You take care to show the best of your business through its storefront: either through window displays or sandwich boards or signage. Shouldn’t your online presence be just as inviting?
The average adult now spends 20 hours a week online and the number’s only growing. More and more people are turning to the internet to help them make informed purchasing decisions, which means online presence is essential for small businesses. Below are some tips on how to make sure your online presence does brick-and-mortar business justice, and help you win some new customers too.
Find your Profiles: Building your profile starts with finding all the places that your customer might look for you. Do a quick search for your business and see what comes up. You might find the pages or accounts, like Twitter, that you set up yourself and forgot about. You might find your business already on other sites, like yelp. It’s important you find them all.
Do a little housekeeping: Next, claim your unclaimed pages. You might decide that based on demographics, you don’t need to keep some accounts active (i.e. If you are marketing to baby boomers, maybe you don’t need that snapchat account), and you can delete those accounts. For the ones you wish to remain active or would like to claim, follow the steps to do so. Creating a list with accounts and logins will save more time later down the line and make it easier for you to stay active.
Keep it current: While basic, this is the most important thing you can do to ensure you aren’t losing customers, make sure your business information is current and correct across every site. Make sure you hit the basics: your business name, address, phone number and business hours (with bonus points if you can note seasonal or holiday hours). This information is key to ensuring our customers can find you without frustration.
Personalize: Now that you have the basics down, take the opportunity to make your presence more personal. The more you present to your customers about your business and story, the more of a connection your readers and potential customers will feel about your business. To start, include a short, friendly bio or profile blurb. If the platforms allow pictures, take advantage of the feature: your customers will love to see everything from your favourite new products, classical menu items, your staff having a good time, or images that allow them to get a feel of your space.
Of course, if you have a website, there is no need to replicate much content. Just make sure your link(s) are active and current, and included on your business pages.
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