Learn the important & successful parts to your business’s digital presence.
Online presence. If you weren’t aware of it already, the internet is a massive source of potential leads for your business. It doesn’t matter if you’re a personal trainer in New York, a business consultant in London, or an architect in Hong Kong, the internet has the ability to bring in more qualified leads for your business and the potential (a guarantee, in reality, with enough persistence) to grow your revenue exponentially.
We all get into business to make a difference and, understandably, make some money along the way. What you might not realise, however, is the massive potential, reach and growth that your online presence has. Some call it branding, some refer to it as SEO & Google search, whereas others focus on social media to develop and grow their business.
Whatever you call it, I think we can both agree that these are all marketing activities that you should be doing online.
Marketing and advertising your business online is what One Web Street is all about. Helping you grow your business in the best possible way. To reach the right people, at the right time and in the right way.
Because, let’s face it, you don’t want to be selling your services to absolutely everyone (nor should you be). And, you shouldn’t be restricted to selling to people in your local area or country because there is probably, right now, someone sitting there two-thousand miles away needing exactly what it is that you sell. You need to be there, in front of them.
So, what are the main things that matter for your business on the world wide web? It’s simple, really. There are a couple of distinctive areas:
Your Website
This is the central hub of your business online. It’s where you have information about you, your team, and the services you offer. You’ll also have your contact details and links to other places you’re active online (such as social media channels).
However, some important things are missed on a lot of websites:
- Adequate CTAs (calls to action) to get people to do things
- Lack of a lead magnet to collect email addresses & create a funnel/follow-up
- No Facebook tracking pixel (re-targetting)
- No A/B split testing
- A lack of overall SEO optimisation
When I see the above not on a website I generally shake my head. Not in a negative way, but from a lack of knowledge of, quite literally, allowing a website to throw leads away every single day.
If you have a ‘brochure’ style site then it’s important to get it right. If you have a one page WordPress website built that has the strategic advantage over your competition then that is great. So long as you’re getting traffic you’ll be getting some leads (provided it was set up correctly).
Social Media
This is where you can see a lot of growth in leads, sales and profit if done right. Do it wrong or get out too early and you might see it as a total waste of time and money. And, in some cases you’d be right.
Social media for business takes significant thought and energy through a few steps:
- Creating a customer profile/avatar
- Researching trends & popular stories
- Generating commentary (or content) to post & scheduling stories
- Understanding engagement & connection
- Replying & communicating with your audience
- Analysing & pivoting future content/information
And we haven’t even started to discuss the different social media channels yet! Maybe you’re like a lot of business owners: you know you should be communicating with current and potential customers on social media, but you’re not sure what you should be saying, how often and what is going to be effective. Most people start out this way. So, you’re not alone.
How can you be more effective?
Two things: choose a few channels and use tools to make things easier. Now, I am one for automation but not in the many ways that people use it for. I’m all for using Buffer or Hootsuite for posting the same story (with different commentary/intros of course) to different social media channels, but not the exact same delivery on each channel.
For example, whilst #hashtags on Facebook are acceptable, autoposting all of your Instagram photos to Facebook isn’t a good idea. The story that you share on Facebook is going to be slightly different to the one on Instagram, and it is going to be slightly different to the one on Twitter.
So, using the same image or video across all those three platforms is great, but some adaption to the size, angle and actual text (or dialogue for the video) used is going to require some improvement and/or changes.
And that’s just updating. If you’re using ads on any of the different platforms then that takes a slightly different viewpoint to the rest.
Search (Google & Bing)
Search engines are going to continue to provide businesses like yours with a number of visitors, leads and sales. They have a time tested approach and the people searching for services on Google and Bing have an active intent to find something – unlike with Facebook/LinkedIn ads where you’re interrupting what someone is doing to get their attention.
That last sentence is something you should take serious thought over. Maybe you’re like a lot of us in the beginning: pausing a Facebook ads campaign because it didn’t seem to be working, when, in actual fact it could just be the delivery that isn’t generating enough attention.
Video
Over the last few years, video has grown massively. There are less barriers (with the latest phones producing great videos) and observations used are becoming more real to people as real-life experiences are shared online.
Why is video crucial for your business?
Connection. People buy from other people they know, like and trust. I think we are all aware of that. What a video adds to your offering to someone is authenticity: a real connection to the person (or people) behind a business/brand. That’s something that a large corporation isn’t able to do as easy as you.
Where to post video?
The major players at the moment are YouTube and Facebook, but make sure you’re sharing the native video on Facebook. Not being lazy and sharing the YouTube link as this provides less value and is like sharing a tweet on your Facebook business page (what people do when they don’t have a clue about what to do).
Where should you be?
Wherever your current and future customers are. For a basic start, your website is crucial (and so too is ranking for your business/brand name in Google/Bing), and so is Facebook and YouTube. Yet, it’s not just setting up your accounts on those channels, you should be providing your audience with reasons to take notice of you and interact or take action.
If you’re B2B focused then Twitter and LinkedIn are going to be important. Yes, there’s quite a bit of spam across these two networks, but the more you use and interact on them, the more exposure you’ll see and the number of connections and relationships you’re then able to develop will increase.
B2C led? Concentrate on search, Facebook & Instagram (Snapchat if you have the time). It’s as simple as communicating stories to your target market.
The Future
The internet is changing every week. Does that mean you need to jump on everything when it comes out? No. Some things are just going to be fads whilst others will last for a number of years and then develop along the way (think how far Facebook has come).
The main thing to keep in mind is that your website is still going to continue to be the single most important piece of property you own in the online world.
Social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are developed and grown on someone else’s ‘land’. They are simply letting you stay there because it’s convenient to them (and, on the whole, makes then some profit).
As soon as things change, or you do something that they don’t like or think is a little spammy, your grow, development and reach could be wiped out.
