Michaela Weigelt, founder of web by michi, has been self-employed in the field of web design and other internet services for over 12 years. She advised her clients during the blogger hype and was already professionally involved with social media when the trend was still in its infancy. Originally from Bremerhaven, she opened her business premises in Metzingen in the south of Germany after many professional stops. In this interview, she tells us what is important today when it comes to websites, blogs and social media.
Michi, every business needs a website. Some try to do as much as possible themselves. Others hand this task over completely to a professional service provider like Web by Michi. What is your experience like?
My clients are small customers and start-ups as well as medium-sized companies throughout Germany and internationally. My advice is individualised and tailored to the client. This means that I only recommend to my customers what they really need – depending on the customer’s goals and the financial investment that the customer can or wants to make.
For many customers, I do the technical website maintenance on an ongoing basis, as well as other services such as content management, social media support or hosting management.
If you want to take care of the ongoing technical maintenance of the website yourself, including hosting issues, I will train you to do so. Customers should then make time for this at least once a month. They then only come to me if there is a question or a problem. Depending on the type of customer, doing the account maintenance by themselves is also a good way to establish an online presence cost-effectively, especially in the area of social media. However, the customers must then be prepared to invest time themselves.
Talking about Social Media: You could get the impression that a company can't get anywhere without social media and that blogging has been pushed into the background. How do you see that?
Social media is immensely important today. Many people already use the respective social media channels as a search engine. On the other hand, the website is still very often visited in order to obtain complete and specific information about the company and its products. A website also serves to build a relationship of trust.
The importance of social media also depends on the target group, the offer and the goal of a company. It also depends on how much effort a company wants to make. Some of my clients have a website and possibly one or two social media profiles, but they don’t use them intensively or only secondarily for customer acquisition. Some trades already have full order books. While such companies are happy to have new customers, they do not necessarily need to acquire them. Other businesses however, such as coaches, beauticians or retailers with a shop system, actively and continuously use social media to acquire customers.
"The website is still very often visited in order to obtain complete and specific information about the company and its products. A website also serves to build a relationship of trust."
Does a blog still make sense? After all, writing a blog is quite time-consuming compared to a quick two-sentence post on social media...
I would always blog too, if possible. You can report on the latest news from the company and pick up on current topics or services and incorporate a keyword in each case. To do this, think about the keywords in your area, use keyword research and then choose suitable topics.
Write a good and helpful article for each keyword and publish it. With ongoing optimisation, this will definitely have a positive impact on your organic Google ranking. And in the long term, this will result in the website appearing higher up in the results list when the relevant search term, the keyword, is searched for on Google.
External link building is also very important for Google. And this is also possible in blog posts by including links from other pages in your blog post, by referring to other pages. Or preferably link other external websites to your own website! This emphasizes the importance and relevance of your website to Google.
Google has an extremely large number of criteria that influence the ranking and these often change. However, there are also some constant factors: These include good content for suitable keywords on a website. In addition, external links and internal links, the ladder being links to blog posts or pages on your own website.
"Google has an extremely large number of criteria that influence the ranking and these often change. However, there are also some constant factors: These include good content for suitable keywords on a website."
Is a keyword really that important? Unfortunately, it makes a text often awkward to write...
Yes, I would always use a keyword. One that matches the topic, the customer benefit and the title. The keyword should be in the title, in the first paragraph, in the permalink, meaning in the URL. Then include it in a subheading and, if necessary, occasionally in the rest of the text. In common SEO plugins for WordPress, you can then insert the keyword in the keyword field and in the meta description.
How is KI influencing blogging and content creation?
The topic of AI and AI-generated content is becoming increasingly important here, for example with chat GPT and other services for text, image, audio and video generation. On the one hand, this will generate a lot more content. On the other hand, quality is likely to become increasingly important in the long term. This then relates to the question of the extent to which Google rates AI-generated texts positively or negatively. All AI-generated texts should be checked for content accuracy in order to avoid publishing false information. It can also make sense not to place company-relevant or product-specific information in the chat GPT bots, but to expand the texts afterwards.
There are also paid packages from Open AI, Chat GPT, and other providers that can prevent the data entered from being used to further train the AI. This can be important, particularly for larger companies. The use of AI-generated content is a major and ongoing topic regarding Google’s evaluation and will continue to develop.
What workflow do you use to be as effective and quick as possible?
Once I’ve written a blog post, I often use the same content for social media posts. Sometimes I simply use the first paragraph as an excerpt or in a shortened or modified form. It also depends on the platform in question. The blog post is usually longer than a social media post. Artificial intelligence, programmes such as Chat GPT and alternatives, can help to find ideas. However, as I said, I would never have a Chat GPT text written for me and then post it as it is.
Often, AI-generated texts still contain errors or wordings that are not as you would like them to be. It`s then obvious that is is not a self-written contribution. I would therefore always reword and personalise an AI-generated text. AI is constantly changing and improving, but if you want to have control over what is published, you should check the texts and revise them if necessary.
It is important to link to the page where you want your readers to go. It also makes sense to link to appropriate landing pages. Landing pages are pages that are not the main website but are designed to link to a specific offer. And they allow you to place additional external links to your own target website. To simplify social media maintenance, there are also a variety of tools that save time, such as Buffer or Canva, as well as SEO tools for keyword research.
Does the frequency of posting matter?
The frequency of posting depends on the company and its target audience as well as its goals and budget. A blog is different from social media. And the individual, different social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook, or Tik Tok also differ in terms of frequency and type of publication – i.e. text/image or video campaign. The use of Google services such as the Google Business Entry or YouTube also plays an important role here. These different channels can be used very well in combination.
A very young target audience of a fashion influencer is probably happy about daily posts, but in my opinion, this is not necessary for trades people.
For blog posts, I recommend: If you can, post twice a week or even once a week. Once a month is also ok. But it shouldn’t be much less, at least if you want to use blog posts primarily to attract more new customers. Even if you don’t necessarily want to acquire new clients, it’s still a good idea to post a blog post every now and then, simply to keep up the habit and provide the latest information.
"If you can, post twice a week or even once a week. Once a month is also ok. But it shouldn't be much less, at least if you want to use blog posts primarily to attract more new customers."
What about the frequency of email marketing with newsletters?
Again, it is important to know what your goals are and what your budget is. If you want to use email marketing to acquire new customers, you would be well advised to send emails at short intervals and have a structured funnel of follow-up emails. Companies that do not want to use email newsletters for customer acquisition, but rather to publish important information or one-off offers, can allow more time between newsletters. For example, I usually only write to my existing customers every three months with information that I think is important to them. These emails have a very good opening rate.
When starting out, you may also need to develop a feeling for the respective target audience first... Do you still have clients from your first years as a freelance web designer?
Yes, I have many long-standing customers who I have been looking after for a long time. My main activity as a web designer with WordPress also takes up a large part of my time here.
I like to get familiar with my clients’ requirements, which often results in ideas for marketing activities that are not necessarily directly related to web design or content marketing.
In addition to such services, I am essentially a web designer for WordPress for my clients and offer the creation and maintenance of websites and online shops with WordPress.
You can find more about Web by Michi here: www.web-by-michi.de/
About the author: www.business-photographer.com
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