What do greenhouses in Iceland have to do with a company in Prineville?

For BTL Liners, a recent post on its website about geothermally heated greenhouses in Iceland could mean more visits to the site, more queries and, eventually, more orders for the material the Prineville company sells to make greenhouses.

Businesses began building websites before the invention of the browser, but simply having a webpage with some text is not enough anymore. To be seen in the digital marketplace requires a Facebook page and activity on other social media sites. And content is king on social media, said digital marketing experts in Bend and Eugene.

“You can have the most beautiful website in the world,” said Christina Brown, creative director for Savy, the firm in Bend with the BTL account, “but without content you’re not going to get too much traffic to it.”

The BTL investments in its branding, website and its presence on social media, primarily Facebook, pay a return in terms of a more professional and positive presentation by the company, said BTL President Michael Baron.

BTL has been active online for decades but in September switched to Savy to revamp its website, rebrand its company logo and increase its social media activity. BTL makes pond liners, covers for oil drilling sites, inflatable greenhouses and similar products for a global market.

“An engineer or a golf course architect, when they’re looking for a geomembrane,” Baron said, “the first thing they’re going to do is go on the Web and look for the players.”

About 45 million small businesses use Facebook to connect with customers, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in a post in September.

The social media giant boasts 1.55 billion monthly active users as of Sept. 30, and nearly half of those users access the site via a mobile platform such as a tablet or smartphone, said Matt Hand. Hand owns his own video production firm, Hand in Hand Productions, in Bend, and is an instructor in social media for small business at Central Oregon Community College.

He and Brown said creating the right content for business websites, posting that content on Facebook and paying from $5 to $40 to boost those Facebook posts translates to more visits to the business website and a higher placement on Google search results.

Brown declined to provide specific prices for her agency’s services, but she said the rates she charges a small business for creating four blog posts a month can be covered by that business acquiring one new client, for example. Rates are customized to suit each client and still make a profit for the firm, Brown said.

Facebook has grown into the largest social networking platform, and Google continues to be the search engine whose analytics and search algorithms drive user experiences, Brown and others said.

Business owners ask whether a social media presence really translates to a difference in the bottom line, a return on their investment in websites and the content — words, images, video — that hopefully attracts prospective clients. In BTL’s case, that meant an increase in the number of queries by prospective clients.

“If you boil it down, you want to have your return on investment to be one that is handsome and growing, so when you engage with any outside contractor, you want their activity to not just create more activity but also results,” Baron said. “One of my favorite sayings is never mistake activity for results.”

Before Savy redesigned the BTL website, Brown said, many prospective clients abandoned online forms on BTL’s website because the site was confusing. By redesigning the site with “call to action” prompts, such as “let us help,” or “get a quote,” those queries were often completed and led to actual sales.

On the BTL Facebook page, the number of “likes” for each blog post, like the recent one on greenhouses in Iceland, jumped from four or five to 400 to 500, she said.

Creating quality content is the first step toward actual results from social media, said Kelli Matthews, an instructor of public relations at University of Oregon. She, too, has her own digital advertising firm, Verve Northwest Communications. Content needs to be relevant and focused on a particular audience, with fresh content posted often, from four to seven times a week.

“Content is the biggest challenge,” Matthews said. “We have to keep our eyes and ears out for stories to tell (about clients) every day.”

Anne Pick, a copywriter at Savy, posted the article about the Iceland greenhouses. It’s not an outright ad for BTL, but the post mentions BTL and its products. That blog post also appears on the BTL Facebook page. It’s not meant as an ad for BTL greenhouse covers.

Instead, it demonstrates that BTL has a grasp of topics that its potential clients, and “friends” on Facebook, are interested in. The more often an interesting post prompts the user to click that link and read the piece, the more often BTL posts start to appear in its friends’ Facebook feeds.

“Everything is driven by content,” Brown said, “whether it’s imagery content, media content, word content. Facebook’s algorithm is really driven by the quality of your content. You can go on there and blather a whole bunch of stuff, but it won’t really go anywhere unless it’s quality content.”

Also, when businesses pay to boost their posts, they appear more often on the newsfeeds of Facebook users who follow them. A digital advertiser may also target that post to appear before users in a certain industry or demographic. The boosted post more than pays for itself in terms of the ability to spread the client’s message, Hand said.

“You get a really good bang for your buck on a boosted post,” he said, “a massive amount of reach.”

Baron, of BTL, said he’s pleased with the results of the company’s social media campaign, so far, because prospective clients are finding BTL on the Web. BTL fielded a query recently from Canada that could yield the largest transaction in the company’s 35 years in business, Baron said, “strictly through being found on the Internet.”

“The key word is relevant,” he said. “No matter what we do in life or business, we have to be relevant. It’s like sailing a boat. You can be going 15 knots and have a warm feeling that you’re cutting through the ocean, but if you’re not going in the right direction, what good is it?”

On Google, the object for businesses is to position their website links as high as possible on the first page of search results. The more often visitors engage with a website, the quality of its content and the number of reviews the business receives all add to a business’ online rank. The goal is to become the No. 1 result for relevant searches.

A search for fireplaces in Bend, for example, on Google serves up Fireside, a retailer on NE Third Street that carries wood and gas stoves, fire pits and barbecue grills, at the top of the list. Fireside’s owner, Roger Sanders, said the company has improved its search engine optimization over the past five years.

It’s presence on Facebook has improved, as well, in the same period. How much difference that makes in actual sales at the store is hard to say, he said.

“How do you separate out the effect of a good social media presence from an improving economy and from potentially other really good things you’re doing like a good website and traditional advertising?” he asked. “There’s no easy way to connect the dots.”

Lucy Merino, of Bend, who handles the digital advertising account for Fireside, said creating fresh content that attracts users, like recipes for the grill, and otherwise improving its web presence helps the bottom line.

“There’s a very clear correlation between higher search rankings and more business coming through the door,” Merino said. “What is more tenuous or difficult to see is the relationship between sharing content on your blog, having likes and shares (on Facebook) and that having an impact, (but) it’s definitely worth it.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7815, jditzler@bendbulletin.com