My Branding / Reputation Journey (programming agency)

[0x636f6e6e6f72]

I've been running a programming (websites, web apps, mobile apps) agency for 3 years now. I am very qualified for the work I do and have a good reputation with my existing clients. I've experienced success, but my clients have only come via referral.

In 2019, I will build my brand and increase my reputation and presence on the internet, with the goal of building inbound marketing funnels (maybe I'm using this terminology wrong, but you get what I mean).


Tactics

This is really going to be an exploratory journey for me, and I would love feedback. To make things simpler for myself, I'll be breaking things up into 30-day challenges (one per month). I do not have these challenges predefined, but I'll update this post to list them below, as I progress.

• January: Every day, build one link (follow)
• February: Every day, post some original content (no matter how small)

(I will keep this list updated)

Of course I will not only work on these 30-day challenges. I also have the goal of publishing one large, higher impact piece of content with a reputable publication each month. Those are the only goals I will set, because I have to focus on running my business .


Metrics

Again, this is going to be an exploratory journey for me, so if you have suggestions about what metrics I should be looking at they are much appreciated. I will track the metrics in subsequent updates.

• Website Moz DA
• Website, Weekly Unique Visits
• Facebook Page Likes
• Twitter Followers

(I will keep this list updated)

Will follow up with a post regarding what I've been doing in January.

 

[TheVigilante]

Following your journey and yes leads from referrals are good...just curious have you provided any incentive to the people who referred you the clients?

 

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Update (January 1, 2019)

These are the metrics that I had when I started:

• Website Moz DA: 2
• Website Weekly Visits: 0
• Facebook Page Likes: 0
• Twitter Followers: 0

 

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Update (January 18, 2019)

When I started my challenge on the New Year, I decided the first logical step for me would be to build links.

I began by trying to get backlinks by looking for questions asked in forums, then linking to my site (follow). I created a few profiles on some forum sites and was able to get a few follow backlinks, but someone in a Facebook group mentioned that this would work, but there were better things I could do.

Next, I started to build web 2.0s. I'm still doing this, and I believe I will continue to do this until the end of the month. Every day I create a few profiles and stop when I get a profile with a follow link. At this point, it takes me a while to find a profile that allows me to have a follow link on my profile, but there is another benefit: I'm discovering communities that I can interact with. Many of these sites are very active and almost all are related to the field I am in. I have been keeping a Trello board with ideas on how I can contribute to these various communities.

This leads nicely into my next 30-day challenge: publish 1 piece of quality content every day.

I also have dabbled in dropping my site into directory listings. I'm a bit worried about this (some have expressed concern that these might be spammy backlinks in Google's eyes). Would love to hear your opinion on this.

Discoveries so far

• I've not been very active in online communities prior to this year. Being active in communities online has already brought me many leads -- I'm quite surprised at the number.
• The small amount of content I've published so far has brought me the most traffic. I'm quite surprised, despite it being small.
• Social media is going to be difficult for me, when it becomes a focus (it will be for one of my 30 day challenges)

Metrics

• Website Moz DA: 4
• Website Weekly Unique Visits: 51 (this may be skewed by myself visiting from up to 4 IP addresses / devices)
• Facebook Page Likes: 5
• Twitter Followers: 2...

 

[0x636f6e6e6f72]

Following your journey and yes leads from referrals are good...just curious have you provided any incentive to the people who referred you the clients?

Thanks! Yes the leads from my referrals have been very high quality. I have not explored offering incentive for referrals (though I have thought about it). Have you had any success with referral programs?

 

[TheVigilante]

Thanks! Yes the leads from my referrals have been very high quality. I have not explored offering incentive for referrals (though I have thought about it). Have you had any success with referral programs?

Mainly in affiliate marketing...getting 5-10% of their earnings...

 

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Update (January 26, 2019)

I'm totally getting bored of adding links to websites at this point. It's a struggle to find a 2.0 profile link every day, and from what I've read, the benefit is very limited if you don't mix with other links or provide second tier links. However, the 30-day challenge is an easy format to tackle.

Questions:

• After I've added content, should I start building tier 2 links to that content? Should I use blackhat tactics on those tier-2 links, relying on the fact that these tier 1 links are on well known sites? ("parasite SEO")

Discoveries:

• I've published a few pieces of content so far, on two different 2.0s. For one, I've put a link to my website in a visible place in the content. For the other, there is no link unless visitors go to my profile. The content that has a direct link to my site is driving traffic, while the other is not. Takeaway: ALWAYS SHAMELESSLY SELF PROMOTE.
• It's likely going to be easier to build my personal Twitter, and I'm going to need to focus on both my personal and private one.

Metrics:

• Website Moz DA: 4
• Website Weekly Unique Visits: 74 (+23 from last update)
• Facebook Page Likes: 5
• Twitter Followers: 2

 

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Update (March 2, 2019)

I've just finished a month of publishing content on my site. I've put together around 28 pages on the site, mostly microblogging. Of that content, there is one piece which I feel is very valuable & share-able. Some of the other pieces I'm not so sure about, but I will try to promote the content regardless.

Website visits are down (only 20 per week), but that's somewhat expected since I haven't been active anywhere else.

The next challenge (March) is about tier-2 content & linking. I'll be:

• Writing posts on sites like Medium, always for backlinks, but also hoping to produce share-able content.
• Submitting my content to aggregators like Reddit
• Being active on all the sites I made accounts for in the first challenge (January)