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The recession has thrown up a whole new interest in using the Internet as a promotional tool.  Business owners who, just a couple of years ago thought they didn’t need a website are now scrambling to get online.

Having an informative website allows you to communicate your message to a much wider audience as well as enabling you to instantly provide updated information about your products or services to your existing customer base.

Getting Your Message Out

You may know your products or services like the back of your hand but does your website describe what you do well enough for potential customers to want to contact you?

Below are a couple of things to keep in mind when planning your website:

  • Keep the home page as simple as possible with links to pages with more information. Visitors to your website should be able to tell from the information presented on the home page what your business has to offer and shouldn’t have to search to find out that basic message. The Internet is vast and consumers have greater choices than ever before, most will very quickly move on if they can’t make sense of your website straight away.
  • Describe what it is you do in your introductory paragraph. If your product or service is not easy to describe in a few short sentences, you might want to consider making a short video to demonstrate your services. This way you can explain visually how your product or service works.
  • Write your content for the uninitiated. Don’t assume visitors to your website understand the lingo within your industry.
  • Make sure your website is attractive, has a clean design that’s easy to navigate and keep your content up-to-date. You can optimise your site for Search Engines, start an AdWords campaign and get thousands of hits on your site every day but if your material is out-dated, your design unappealing and your layout cluttered and confusing you will get very little more than that.

Blogging for Business

Maintaining a blog allows corporations to personalise their profile, engage directly with customers and to openly deal with criticism on their own turf.  SMEs can use blogging as a means of building their brand and quickly post updates about products and services.

Some tips on business blogging:

  • Decide how you want to portray your business image and stick to that style
  • Try to write a new article at least once a month to keep the content fresh
  • If you have more than one person contributing articles, make sure that you have a system of moderation in place
  • Use keywords in your articles that you would like to see your site rank well for in Google and other search engines

Micro-blogging & Social Networking

Using social media websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can help you to build a network of others in your industry as well as related business that can be a source of leads for you.

There are tools available to help speed up the process. For example, TweetDeck allows you to post to Twitter and Facebook simultaneously, while LinkedIn and Facebook have RSS feeds that can automatically publish your blog postings.

Finally, and most importantly, if you are going to delegate the job of blogging and social networking to a member of staff, make sure that you select someone you trust, someone who knows your business intimately, is passionate about it, will stick to the image you want to present and will write appropriate material.

Related Articles & Resources

  • Recent article from The Irish Independent  (or is that future article – judging by the posted date?  Thursday April 19 2012) on business blogging blunders and how to avoid them.