Lately, we have had several clients who have been approached by individuals claiming to be with companies providing social media and SEO services. We’ve seen bad ones and we’ve seen some that were absolutely atrocious. Today we’re going to tell you about some of the things we’ve seen from these companies along with what to look for if a national Social Media or SEO company approaches your company offering up its “professional” services.
The Bad
For the most part, we see that these companies don’t fully understand SEO or Social Media, therefore cannot fully perform the tasks that they are promising you. We’ve seen a company offer up 100 word blogs (recommendations from the experts say to write a minimum of 300-400 words for SEO purposes – this shows Google you have something of substance to say). We’ve seen companies who auto-generate their content, scouring the internet for any articles that mention topics related to your product/services, directing your fans to other sites, not yours. We’ve seen set up fees that are out of this world. We’ve seen companies who are still stuck on meta tags, which have been obsolete for quite some time, now.
Overall, these companies have either not kept up with the times, or they take shortcuts that could end up hurting your social media campaign instead of boosting it.
The worst we’ve seen was a full-fledged scam. The whole thing seemed very fishy to us, so we did some digging. Turns out, the company wasn’t a company at all. They had a website and a Facebook page, but when you looked up their address on Google Earth, it took you right to a counseling center with a very sketchy store front. The whole thing ended up being a scam.
The Good
The good news – we can tell you what to be looking for when one of these companies approaches you. We can tell you the warning signs of a company who is making promises they won’t be able to keep, or a company that will just plain take your money and run.
- If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. If a company can come up with 100 posts every month for $100 a month, there’s no way you’re getting quality, original content. If a company tells you that they can get you to the top of Google in a month, ask more questions about what they mean by that and how they plan on doing it.
- If the only way to pay is by credit card, dig deeper and ask for references. Never give your credit card to a company you don’t know and trust as a legitimate business.
- If you’re so lost in jargon that you aren’t sure what they’re saying, walk away. It’s right in our mission statement. We deliver results. Not empty promises and meaningless jargon. We can talk the industry talk, but we want to help you understand what it is we can do for you and how we can do that. There are many companies out there that will throw a lot of terms at you that don’t mean anything to you, hoping that you will be so impressed by their terminology that you won’t see through their empty promises and smooth talk.
- If they can’t/won’t meet with you in person, they’re not invested enough in your success. Period. This goes for any marketing company.
- If in doubt, you can always ask for references, and you can always call us to look into it for you.
At Transformation Marketing, we care about our clients. We keep up on the latest in Social Media and SEO so that we can do our best for them and we work hard to find ways to keep our costs down without taking shortcuts that could end up hurting their social media campaigns instead of helping them. We believe that integrity and ethics have a place in the marketing industry and are appalled by the companies out there who don’t. Give us a call today. We would love the opportunity to honestly earn your business and help grow your online presence.