When I speak to owners of Small Businesses, I often ask them “are you actively keeping your website up to date?”
95% of them said “NO!”
So I then asked them to explain why this wasn’t happening and why it seemed to be a problem.
“I don’t know what to write, and I don’t have the time!” and also “I don’t really understand what I should write about”
Does this sound like you?
It turns out that many business owners are so focussed on their business and are completely missing a trick when it comes to their online marketing.
How to organise your online presence
So it got me thinking, and I realised that so many business owners get hung up on their website that it stops them from even thinking about building online presence elsewhere.
Your website is purely just a marketing tool that is there to capture emails from visitors interested in your products and services. It’s there to help you grow your list. But this is only a small part of the whole online marketing story and is where business owners are missing out.
There are, in fact, 3 areas to grow your marketing online:
Outgoing Socialising Posts – this is where you use the social media website such as facebook, twitter Pinterest etc to engage with you
Media Assets – These are your business assets such as your videos, podcasts, ebooks, etc
Homebase – This is your primary website, where you drive visitors to, to capture email and grow your list.
“You are what you share” Charles Leadbeater
How to organise your Media Assets
So you see from this its clear your website is only a small part – however it is the place where your social engagements and media assets should be headed to. So to keep things simple make sure you follow these steps
- Allow yourself time to learn and understand how to properly use the social media websites to maximise engagement. This is crucial to reach out to wider markets. It is important to plan. Plan in advance the market you want to reach, think about what they would search for when looking for your services, what questions they ask – then work backwards and work on the content that would be useful to them.
- Ensure your blogs are relevant and uptodate. Think about your most frequently asked questions? Convert this information that you often repeat to new prospects, into a blog – or short snippets of information. Make time to do some research to what is relevant in your business today and document it.
- Make sure your primary website is set up to capture email from prospects. This is a trick that many people miss. Remember your website has a purpose! If it’s set up right, it should work hard for you and capture all those prospects you have sent to it – via email. Don’t let the hard work that you’ve done with the social media go to waste. Integrate your email software into your website – and if you’re not sure how to do this, contact me and I’ll help you.
And REMEMBER! Rome was not built in a day. This will take time… just remember three very important words:
Plant – Cultivate – Harvest
You cannot leapfrog to harvest, you have to plant and cultivate first!
If you would like to find out more about how to manage your online presence, please contact us here or call Alison on 01747 850403 for details.
