Judith Lewis will be the moderator in the ‘Build Your Online Presence for Business Success’ masterclass at the 2009 National everywoman Conference today.
Judith has worked for herself most of her life, starting a number of businesses both successful and not. She currently works as an employee for i-level, Europe’s largest digital media specialist and when not doing so, argues with her husband over how to market their family business. She also has her own small business online marketing consultancy and is considering launching yet another business should she find the secret to altering the flow of time.
Since getting online in 1985, I’ve always been aware of the importance of building out who you are online. Whether it was to find a date in my teens through a wholly non-graphical medium or to establish my credentials later in life within search results, I’ve grown up understanding that online presence does not equal offline.
Building your online presence does not need to be an expensive prospect. As many women in business will no doubt be familiar with, bootstrapping and doing things as economically as possible – often involving a lot of your time and a little cash – is sometimes the only way to go. There are a lot of tools out there which help small businesses improve their online presence without costing an arm and a leg.
Do you need to be online?
You do need to be online. As a business, whether purely offline or not, individuals expect everyone to have a website. In fact, it can harm offline sales to fail to have any sort of web presence. By web presence, I don’t mean an email address and a website proclaiming ‘under construction’. A bad web presence is possibly worse than having nothing. Having a single web page describing the business, perhaps an image of the outside of the premises and contact details works well. Getting fancy with a link to a Google map of your location is even better. Having a fully realised web presence is best with some tie-ins to social media.
Whether you are online or not, your customers are and they may not only be looking for you but they may also be speaking about you or reviewing you on a website like Qype.co.uk. Failing to be online means you don’t see what is going on within one of the largest consumer marketplaces on earth and it makes you profoundly deaf to trends, consumer wishes and demands and possible new products or routes to market. Getting online can be free, or a very small cost.
Free tools are fun and helpful but often involve the cost of time. Time is a precious commodity and when I started in business (and to this very day) I have often not properly accounted for the cost of my own time. I fall in to the trap of feeling something being free is the best value even if it involves 15 hours of my own time. Sometimes though, free and time is exactly what you need.
Building your web presence for free
You do not have to pay anything or know anything about programming to create your own website. All you need is to have something to say, however brief, about your business, and some contact details. You can build your presence out as much as you wish but at the heart of it all, basic information is all you need. Head over to Moonfruit, founded by the talented Wendy Tan White at http://www.moonfruit.com and there you will find a large number of themes to choose from and the website builder will lead you step by step through every stage of the process. I do recommend paying for hosting as this is a small fee and gives you several added extras which will help as you build your presence online. Perception creates reality and Moonfruit can help you create a professional looking site for free. Moonfruit gives the option to then, for a small fee, give it a unique customised URL with matching email address and more.
An important next step is to add analytics to whatever site you have. Both Yahoo! and Google have free analytics packages which will help you better understand your visitors behaviour. There are a number of blogs and information portals online to help you understand analytics, including analytics guru Avinash’s blog ‘Occam’s Razor’. These will help you make sense of what the numbers are telling you. Often when you add analytics a short while later you’ll get a coupon for free PPC advertising with Google (if you use Google analytics). To learn more about how to get the most of your money, check out PPC optimisation author Andrew Goodman’s online information and blog at Traffik.
Social media marketing
One of the hottest things right now is social media and specifically Twitter. In any form of social media you need to be genuine. If there is only one thing you learn this year about social media, let it be to be authentic. The web is littered with stories of PR disasters when companies try and deviate from this norm. Be yourself, be Judith Lewis, chocolate loving search and social media expert (if you’re me). Speak with that voice and remember that even when you have a bad day, people are listening and watching. Engage with your visitors, audience and the person who stumbles upon you.
If you decide to have a company presence, ensure you understand what the purpose is of engaging through a blog or Twitter or Facebook is. It is easy to clam a space for your business in each form of social media. It is often difficult to maintain an effective presence in each form of social media. Ensure if you go in to social media offer specials or coupons that you create as part of your seasonal marketing calendar the points at which you ensure a coupon or offer goes in. If you’re hoping to raise awareness, ensure that you are blogging/tweeting/updating your status regularly with interesting information. It is difficult to engage over social media – just be yourself.
There may seem to be a number of elements to getting an online presence, some of them may seem very technical, but all of them are within your grasp. There are many free ways to get an online presence, free ways to monitor and with a bit of time on your part, free ways to promote your presence (however small) online.
Visit Judith’s website: http://www.decabbit.com
Judith blogs at: http://www.SEO-Chicks.com
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