6 Steps to Get Your Company Online to Survive Economic Times

I’ve heard an increasing number of stories lately about traditional companies that know they want to create a business presence on the Internet, but they don’t necessarily know how to get started. Having created my first website in 1994 and worked in many parts of the technical industry since then I decided to write some tips for getting started. In these rough economic times its important to be as competitive and effective as possible and this article puts its focus on growing business by establishing a brand online, marketing services online, improving placement in search engines like Google, and other means of building conversation and buzz about your products and services on the Internet.

Getting Started

The goal of any Internet-based marketing initiative should be to drive new leads and sales to your business– essentially, it should pay for itself, done right. There are a few steps to get started and a few more to grow your presence and exposure online.

1. Create a web site

A bare minimum to establish an online brand is to have a website. This could be a simple page with contact information or it could consist of message boards, an online store, a blog, user accounts and secure access for clients and suppliers, and more.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a hot topic these days. It refers to designing and organizing your website in a way that makes it both understandable and seen as a reliable source of information to a search engine. There are many companies promoting SEO services– some of them are legitimate partners who will help you, and others are more questionable.

Whether you decide to get help or not there are at least some basic points you can focus on to make your site somewhat optimized:

• Make sure your site is built on a publishing platform like Wordpress, content management system like Drupal, or some other system. These systems are used by millions of sites on the web and have been refined over the last few years to make sure content is managed well. There are also SEO plug-ins, or feature modifications to the platform, that are free and will automatically increase your site’s SEO.
• Only post genuine, original, fresh content to your site and only on your site– don’t duplicate content.
• Link to other quality sites.
• Get quality sites to link to your site.

3. Drive communication

Make sure to solicit interaction with your visitors and potential clients. Expose your contact information everywhere and give people multiple ways to contact you. Some of them will prefer phone, others will prefer email. It’s best to give people as many contact options as you are equipped and comfortable handling. This means, only give a phone number if you have someone to answer it. If you give an email address, an automatic response letting the user know you received their note is a good, too.

Believe it or not, I’ve visited many sites where people fail to offer any method of communication. New clients cannot come to you if they don’t have a way to reach you.

4. Create a blog

A corporate blog or even a personal blog of a company executive is a good way show people your company’s current focus. Write about new products or services, company goals, press, or just related topics that would be of interest to your market. This gives your company a face and a feeling– something your potential clients can hopefully relate to, find insightful, and gain trust in your abilities. You can even allow moderated or un-moderated commenting which can start discussion and buzz about or around your products and services.

5. Become a part of the community

Seek-out sites relating to your industry. Many of these sites will have potential clients for your services, readers or even the writers themselves, and can even provide ideas and feedback on the design, implementation, and perceived effectiveness of your site.

• E-mail, call, talk with these people. Think about what they’re trying to do and how you can help them. Sometimes offering guidance or suggestions can be helpful to the rest of the community and will get your site favorable mention by others.
• Link to these sites from your own. As your visitors find other quality sites through your own it will build your own credibility and there’s a good chance the managers or authors of the other sites may notice new traffic coming from your site (see step 6 for how they know)
• Ask for a link. Once you have an established relationship with other sites in your community ask them if they will link to your site. Assuming its appropriate to their visitors there’s a good chance they will. If they won’t, ask them why. Maybe it’s just their personal reason, or maybe there’s some aspect to your site that turns them away from it (and thus possibly driving others away also). Either way, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

6. Track your progress

Seeing who is visiting your site, where they’re coming from, and how many are coming are all important metrics to know about your organization’s site. There are many different systems and tools for tracking site activity. I’ll mention Google Analytics here since I’m personally most familiar with it, but realize there are other options. Google’s tool is free and easy to add to your site (many publishing systems have easy to add plug-ins that are simple to configure).

Get going!

The 6 steps above are a suggested start to getting your business online. They by no means are comprehensive, but will give you a great start and keep you going for awhile.

Review Checklist

• Create web site
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Drive communication
• Create a blog
• Become a part of the community
• Track your progress