizations that do not have much exposure on their own, you can be seen as a leader in your community that really cares about your customer base.

How To Leverage Your Charitable Efforts

Attracting great employees, building team camaraderie, supporting your community, increasing your customer base, and getting tax cuts — these are all great reasons to prioritize charitable efforts. But how exactly should you go about charitable giving in a way that yields the above results?

Pick A Cause You Care About

It is not helpful to anyone to invest in a cause that you don’t have much interest in. Rather, put your energy toward supporting causes and organizations that pique your interest and passion. Otherwise, employees, customers, potential customers, and the community will sense you’re just going through the motions — which will negatively impact your business.

Be Strategic With Philanthropic Storytelling

It doesn’t only matter that you publicize your charitable efforts, but it also matters how you do it.

The LNP article, “Charitable Giving: A Marketers Guide,” outlines some of the best ways to strategically communicate your charitable efforts:

• Craft a compelling press release. Send out the press release to local media outlets with information and photos that highlights your involvement.
• Include dynamic stories about nonprofits and volunteering in your business’s newsletters and social media posts. Instead of just sharing that you helped, tell stories of why you helped, why the cause is important to you, how exactly you got involved, and what you plan to do next for the cause.
• Create links on your website. Whether linking to a simple web page for donations or including more information about volunteering opportunities, including links and key details on your website will help philanthropy become a visual part of your brand.
• Ask customers to get involved. Send out emails and feature posts on your social media pages, urging your customers to get involved in the causes you’re most passionate in supporting. By helping connect customers with a cause, you can forge a beneficial relationship with them.
• Connect with The Extra Give. Each year, the Lancaster County community supports the Extraordinary Give. The Lancaster County Community Foundation sponsors Lancaster County’s largest day of giving and raising millions of dollars in donations for over 300 organizations. LNP Media Group supports The Extra Give through an annual special section; putting your business in this section can help raise your profile as an organization that supports local charitable work.

Participate In Community Events

The first step in helping your community is being an enthusiastic member of your community. From attending community days to local sporting events, having a presence with your customer base will establish your presence and connect with you more people and opportunities for volunteering and giving.

What To Avoid When Finding Charitable Avenues

It is critical to carefully vet and choose each charitable organization your business associates with:

• Make sure the charity is completely legit and highly rated. WITF has a top 4 star rating on Charity Navigator. This tool is a fantastic way to do a quick search of a charity to view its star rating, its contact information, and details in different categories, including Impact & Measurement, Accountability & Finance, Culture & Community, and Leadership & Adaptability.
• Make sure the charity aligns with your business. It doesn’t make sense to associate your business with a charity or organization that is off-putting to your primary customer base or desired audience. Ensure that your philanthropic efforts align with the type of customers you want to gain. WITF is an affiliate of both PBS and NPR, and those customer bases are premium groups for almost any business.
• NPR audience demographics show that 42M is the weekly NPR audience across audiences; that NPR is the #1 and #2 drive time news/talk radio program in America; that NPR ranks #1 out of 13 news brands for trustworthiness, integrity, and respect; and that 89% of listeners agree that NPR provides them with information that other media outlets do not provide.
• PBS reaches over 36M adults on linear primetimes, linear primetime; engages 16M monthly users across PBS.org, OTT video app, and the mobile video app; and reaches 213M annual full episode general audience streams on PBS-owned platforms.

TL;DR:

Customers and employees today are drawn to businesses that value charitable efforts. Be strategic about the charities you support and how you promote your charitable efforts so you can have real impacts on your bottom line. Contact LNP Media Group to combine multi-channel marketing with charitable marketing efforts, through our status as part of WITF, a long-standing local non-profit with an impeccable record in the community.

« Back to Blog

When working with your marketing agency to strategize a new marketing campaign for your small to medium sized business, chances are the campaign will include some type of digital and/or social media marketing. One common mistake in developing digital marketing strategies is assuming that all types of digital marketing are fairly equivalent. In this article we will focus on the key differences between social media marketing and other types of digital marketing.

We will start this article with a brief description of each of the types of digital marketing:

• SEO
• Paid search (PPC or pay per click)
• Email marketing
• Display
• Geo-fencing
• Social media marketing – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X (formerly known as Twitter), Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn

Then we will follow with:

• Differences between social media marketing and other digital marketing channels.
• Key aspects of social media marketing where it is significantly different from other types of digital marketing.

Types of Digital Marketing

SEO

SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, is focused on improving where your business’s website appears in the list of search results when people search online for terms relevant to your business. For example, if you own a local dress shop, you want Google to show people your store’s website as high as possible on the search engine results page (SERP) when they search for “dress shops in Lancaster PA”. Ideally, you’d want the search engine (Google, Bing, or other) to show your store’s website in the first position at the top of the first page of results.

Using SEO to improve the visibility of your business’s website on those search results pages is important because most people click on the first several websites listed on page 1 of Google search results, and the same applies to Bing, Duck Duck Go, or any other search engine results page.

SEO is a strategy that takes a significant time commitment to yield results. Six months would be the minimum time to dedicate to SEO and successful companies consider SEO to be a continual, on-going part of their marketing operations. There are three basic types of SEO work:

• On-page SEO – Adding relevant content to your site such as informative blogs, detailed product copy, images, videos, interlinking across internal pages, use of relevant keywords in the copy, easy navigation, etc.
• Off-page SEO – Adding links to your site from other reputable sites and building a solid social media presence that has engagement from your audience.
• Technical SEO – Ensuring that all the back-end functionality and code of the site is optimized, including responsive design, schema markup, robots.txt, H1 tags, secure https, sitemap, etc.

Properly executed SEO will, over the long term, improve both the quality and quantity of your website’s organic traffic from search engines. SEO is an important investment because it creates a sustainable increase in traffic to your site, which should also drive more revenue for your business. This is different from paid digital marketing campaigns where the traffic will stop when the campaigns stop.

The data that is collected on your site because of SEO work can be used to understand your audience’s shared demographics, how they use your site, and how to optimize paid digital campaigns. Optimized digital campaigns will do a better job of increasing online traffic and elevating campaign ROI (Return on Investment).

Paid Search (PPC or pay per click)

This is a digital strategy used to quickly increase traffic and leads to your site. PPC stands for “pay per click” which means that every time someone clicks on your paid search ad, you get charged for that click but you do not get charged for the impressions from ads that weren’t clicked. Paid search ads are displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs). Google Ads is the platform used to deliver paid search ads, and it offers three basic types of paid search ad campaigns:

• Text ads
• Shopping ads
• Local services ads

Each of these ad types appear in different positions (and in different formats) on SERPs. A properly set up paid search campaign will result in a relevant ad for your business appearing when a consumer is searching for a product or service that you offer.

Benefits of paid search include but are not limited to: immediate online product sales, increased website traffic, and increased lead generation. The amount you pay per click is based on how much you bid for that ad space.

One of the most important factors in successful paid search advertising is the use of keywords. Keywords are entered during the ad creation process to help Google, Bing, or other search engines determine which of your ads are most relevant to serve on the SERP.

For example, if your company wants to reach people searching for low-cost family vacation ideas, you will want to bid on keywords such as “low-cost family vacations” or “family vacation on a budget”. This way, when someone enters “low-cost family vacations” into Google, Google Ads will serve your ad and bid for the top spot on the SERP. To learn more about PPC advertising and keyword targeting, read through our Beginners Guide to Digital Campaign Targeting.

Display

Display ads are the typical rectangular and square ads you see when you are browsing news websites. Display ads can be designed as animated gifs, which convey more information about your business than a static jpg or png ad. Targeting for display ads includes interests, placements, keywords, and demographics. Display ads are best for raising awareness of your business’s brand. The old “rule of seven” in marketing is that a person must see an ad at least seven times to retain awareness of your business’s brand.

Building brand awareness is an essential ingredient in your business’s marketing mix. Research shows that consumers are roughly 70% more likely to take an action, such as making a purchase, when they are already familiar with a brand’s name, which means that digital display campaigns should be part of your on-going digital marketing strategy because they set the stage for other campaigns that directly drive online shopping sales.

Geo-fencing

Geo-fencing is all about location. To run a geo-fenced ad campaign you specify, using GPS coordinates, a location with a minimum radius of 50 meters. This location could be a school, a competitor, your own business’s location, or an event venue – basically any location where you know that your target audience will be present. When someone enters the fenced area with their location-enabled mobile device, their device is tagged so that your ads will be delivered to that person the next time they are on a website or app that is in the ad network. Geo-fencing tends to produce a smaller number of leads than other types of digital marketing, but these leads tend to be highly qualified.

The key caveat with geo-fencing is that you must be very confident that the people you want to reach are, in fact, present at a particular location. For example, if you wanted to fence the offices of one of your competitors to try and attract their workers for a job opening at your company, you’d need to be sure those workers are still coming to the office. With the rise in remote working during the Covid-19 pandemic it is now harder to be confident that office workers are actually in a company’s office space.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is not only a form of digital marketing, but also a form of direct marketing, meaning that you are communicating directly with an individual consumer. Email marketing must be compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act, which requires that email campaigns have an unsubscribe link, be sent to people who have opted-in, have clear subject lines, and clearly indicate who the email is from.

Email marketing campaigns can be sent to your own list of customers and prospects or can be sent to email lists from proprietary databases of opted-in email addresses. These large email databases offer selection criteria by age, interest, occupation, intent to purchase, and much more.

After your email marketing campaign has been sent out, you can target digital ads to people who have clicked on a link in the campaign. Email marketing is a good choice to keep your audience engaged with new information about your products, brand, offers, and events. Email marketing is a more personal approach than paid search, geo-fencing, or display marketing.

Social Media Marketing

Social media is a huge presence in digital marketing with billions of users across the main platforms. Below are the approximate number of users for each platform as-of 2022:

• Facebook – 2.9 billion users
• YouTube – 2 billion users
• Instagram – 1.8 billion users
• TikTok – 1 billion users
• LinkedIn – 774 million users
• Pinterest – 459 million users
• X (formerly known as Twitter) – 319 million users
• Snapchat – 300 million users

Source: Hubspot State of Marketing 2021.

As a result of the dominance of social media as a communications channel, some companies, like Spotify, have decided to exclusively use social media for outbound communications to their users. Spotify uses X (formerly known as Twitter) messaging as their only form of customer assistance because it is so accessible and easy to use.

There are two fundamental ways to approach social media marketing: 1) posting organically about your business (and sometimes boosting those posts), and 2) running ad campaigns on social media platforms. For ad campaigns, each social media platform has its own setup process, ad formatting requirements, targeting options, boosting options, and unique demographics. Like email marketing, social media marketing can help your company engage with your audience in a more personalized way than SEO, paid search, geo-fencing, or display.

Using Facebook as an example, the big limitation in using organic posting to promote your business is that organic Facebook posts only reach about 6% of your fans. So, if you put a lot of time and effort into organic posts you are, unfortunately, wasting your time because a large portion of your audience will not see what you have posted. A business can choose to pay to boost its organic posts, which will reach a somewhat larger audience, but boosted posts don’t offer the full power of paid social media ad campaigns. The limitations to boosted posts on Facebook include:

• No option to A/B split test a campaign. A/B split testing provides important data so that you can learn what types of posts perform better.
• Limited targeting options. With boosting, you can only select one of these options: people who like your page, friends of people who like your page, targeted audience. Note that the “targeted audience” option within a boosted post only offers a fraction of the targeting options available in an ad campaign.
• Optimization is only available for engagement (likes, comments, shares). You cannot optimize for web traffic, video views or conversions.

Because of these limitations, which are similar on all social media platforms, we recommend that businesses post once or twice a month to let people know that the business is still open. Then take that time you would have put into organic posts and instead work with your digital marketing agency to develop highly effective social media ad campaigns.

Next let’s review the key differences between social media marketing and other types of digital marketing.

Key aspects where social media marketing is better than other types of digital marketing

1 – Social media is powerful for both brand awareness and online sales/lead generation.

Traditionally, social media was considered better for brand awareness than for generation of leads or online product sales. Social media’s strength in brand awareness rests on its ability to personally connect your business with people who are interested in your brand. Your brand’s organic social media posts and ads can be intimate, funny, storytelling, or candid in a way that is difficult to replicate through other digital platforms.

Social media ad campaigns can be displayed in users’ feeds, thus appearing naturally alongside organic posts. And, even though organic posting is an inefficient use of your time, your brand can post organically at no charge. Plus, your brand’s social media followers can like and share your organic posts and your ad campaigns, thus giving you free help to reach more people. All these aspects mean that social media remains a brand awareness powerhouse.

For online product sales and lead generation, paid search campaigns have long been considered more effective than social media. More recently, this conventional wisdom has been changing as social media marketing has been proving that it can be very effective for lead generation, selling products online, and even hiring for open positions. Insider Intelligence estimates that half of all U.S. adults made a purchase via social media in 2021. The revenue from online purchases via social media ad campaigns in 2021 amounted to $492 billion dollars and this number is predicted to more than double by 2025. Selling products online through social media channels now even has its own name: social commerce.

While social media has is now considered a highly effective channel for both brand awareness and online sales/lead generation, paid search remains more one-dimensional as a great choice for online sales/lead generation, but a poor choice for brand awareness due to the fact that paid search ads reach a narrow audience that is actively searching for specific products, services, or information.

2 – Social media has the most interest-based targeting of any digital platform.

If you think about all the things Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, X (formerly known as Twitter), Pinterest or TikTok know about your habits, likes, and interests, you realize that those platforms have a lot of data about who you are and what you like. The benefit for a business in Lancaster County is that you can work with your digital marketing agency to leverage this interest information to craft audiences of people who are highly likely to want to purchase your products, services, or apply for your open positions.

The different types of targeting available in social media platforms perform best at different points in the marketing funnel, according to Hubspot:

• Social media demographic targeting is most effective at driving brand awareness.
• Social media interest targeting is most effective at driving purchase intent and consideration, if the size of the interest-based target audience is comparable to the size of a demographic-based target audience. Meaning, you want to be careful not to create an overly narrow target audience using interests because if the audience size is too small it could reduce the effectiveness of the campaign.

Below is a partial list of interest-based targeting options just for Facebook. As you can see, the options are extensive and detailed. The complete list can be found here on page 9, but beware, targeting options on all social media platforms change constantly. While the interest options below are for Facebook, every other social media platform has as many or more detailed lists of interest-based targeting available. The options are truly staggering and are all derived from users’ real, tracked behaviors, making these interests very accurate.

• Hobbies and activities:
  • Political and social issues (e.g. law, environmentalism, volunteering)
  • Home and garden (e.g. furniture, home appliances, gardening)
  • Arts and music (e.g. fine art, guitar, singing, dance)
  • Pets (e.g. dogs, cats, reptiles)
  • Travel (e.g. adventure, air, vacations, nature)
  • Vehicles (e.g. SUVs, RVs, trucks, boats)
• Business and industry:
  • Real estate, architecture, nursing, higher education, construction, and more.
  • Design (e.g. fashion, graphic, interior)
  • Online (e.g. digital marketing, web development, search engine optimization)
  • Personal finance (e.g. credit cards, insurance, investment)
  • Banking (e.g. investment, personal, online)
• Shopping and fashion:
  • Beauty (e.g. cosmetics, tattoos, spas, hair products)
  • Clothing (e.g. children’s, men’s, shoes, women’s)
  • Fashion accessories (e.g. dresses, handbags, jewelry)
  • Shopping (e.g. boutiques, coupons, luxury, discount)
• Fitness and wellness: dieting, running, yoga, Zumba and more
• Family and relationships: fatherhood, motherhood, weddings and more
• Technology:
  • Computers (e.g. hard drives, network storage, software,)
  • Consumer electronics (e.g. cameras, TVs, game consoles, smart phones)
• Entertainment:
  • Live events (e.g. theater, concerts, nightclubs)
  • Games (e.g. card, board, online, video)
  • Movies (e.g. drama, fantasy, anime)
  • Reading (e.g. e-books, magazines, manga, non-fiction, newspapers)
  • TV (e.g. game shows, reality, talk shows)
  • Music (e.g. hip hop, pop, rock, soul)
• Sports and outdoors:
  • Sports (e.g. soccer, tennis, golf)
  • Outdoor activities (e.g. hiking, hunting, fishing)
• Food and drink:
  • Alcoholic beverages (e.g. beer, wine, distilled beverages)
  • Cooking (e.g. baking, recipes, beverages)
  • Cuisine (e.g. Japanese, Thai, French)
  • Food (e.g. barbecue, vegetarian, organic)
  • Restaurants (e.g. diners, coffee houses, fast casual)

Note that there are even more options for demographic and behavior-based targeting which are not listed above because the focus of this article is how social media channels are different from other digital channels, and interest targeting is a key difference.

3 – Social media offers better creative space compared to other digital channels.

Ads in social media platforms are larger, more dynamic, and can use video at no extra cost. By contrast, the most dynamic ad format on a display campaign is an animated gif, which is nowhere near as engaging as ads on social media. Social media ads can be short videos (like speeded up cooking videos), or testimonials from users, or shots of products being used/modeled in action, or drone flythroughs of an event space, and on and on.

Of the different social media platforms, TikTok is, of course, 100% video while Facebook and Instagram can utilize either video or photos. Facebook and Instagram include more room for copy than TikTok does. Ad formats are shown in social media alongside organic content which only heightens the authenticity of the social media ads themselves.

4 – Social media is memorable.

People remember that they saw your business on social media. We often hear our advertisers say that their customers tell them “I saw you on Facebook”. This is because users are highly engaged when they are scrolling through the feed of their favorite social media platform. Your business’s ads will be shown to social media users while they are in that highly engaged moment. Using the professional design capabilities of a digital marketing agency, your ads will flow naturally within the social media feed, thus increasing the perception that the ads are part of the overall engagement experience. In this way, social media advertising is much less passive than other forms of digital advertising.

5 – Social media platforms offer a diverse array of dedicated fan bases.

Each social media platform has its own core group of dedicated users with distinct generational and interest attributes. Because each platform has its own fan base, you’ll need to consider which type of social media fans are most aligned with your brand and campaign goals.

Researchers at Brigham Young University identified four basic categories of Facebook users:  relationship builders, town criers, selfies, and window shoppers. While this type of research has not yet been applied to TikTok, we do know that 47.4% of TikTok users are under age 30. Facebook, predictably, skews toward an older audience, with only 24.9% of users under age 30.

Researchers at Lahore University have identified six types of  X (formerly known as Twitter) users: professional users, personal users, business users, spam users, feed/news users, and viral/marketing users.

The lists of various user types for each social media platform are almost endless, but you get the idea. You digital marketing agency experts can help you dig into the details of which social media audience is right for your business’s campaign.

Conclusion

Having a strong social media strategy will maximize your business’s overall online performance. Working with a digital marketing agency to develop savvy social media campaigns will boost your company’s brand awareness and increase your online sales and lead generation. Social media marketing stands apart from other digital marketing channels because of its extensive interest targeting options, cost effectiveness, and generous amount of space for visual assets and ad copy.

Whether your business wants to reach people in Lancaster County or anywhere in the U.S., the digital marketing experts at LNP Media Group will help you to achieve your business’s goals. We work closely with your team and provide full transparency into the performance of every campaign. We are social media enthusiasts who can select the most appropriate social media platform for your business goals and develop the optimum combination of demographic and interest targeting. Plus, we provide digital creatives at no additional charge. Contact us to today for a completely free, no commitment marketing strategy conversation.

« Back to Blog

Do you feel like your digital advertising campaigns need a boost but you don’t know where to start? Are your social media campaigns struggling to bring in the results and reach your local small to medium sized business’s needs? Before your ads miss any more valuable views, clicks, and conversions, consider reading through this digital campaign targeting guide provided by your local media agency. This guide, written by the digital marketing experts at LNP Media Group, will help you to get a better understanding of how to efficiently reach, engage, and inform your target market.

Digital Campaign Targeting Basics

Before choosing an online campaign strategy and running your campaign, it is essential to know which people, and how many of them, you need to reach in order to drive revenue for your business. Targeting the right audience demographics will help ensure that you’re choosing to spend your money in the right places. One factor to consider is how long it may take someone to decide to buy your product. For example, if you’re selling an impulse buy like discount priced clothing or shoes, your target audience will probably be larger and broader than if your product is a more expensive item like a dishwasher. This is because a household appliance is a “considered purchase”, meaning potential buyers will take the time to research which dishwasher brand is known to last the longest, and which brand is best for their price range. Campaigns for considered purchases should target an audience that is more tightly defined because you want to reach people who are actively researching dishwashers.

To get an idea of the right location targeting for your ads, think about how far your customers are willing to travel to obtain your product or service. If you provide a specialty service that specific people would seek out, like physical therapy for severe scoliosis, you may want to set your location targeting to a 50-mile radius of your address, if that is a reasonable drive time to your practice. If you own a local pharmacy downtown, you may want to keep your location targeting to a 15-20-mile radius around your pharmacy, since people normally don’t want to travel too far to pick up their prescriptions. This type of thought process will help you avoid wasting money on mis-targeted impressions and will present your ads to people in the right geographic areas.

Google Ads Overview

One of the most utilized online advertising platforms at LNP Media Group is Google Ads. Advertising on Google is one of the most cost effective and viable online marketing strategies that a business owner can choose. Google Ads is also fully transparent with regard to results because it uses a UTM tracking string within the URL of each ad that you create. When you create a campaign with Google Ads, your campaign’s report will show you exactly how many clicks, impressions, and phone calls your ad generated. You can also clearly see the effectiveness of your ad by looking at the click through rate percentage (CTR) and your cost per click (CPC). Once you decide how much you’re willing to spend for each possible lead, you can set a more refined budget for Google Ads and start seeing a better conversion rate.

Within Google Ads, you can target your ads to your preferred audience by choosing which audience segment you think your business attracts the most. An audience segment is a group of people with similar interests and demographics. Google will allow you to select the gender, age, household income, and parental status of your audience. You can also restrict your ads from serving to certain audience demographics as well. After your ads have been serving, Google Ads will show you the demographic data obtained from the ad’s actual clicks and views. Now that you can clearly see the success rate of the ads within your chosen demographics, you have a better idea of exactly who in your targeted audience is seeking out your product or service. With this valuable information in hand, you can narrow your targeting to that same type of audience that is already responding and thus improve your campaign’s performance. Remember that different campaign types within Google Ads will have different success rates based on the types of audience targeting that best fits each campaign.

Google Ads – Paid Search

Google Ads offers an array of different campaign options and one of their most popular choices is the pay per click search campaign (PPC or paid search). The targeting options that work best for a paid search campaign are location, keywords, in-market audiences, and remarketing list targeting. It is important to target your paid search ads to locations where it makes sense to sell or deliver your product. It is also essential to include only relevant keywords in your paid search ad’s heading, since this is what Google uses to serve your ads based on the search terms entered by a user. Many advertisers are focused exclusively on finding new customers, but using a remarketing list is an effective way to reach people who have already visited your site or app and interacted with your ads. You can also use the same demographic profile as your remarketing list to target people actively searching for your product or service, otherwise known as an in-market audience.

Google Ads – Display

If you would like to take a more creative approach, and provide a visual of your product or service, Google Ads offers the ability to upload image ads and GIFs. Unlike the paid search ads mentioned above, display ad campaigns allow your image ads to be presented across the Google Display Network, which is “a collection of over two million websites that reach over 90% of Internet users across the globe”, according to Google. Of course if there are Google-owned sites that you would rather not have your ad shown on, you can restrict your ads from showing on those sites by excluding them in the Placements tab in your Google Ads menu.

The best targeting methods to use for display campaigns are location, demographics, topic placement, keywords, affinity audiences, and custom audience segmentation. Before defining these types of targeting strategies, we first recommend that you categorize your ads into ad groups based on which goal you’re setting for each group. Maybe you want to run a group of display ads to target Lancaster, Lititz, Ephrata, New Holland, Elizabethtown, Quarryville and Strasburg, but also want to try an ad group targeted to Philadelphia to gain brand awareness and reach. Within your ad groups, you can also assign location, audience segments, demographics, and keywords to each group.

Google Ads – Topic Placement, Affinity, and Custom Audiences

A targeting strategy that is unique to display campaigns is Topic Placement targeting. With Topic Placement, Google Ads will serve your display ad on any Google Display Network site that relates to the topic of your advertised product. As mentioned before, Affinity audiences are pre-made audience segments provided by Google that match your ideal target audience based off your previous ad demographics. The difference between Affinity and Custom audience segmentation is that Affinity audiences are pre-made segments of people created by Google based on their demographics, while Custom audiences are audience segments created by you. To create Custom audiences, you can enter websites, keywords, and different topics of interest, which Google will use to generate an audience of people that match those attributes.

Google Ads – Shopping

Like display ad campaigns, Google Ads also offers users the ability to create a shopping ad campaign that shows ads with product images. This best utilized to target people who are searching for a specific product to buy. For example, if your business sells skis and you want to increase your ski pole sales during the winter months, your business could benefit from creating a shopping campaign. Just upload a picture of the product you want to sell, enter the price, and then the display link. This helps the viewer know exactly where the shopping ad will take them if they click it. Because this is a campaign that will have a very specific audience, the targeting methods that we suggest for this type of campaign are remarketing list, location targeting, and remarketing audiences. Shopping campaign ads can appear anywhere in the shopping tab in Google, YouTube, Gmail, and the Google Display Network.

Social Media

One of the most popular strategies for online advertising is social media platforms. Depending on their campaign goals, many companies will advertise on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, or YouTube. The trick to advertising on social media is first setting a goal for your online ads. Are you trying to raise awareness of your brand? Do you offer specialty services that are difficult to find? Do you need to increase sales for specific products? It is helpful to work with social media experts, like LNP Media Group, to ensure that your social media ad spend is targeted correctly to ensure best possible results.

Social Media – Facebook and Instagram

If your business’s goal is to gain brand awareness, Facebook and Instagram are known to have huge success rates for branding campaigns. Facebook and Instagram are a package deal when it comes to social media advertising. You can structure the exact same look and targeting method for each campaign and it will post on both Instagram and Facebook. According to Facebook, there is an “80% greater discovery for new brands or products on Facebook than on brand or retailer websites”. Facebook and Instagram are great choices not only for large businesses to expand their reach, but also for small to medium-sized businesses that want to target a local area. Another statistic from Facebook informs us “Over 10 million businesses have used Facebook advertising, the majority of which are small to medium-sized businesses”.

Facebook and Instagram give advertisers the ability to reach what they call “Core Audiences” which are audiences based on interests, age, and geography. You also have the option to use their Custom Audience targeting method, which is similar to the remarketing lists in Google Ads. This method allows you to reconnect with people who have visited your site or engaged with your business on or offline. You can also target what Facebook calls a “Lookalike” audience. This method targets people who have similar demographics as your current best and most engaged customers. From this selection of audience targeting, it is clear that if you’re looking to give your business more reach, Facebook is a great platform to explore.

Social Media – LinkedIn

If your business is advertising to fill open positions, consider LinkedIn’s targeting abilities and transparent reach. LinkedIn has stated that their platform has the ability to “combine targeting criteria to build your ideal persona: IT decision makers, C-level executives, prospective students, small business owners, and more.” With LinkedIn you can post an ad for open positions and review potential candidate’s profiles. LinkedIn is so transparent that you can see proof of people’s qualifications in their profile and make an informed decision on whether you should reach out to them.

Social Media – YouTube

For businesses that are trying to expand their reach, we suggest leveraging video ads on YouTube. Businesses advertise on YouTube to connect with their audience on a more personal level. When you can convey the story of your business and show your product, you can build a better connection with your audience by captivating their attention. The targeting methods used by YouTube are demographic grouping, interests, placements, and remarketing. You can even choose specific audiences based on what content they are currently viewing on YouTube. YouTube provides an array of different video ad formats, such as skippable ads, non-skippable ads, in-feed video ads, and bumper ads. You can manage your YouTube video campaign through the Google Ads platform. Within Google Ads, you can upload the desired video ad and monitor how it is performing.

SOCIAL MEDIA – TikTok

The most recent social media platform that advertisers have started utilizing is TikTok. TikTok is an app where users upload 15-60 second videos, and which allows for the placement of video ads. With an audience that spans across 150 countries, TikTok is a great tool to use for gaining reach and engagement from your target audience. Similar to the previously mentioned Google Ads platform, TikTok allows businesses to create ad groups with specific target audiences for each. Like Facebook, you can also create Custom and Lookalike audiences within TikTok. TikTok includes a wide variety of targeting options such as gender, age, location, interests, internet connection type, device model, phone carriers, and even the price of the user’s device.

One unique aspect of TikTok’s targeting is its ability to track user behaviors. Behaviors are user interactions with TikTok creators and videos such as liking, commenting, watching, following creators, and viewing creator’s profiles. TikTok even focuses on the interest categories that each user interacts with the most within the app to drive ads and additional videos of the like to the viewer’s device. The user behavior tracking and interest category algorithms are so precise, that you shouldn’t be surprised that if you like a TikTok with cute and fluffy kittens, your TikTok feed becomes populated with kittens of all kinds.

One important factor to keep in mind is that TikTok’s audience consists of 47% of users between the ages of 10-29 and 42% of users between the ages of 30-49. Statista.com states that this leaves only 11% of TikTok’s audience in the 50+ age category. Based on these statistics, advertising on TikTok is not for every business’s target market, so if your product or service would not be of interest to the Gen Z and Millennial audience, you may want to consider advertising on a different social platform.

Although there are other social media platforms to advertise on, these five are the most popular. No matter which platform you pick, remember that you can save time and money by working with a Lancaster digital agency that is experienced in all the nuance and detail of social media marketing.

LancasterOnline.com and LancasterFarming.com

If you are interested in advertising your small to medium sized business to a strictly local audience, we suggest advertising on LancasterOnline or LancasterFarming. We have a wide variety of targeting options provided by Google Ad Manager 360. These options include targeting by IP address, by device type, by zip code, radius, browser language, or browser type. You have the option of choosing display ads, which only show on browsers, or on the LancasterOnline or LancasterFarming mobile app.

Targeting people by their IP address is similar to targeting people by location because an IP address identifies a device on the internet. If you want to target by zip code, Google Ads 360 will give you an estimated radius of how far your ads will reach based on that location. If you would rather save money on ads and only serve them on certain devices, you can restrict your ads from serving on certain device types. For example, if you are trying to run a campaign for your business’s new app, you may want to only target your ads to phones and tablets because these devices can download apps. If you find that most of your customers prefer Google Chrome to Microsoft Edge, or if you prefer how your ads render on Google Chrome rather than Safari, you can restrict your ads to serve on only on specific browsers.

In addition to targeting by audience attributes, LancasterOnline and LancasterFarming also offer the option of targeting by content type. LancasterOnline is the largest news website in Lancaster County, reaching over 1 million unique users per month. LancasterFarming is the largest agricultural news site in the mid-Atlantic region with over 100,000 unique users per month. For both of these sites you can target users based on the type of content they read. For LancasterOnline, key topics are sports, entertainment, breaking news, crime, food, business, home & garden, and health. For LancasterFarming, key topics are dairy, equine, crops, beef, recipes, antiques, history, livestock, and farm life. On both of these sites you can also target based on ad position. For example, the large ad at the top of the page is a premium position called the reveal ad, while the small ad at the bottom of each page is called the sticky anchor.

Because of our digital campaign targeting expertise, Lancaster’s local recruitment company known as PA Career Link chose to advertise their upcoming job fair with LNP Media Group. Our digital marketing team created and sent out email blasts, posted and maintained PA Career Link’s online advertisements on Facebook, and featured ads on LancasterOnline to raise local awareness about their job fair. Because of our integrated, multi-channel marketing campaign, our team attracted 350 local job seekers to the job fair, while other job fairs in the same year had struggled to bring in even 50. Click here to learn more about PA Career Link’s success with LNP Media Group.

OTT, CTV and Video

Digital advertising media that are often overlooked are OTT, CTV, and video ads. OTT stands for Over the Top because this type of ad placement only shows on top of streaming networks such as Hulu, Netflix, and Disney Plus, served via the internet. The targeting options available with OTT advertising are home demographics, state, designated market area (a broad metro area designation) and zip code. CTV advertising is a type of OTT that serves video ads on TVs connected to the internet, like smart TVs. These ads will serve on networks such as Roku, Amazon Fire Stick, and PlayStation. However, CTV does not allow specific household targeting options. Video ads are 15-30 second videos that serve on websites and apps, like ads on YouTube as discussed previously. These can be viewed on a desktop, tablet, or mobile device. With video ads, you can target a wide variety of users. You can target people by their behaviors and interests, zip code, age range, gender, education, parenting status, household income, and annual income.

Conclusion

Are you ready for your small to medium sized local business to try digital advertising? Or are you already using digital ad campaigns but have been disappointed with the results? Whether your business is focused strictly on Lancaster County or anywhere in the U.S., the digital marketing experts at LNP Media Group will help you achieve your digital campaign goals. We work closely with your team and we are fully transparent every step of the way. Whether your goal is to raise your brand awareness or generate more leads and more product sales, you’ll find that our deep experience will drive campaign results that are better than any other digital agency in the area. Contact us to today for an absolutely free, no commitment marketing strategy session.

« Back to Blog

As a local business, you may not have time to pay close attention to the goings-on at Google. However, changes in Google’s search engine algorithms can affect businesses across the globe, including mom and pop businesses right here in Lancaster County. If any portion of your new customers find your business via an internet search, then your business can be impacted whenever Google makes a change. In this article we’ll summarize what Google’s algorithm changes are and what they mean for your business.

First – the basics

Why do Google updates matter? They matter because Google’s algorithms control what appears in search results. So, if a local consumer types “hardware store near me” into Google, Google decides whether or not your hardware store’s website appears in the list of results and, if it does appear, how high on the list. Google’s algorithms change frequently, many times per year. So, while your hardware store might have appeared at the top of the list last time you checked, it might not appear that high on the list after a Google update. Appearing high on the list of search results is important because most consumers don’t scroll past the first page of search results.

There are two types of Google updates, regular updates and core updates. Regular updates are generally unheralded in the mainstream press and have smaller impacts on specific types of searches. Regular updates happen frequently. An example of a regular update was an April 2021 update for search results for product reviews. That type of update would only affect sites that have product reviews, like e-commerce sites. Google also regularly does spam updates to attempt to keep junk websites from appearing in searches.

The other type of update is a core update. Core updates only happen a few times a year. Core updates are broad in scope and affect most types of searches. An important Google blog post about core updates can be found here and it is definitely worth a read. As Google explains in that blog post, their focus is on high quality, original, trustworthy content when determining which sites will outrank other sites in search. Google is continually assessing the content of every website to determine if it is relevant, valuable, and useful to searchers. In Google’s perfect world, every time a user searches for something, Google would provide the perfect website as the first result.

Google uses the acronym E-A-T to summarize how it identifies quality websites: E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness.

• Expertise – Google has different expertise requirements for different types of content. For example, a site that has product reviews from ordinary users can rank highly for expertise since these users, even though they don’t have expert credentials, can be considered experts because they have used the product. However, for YMYL sites (Your Money or Your Life) the standards are higher. YMYL sites are focused on content such as health, news, safety, law, finance, and shopping. Google has higher expectations for YMYL sites and will look for site authors to have relevant credentials.

• Authority – Google assesses your site’s authority by looking for links to your site from other sites, as well as mentions of your site on other sites. If your site’s content is widely cited and shared by other sites that’s an indication to Google that your site has authority.

• Trust – Google assesses trust by noting several attributes on your site, such as: privacy policy, terms of service including refunds and exchanges, clear contact information, product specifications (if applicable), product reviews (if applicable), and positive reviews on other sites.

Overall, if you think about the content on your own site from an E-A-T perspective, you’ll have a clear lens through which to assess whether your site’s content meets Google’s definition of quality.

Because Google is always trying to make search results more relevant for users, it needs to do regular updates to its algorithms. So if your store’s website dropped down in search results after a Google update, it’s because something in your website’s content or metadata is no longer considered by Google to be as relevant to that particular search as it used to be. This is actually a good thing in the long run because the more relevant Google’s search results are to users, the more users will trust Google to provide the right information. This means that when your business’s website appears in a Google search results page, consumers will trust that your business will satisfy the need they searched for. However, as you’ll read in the paragraphs ahead, Google’s updates don’t always work perfectly or predictably.

The best way to increase the likelihood that your business’s site appears in relevant searches is to pay continual attention to your site’s search performance. This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You can read more about SEO here and here. Most small to medium sized businesses do not have the resources for an in-house SEO expert. If this is the case for your business, then you should invest in a shared SEO expert through contracting with a Lancaster County digital agency such as LNP Media Group. While an SEO expert cannot 100% “future proof” your site against Google algorithm changes, an SEO expert will stay on top of Google algorithm changes and will help your site respond appropriately. This will make your site “future responsive” and help your site achieve and maintain good organic search placement over the years.

What changes after updates?

Google does not directly state the detail of changes in their core updates, but resources like Search Engine Journal and SEM Rush publish articles with observations and information from SEO experts. Reviewing multiple such sources revealed the following list of significant changes and impacts from updates.

1. Volatility – Many experts report that there has been significant volatility in search rankings (and thus in traffic generated by searches) after core updates. Experts have indicated that some sites may have gained traffic after a core update, only to lose it after the another core update, or vice versa. This is because every update may have unintended consequences in search results which, as they become apparent, may require a correction in a succeeding update. If your site’s organic traffic has experienced a sharp dip or boost, it may be because of this post-update volatility. Consult your local SEO expert to understand the specific factors that may be in play on your site.

2. Certain types of sites were more affected than others – According to SEM Rush, Google core updates affect almost all industries. However, some industries are uusually slightly more affected than others. If your business is in an YMYL category, your website is more likely to experience search/traffic volatility than other types of sites. Generally speaking, Google is especially cautious about content on health, medical and financial sites because searches that produce links to spammy health, medical or financial sites can have a significant negative impact on users. When just looking at the mobile web, sites that are in other industries like real estate, people/society, and beauty/fitness may also experience increased volatility in search rankings after core updates. The specific reason behind this mobile web volatility for certain industries that are not YMYL is not clear. If your site has been affected, consult a local digital agency for an SEO consultation.

3. Certain sized sites may be more affected than others – In 2021, also according to SEM Rush, sites with small to medium sized traffic (500k or fewer views per month) were more affected by the core updates than large sites in some core updates. That was relevant to Lancaster PA businesses because most businesses in our area will have sites with small to medium amounts of traffic. However, other core updates in 2023, for example, did not seem to affect sites by size. Again, check with your local SEO expert to understand the impact of core updates each year.

4. Sites with common content – Sites that publish content that is readily available on other sites (think song lyrics, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and business directories) may experience more volatility than other types of sites as a result of Google core updates. This is because the identical nature of the content makes it hard for Google to determine which sites should rank higher. Although this should not be an issue for local Pennsylvania business sites, a solution to this issue is to always add unique, relevant, value-added content to any pages that have commonly available content.

5. Reviews – Google releases updates focusing on sites with reviews. and as-of 2023 “reviews” includes not just product reviews, but any type of review. In essence, these types of updates are intended to reward sites that have high-quality, relevant reviews, and penalize sites with thin or negative reviews. However, the concept of a “thin” review does not relate to word count, it relates to quality. Reviews, ideally, should be written by named authors who have expertise in the products or services they are reviewing. The reviews should be original, helpful, personal, and insightful. Google’s review updates may penalize sites that over-use affiliate links and that have a lot of ads on their review pages. This is because Google has accurately determined that users don’t like being overwhelmed by monetization strategies while they are in an information-gathering phase of their shopping journey. You can read more about review updates here.

6. People Also Ask – Have you ever done a search and found, just below the first few results, a box that says “People Also Ask” with several questions underneath, all related to your search? That is Google’s People Also Ask (PAA) feature, which was introduced in 2015 and has expanded into over half of search results pages, according to SEM Rush. PAA is Google’s way of refining searches, by letting you see related terms/questions other searchers are using. If you click on a PAA box, it will expand and you’ll see a short answer. Google’s core updates continue the expansion of PAA into more searches. Worth noting is that Google has stated that requests from businesses to update/remove information in PAA boxes will take longer than other types of update/removal requests. This is because the PAA results are more “indirectly” sourced. The details on this seem scant, but you (or your SEO expert) should pay attention to PAA results as they relate to your business’s website.

7. Less country code top level domain crowding – Country code domain crowding is when several search results have the same domain name listed multiple times but with different international country code extensions. This can happen when an international company has multiple sites with the same top level domain name, but different country codes extensions such as .ca, .uk, .rs, etc. For local businesses in Lancaster PA, this is not an area of concern, but it’s worth noting that Google’s core updates have made this less of an issue for users overall. Conceivably, this could result in a Lancaster County business’s site moving up on the page because there should be fewer repeated international domains taking multiple positions on the page.

8. The impact of page experience – While Google pays some attention to user experience when determining rankings, content is more important. If your site is mobile-friendly, loads quickly, is secured (using HTTPS instead of HTTP), and doesn’t have disruptive interstitial ads, then your site most likely qualifies as having a good user experience. Google will use page experience as a tiebreaker when determining how to rank several sites with equivalent content. As always, your local Lancaster SEO expert can help you make changes in these areas if needed.

Closing thoughts

With Google frequently changing how it evaluates and ranks sites, what is a Lancaster County business owner to do about keeping up with and responding to these changes? The best approach is to keep a consistent focus on providing a great user experience. As a site owner, you need to understand what your users want and then deliver it to them. For example, most users now visit websites via their phones, so making sure that your website offers a great mobile experience is critical. You also need to ensure that your site navigation is clear and that there are no deadend pages (404 errors) to frustrate users. Put the time and effort into populating your site’s pages with useful, honest, clear content that provides value to your users.

And, finally, if this all seems too much to worry about while also running your business, consider contacting LNP Media Group for SEO services. SEO is a long-horizon project and requires expertise with Google’s ever changing rules. SEO does not have a payout within a week, it pays out over the course of six months and longer. This is a long term investment that pays off when new customers find your business again and again at the top of a crowded Google search results page.

« Back to Blog