As a small business, it’s extremely important to have an online presence. It might seem like a waste of resources to get your business a website and build out your social media presence, but you are missing out on tons of business if you skimp on online marketing. However, there’s more you can do. Here are a few additional easy ways you can improve your online presence:
Utilize local review sites
Encourage feedback from customers using resources like Yelp, Angie’s List, or TrustPilot. Set up profiles on these external review sites and encourage your happy customers to leave you feedback. High quality, useful reviews are crucial to the success of your business. Word-of-mouth marketing is the most powerful tool available to small businesses, and the same customers that are going to give you 5-star reviews are going to tell everyone they know about your business.
Start blogging
Content marketing is a great way to improve your online presence. By adding useful, industry specific content to your website, you will increase trust with both current and potential customers and give them a reason to keep coming back to your site. As you build your online presence, make sure to use SEO best practices to ensure that Google shows your blog posts in the organic results. SEO traffic is free, so this is extremely important for any startup. In addition to your own blog, it’s also a good idea to start guest blogging for other websites if possible. Not only do you get exposure to their customers and readers, but you will get backlinks to your website, which will improve your SEO ranking on Google.
Promote Your Mission/Company Values on Social Media
While social and content marketing continue to become increasingly prominent and important, many small business owners still have not embraced social media. It’s very easy and is a great way to interact with customers. In addition to Facebook, depending on your target market, be sure to set up profiles on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest to promote volunteer efforts, company sponsorships, and other great press to help upsell the best parts of your business and differentiate your company.
Use Social Media to Build Your Network
Any new business should at a minimum follow industry leaders and influencers on social media. Small business owners are strapped for time, so utilize their industry knowledge to build your brand by re-posting, responding to, and and retweet their posts. In the world of social media, there’s no need to recreate the wheel initially. Use this strategy to get you more exposure to their followers, and it may just get you a response back from these leaders.
