A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR YOU: MAXIMISE YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE WITH MINIMAL EFFORT
With the festive season fast approaching, I’m feeling generous. So I’ve decided to put together a few tips that will help you manage your own online presence without spending big bucks on professional assistance. Call me crazy for giving away free IP, but hey – make the most of it while it’s on offer!
Most small businesses know that SEO, SEM and web design are important tools for getting their brand noticed in the online space, but they just don’t have the time to spend all day everyday in front of a computer screen thinking about search. Sound familiar?
Well, here are my three tips to achieving the equivalent of synthetic turf in the online environment.
Tip #1: Stick to what you know and freelance the rest
Focus on your strengths. Why did you get into online business? What is it that you are an expert in? Stick to that as much as you can and delegate the other tasks to people with the know-how. If you are a DIY on a budget and can’t afford to hire an agency, try freelancer websites where you can usually hire someone to do the work for you at a very reasonable rate. The important thing to remember though is that there are a good number of unqualified or inexperienced workers on these sites who may claim to offer what you are looking for but not have the ability to deliver. Check their work history and experience with projects similar to yours and look for good feedback or ratings in their profile for work they have completed.
Tip #2: Use online tools to schedule weekly postings
If you prefer to do a lot of the work yourself, there are scheduling tools that you can use for your social media management that can make it seem as though your business is active at any time of day. Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, for example, can be used to schedule your posts on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin throughout the week at different times of day, giving the impression you are consistently active in those channels. For your website or blog, consider using a content management platform such as WordPress which allows you to schedule your blog posts for dates in the future. Doing this will give your website the impression it is being regularly updated as well. With the right scheduling tools to assist you, all you then need to do is set aside a block of time each week to plan your activity and schedule its delivery across your channels. With practice, you can achieve a full week of web and social media activity with a few focused hours of planning and scheduling.
Tip #3: Want longer lasting search results? Use SEO
Another important marketing tool to consider is SEO. In my opinion, it is vital and a very worthwhile investment if you can factor it into your marketing budget. What you need to do is find an agency or individual who can help you identify the popular keywords that are relevant to your product or service, develop your website content and meta tags to use these words and then carry out off page activity to drive links back to your site for these words. My experience with SEO has been that its effects are very long lasting, so you should only need to revisit the strategy every six months or so. Done right, you get consistent, targeted traffic to your website for an extended period of time.
Due to this foolish and fleeting feeling of generosity, Christmas has come early for you. We at Grand Brands understand that it goes without saying this is one of the busiest times of the year for not only online businesses, but for all retailers. So make the most of these free tips and treat your business this festive season by investing in the future.
