How to Build an Online Presence for Your Small Business

For business owners big and small, the past few months have been particularly challenging. As mandatory restrictions and closures around operating have forced business owners to reduce their overhead and send employees home, the world of business is suffering immeasurably.

While there are many ways to grow your small business during these tough times, one of your best bets is to get it online. However, if you don’t have a tech background and you are not an engineer, you might find it difficult to know where to even begin to build an online presence for your business.

The competition is fierce, and you’ve got to have your wits about you. Let’s take a look at how to build an online presence for your small business.

1. Figure Out Your Brand

Before you even think about putting anything online for your brand, you have to figure out what it is.

People growing their brands online these days are a dime a dozen, which means that if you don’t have your niche figured out, you are going to get lost in a sea of competition quickly. The more defined your brand is, the easier it is going to be to stand out.

Spend a good amount of time defining your brand and figuring out what it is that you bring to the table that is unique, and that your clients won’t really be able to get elsewhere. Remember, the more you define your small business, the easier it will be to secure your place in the online world.

2. Begin with a Google Search

What do you do when you are trying to find a business that you like online? You Google it, right?

This is the best way to start if you are going to grow an online presence. Open a ‘Google My Business’ account so that you can see what your business is going to look like in Google search.

You’ll even get representation in Google maps. It is like a free mini-website that you can use to build your online presence. Through this tool, you can also add things like a description of your business, as well as what you are selling.

Once you’ve established yourself with Google, you can only go up from there.

3. Have a Solid Business Website

Online business is only going to be as good as its website. While you might want to focus on other things right now, your website is something that you really need to invest a decent amount of time and money into.

Why? Because if you plan on selling your product or service through it, your clients need to like what they see when they visit for the first time.

If you are not tech-savvy, you’ll need to find someone who is. Also, if you don’t really have the budget to spend on a website right now, we suggest that you get a short-term loan to bridge the gap. Simply search ‘car title loans near me’ to buffer your website build, so that you can find an excellent developer that’s going to create the website of your dreams.

4. Invest in a Good Domain Name

Just like your website, a good domain name is either going to make or break your business. You need to not only find one that’s still available – which is harder than you think – but you’ve also got to make sure that it closely relates to your brand and is memorable.

People need to be able to remember where they can find you, so make sure that it is catchy and relevant. This is a foundational part of putting your business online, so the more time and effort you put into your domain name, the easier it will be to bring traffic to your website.

If you are a small business trying to gain some traction right now, you might be struggling. Don’t worry, though – you are not alone. Plenty of people are having trouble because of COVID. The first step to take is to get your business online so that you can give it a chance to succeed in the future.

5. Using Social Media successfully 

This section is a simple one. You might get frustrated with the number of social networking sites available today, so let’s start with the Big 3 to keep things quick.

On Facebook, most of us already have a profile. It takes less than 5 minutes to create a profile for your company on Facebook. Next, create Twitter and Linkedin accounts.

I’m not going to suggest that you go and build a profile on any social network out there. When you can’t post frequently on these networks, it won’t work. 

Here are some useful tips on social media for creating a brand: 

• Using beautiful photos/backgrounds to project a professional picture of your business  

• Decide the pace of posting and stick to it. In general, you can post on Facebook three times a week, on Linkedin twice a week, and on Twitter three times a day. 

• Don’t just post about your goods. By talking about your sector or offering helpful advice, you should have value. 

• Respond to feedback and get the audience involved.

6. Keep improving your online presence using analytics

Such as tracking our company’s results using good accounting software, we can also monitor how we do online on a regular basis. Once you start developing your company’s online presence, it is important to know if your efforts are paying off well. 

Always track the progress of your online presence from day one and continue to improve it until you achieve targets. Begin by monitoring visitors to websites. Google Analytics is a fantastic free tool for monitoring the success of websites. 

This gives you comprehensive information on the users visiting your homepage, such as their location, browser, or computer from which they accessed the website, their age, source from which they came, and how the pages were browsed. 

The success of social media can be monitored by monitoring the growth of Twitter followers or Facebook page fans. You will begin to accept the pattern over the course of time. Based on such activities, there may be an increase or fall in website traffic.