Having a strong online presence is important for any business. You may have made an important first step by building yourself a swanky new website. But there is much more that you can do to further spread word of your business across the web…
Social Media
The next big step any business should take is to get themselves set up on social media. There are many platforms – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram being the most important ones. By setting up a Facebook business page, you can then invite friends to like your page who can then recommend your services to their friends. You can also run ads that will link to your Facebook page. Twitter meanwhile opens up your business to the world. Write a witty tweet, and someone may follow. Continue to write witty tweets and more and more people will follow, gaining awareness of your business. Instagram meanwhile is a picture sharing site, brilliant for showing off the products that you have on show (if you’re a bakery you can show off all your cakes, if you’re a guitar shop you can photograph every new model you get in the shop ect.).
For those that don’t feel savvy enough with social media, you can now pay companies to set it up and jazz things up. There are even social media companies that cater for specific industries (for instance, restaurant social media for restaurant owners).
A form of social media itself, LinkedIn is more specialised for finding business contacts. In some ways it’s like one big open-ended business fair, in which you can look for services to hire, potential clients to work with or even other businesses to cross-promote with. LinkedIn profiles are less about your business and more about you – a CV of your skills and accomplishments for the world to see.
Blogs
Starting a blog is a great way to promote your business. You can do this on your own website, or you can write guest posts for other blogs. By giving advice on a topic related to your business, you may be able to help other businesses and improve your reputation. You can also use blog posts to directly promote your services. Similarly you can cross-promote, asking another business to write a post on your product if you write a post on theirs, increasing business for both of you.
Vlogs
Before blogging, business owners had to write books. Similarly, before Youtube, the only way to give a business talk was to stand up on a stage somewhere in front of lots of people. Vlogging has made this a lot easier, allowing you to make talks from the comfort of your office chair without having to see all the people that you’re talking to. Many business owners have used Youtube to create instructional videos for other businesses, promotional videos for products or even just motivational speeches. All you need is a camera and you can get started.