Four Pillars For Building an Online Presence

I work with a lot of small businesses that are interested in using social media to advance their online presence, but I recommend using social media as just one of several components of building and advancing a business online.

To have an effective online presence you need to have identifiable branding, a website you have control over with sharable content, a method to capture email addresses, as well as a social media presence. 

Business Name Selection and Branding

There are many factors to consider when selecting a business name. Some factors to consider include:

• Do you want to brand your own name or another name for your business. For example do you want your url and social media profiles to be under Smith Consulting or Sue Smith?
• Your business name should be as short as possible for social media purposes. I often recommend typing your business name out in lower case letters with no spaces, much like your url will be, to make sure it reads well and that an ill-intended word isn't created from the last two letters of one word and the first two letters of the next word.
  
• Check to see if there are any registered trademarks for your business name already and if it's available on all the social media channels that you might be active on. If you just want to do a quick check you can access the United States Patent and Trademark Office website and use their TESS or Trademark Electronic Search System to see if your intended name is currently registered. You may also want to consult an attorney to register a trademark for your name.
  
• It's helpful to select a color scheme. I work a lot with clients when designing their websites and we often start at Paletton to get an idea of a color scheme that they would like.
  
• Having the hex codes of your color scheme can be useful when designing business cards, your website, letterhead etc so that you have a consistent look and feel.
  
• Have a distinctive logo created.  Having a logo that depicts your business is useful for your website, your business cards and social media profiles. I work with my clients to connect them with graphic artists to obtain a logo they love.
  

A Website You Control

A website is the foundation of your online presence.  It's not just an online address to put on your business card. If someone else has designed your site for you, make sure you have the log-in information for your domain registration and your site host.

After you have figured out your branding you can incorporate it in your header graphic, and in color selection on your site.

If you want to be involved in social media it's really helpful to have a blog with answers to common questions that your target audience wants to know. Posting links to those blog posts will lead people back to your site where they can also see your services or products and perhaps sign-up for your newsletter, allowing you to capture their email address so you can contact them in the future.

If you are involved in social media, make it easy for people to follow you with social follow and sharing buttons.

An effective website has to not only look good, be mobile friendly, but it also needs to be optimized for search engines. There are very specific things that can be done when building a site and even a blog post to increase the chances that your site will come up on search.

Cultivating an E-Mail List

As much as a love social media I do tell my clients that if you only use social media to develop your online presence, it's like renting a house instead of buying one. You are posting your content on someone else's land and they can (and do!) change the rules. Having a website that you control is important but it's also very important to capture email addresses. If you don't have time to send out an e-newsletter every month, don't worry about it. But, if you can capture email addresses of people that interested in what you do or what you offer,  you have a direct way to communicate with them in the future.

Social Media and Relationship Building

Now, I'm finally getting to the social media part! There is a reason this is listed last. It's helpful to have the first three pillars established first before advancing to social media.

Now, I do have clients such as an author who hasn't finished their first book or a store that hasn't opened that want to get started on social media and that is often very appropriate to do. Eventually it will be helpful if you try to have some portion of the other aspects such as branding, a website and an email list in process. I'm all about progress not perfection, so whatever works for your business is workable!

When it comes to social media, I often recommend the following:

• Pick the platforms where your customers or referral sources are active. If you don't have time to be active on them now, at least claim the name for yourself so you have consistent branding across all channels in the future.
• It's better to do one platform well than to do many platforms just so-so
• Don't just post, build relationships! Monitor comments and respond, interact, ask questions, share posts from others
• Use posts to drive traffic back to your website and to your email subscriber list.

​Four pillars. It sounds easy, but it's a lot of work. It may take months or even years to build up your online presence but having a strategy for what you want to achieve will help you use your website, your email list and your social media activity to advance your business.