The best place to begin marketing your small business online.

Originally Posted by Mike Roncone

Howdy warriors,

I recently wrote an article about what the best method of promotion to start out is for a small business going online.

I wanted to get some warrior's opinions on it, so I will post a transcript of it below as well as a link to the article itself.

Let me know what you think!


---Article Start---
I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what small business owners want to learn about putting their businesses online. Today somebody asked where he should focus his online efforts after initially starting his business.

One of the first things to understand is that all of these different outlets for marketing your business online each serve a different purpose and speak to different businesses and their needs. For example, Facebook is great for businesses and organizations that are trying to make a specific community aware of their goals and services. Twitter is good for businesses that want to keep their customers informed and involved with by-the-minute updates about their operations and LinkedIn is best for the individual that makes consulting and their priority.

Despite the specific purposes of each outlet there are certain steps to establishing yourself online which, regardless of the nature of the business, will help guide you to accomplishing your goals.

To begin, one thing you will notice about any online authority, like The Wall Street Journal, is that their websites are always riddled with interesting, quality information. Regardless of any drastic technological changes or massive shifts in social behaviors, the necessity of great content has always been the highest priority for any website owner when trying to create a trustworthy environment for your visitors.

In order to attract visitors to your site and then make those visitors customers, the most important thing that your website needs to do is develop trust. Being a website there are a very limited (although growing every day) number of ways to attract visitors without paying for them, and to make those visitors trust you. The two most prominent of these are:

Having a website design that does not immediately scare people away
Having great content that provides insight into what you do and how you do it or into something that they wanted to learn.
For example, a restaurant's website should include everything about their food. What it is, where it comes from, why that specific item. On top of that, the site should also have everything about the restaurant that doesn't relate to its food including any relevant history, something about the owners, and what makes them unique compared with similar restaurants.

On the other hand, a consultant's website should include as much of their knowledge as they can possibly give away without rendering their services unnecessary. The willingness to share some of one's expert knowledge for free speaks to the quality of character that you uphold when dealing with your clients.

So in direct response to the question: I would have to say that your own website is the number one place to focus when first bringing your business online.

All other forms of promotion should build off of your website. When you make posts on a social media site? Post back to your real website! When you use QR codes to distribute around the community and get smartphone users to look you up? Link back to your real website!

There are plenty of plugins and other ways to put the social media buttons that you want all over your website. Think of it this way: if somebody was going to like your facebook page... They will almost certainly "like" it from your website. (granted that you have the button where they will see it)

I might be heading in a certain direction here... Every promotional effort that you pursue should link back to your original website that is full of great content that people will recommend to their friends and colleagues. There is only so much information that you can stuff into a social media platform, or a PPC advertisement, or even a brochure.

A great website with great content will always drive traffic and build trust and create leads. Other promotional methods generate traffic in small bursts. They generate trust only so long as you post the exact things someone wants to see without cluttering their feed and annoying them.

posted here
---Article Finish ---

So there you have it, this is my opinion when it comes to first bringing your business online, and that is what I told the person who asked. What do you all think?

Best,
-Mike Roncone