How to Take Your Offline Business Online An Introduction to Online Visibility By Vladas Krivickas
Securing Your Brand Online
Your #1 Job on the Internet Whoever you are and whatever you do, your number one job is to build your credibility on the Internet, so your prospects like you and trust you. When you hand your business card to a person you meet, what s the first thing they are going to do if they are even remotely thinking of doing business with you? Google you! Let s make sure your prospects find what they re looking for!
1) Domain Name (URL) Unless it s Coca-Cola or McDonalds, people don t buy from brands; they buy from other people. Your broker-branded website provided by your company is great, but it s not enough. Start your journey to better online visibility by purchasing a domain with your name: www.johnsmith.com; www.johnjsmith.com; www.johnsmithunlimited.com; www.johnsmithrealestate.com... It doesn t have to be a full-blown website. A blog branded with your name will suffice. While your clients will remember and share your business name, they will connect with it better when they know who s behind the brand.
2) Claim Your Name http://namechk.com/ is a convenient service that allows to see if your desired username or vanity URL is still available at dozens of popular Social Networking and Social Bookmarking websites. Check and claim! http://knowem.com/ does all the work for you for a fee.
3) Create About.me Page About.me: it s a social directory (think phonebook meets the Internet). It s free, their pages are well-ranked by Google and it allows you to organize all your social media links in one place and displays your brief bio in an artsy (yet professional) onepager.
4) Set Up Your Facebook You will need both: your personal page and a business page. If you want to live and breath your business, you may want to give up on privacy and mix business and personal posts. It s easier to manage individual post permissions than try to keep your personal profile strictly personal.
5) Set Up Your Google Plus Page Again, you will need a personal Google+ page first. Once you have it, you will be able to create your business page. Since YouTube is owned by Google, you will then be able to create your YouTube Channel with just a few clicks. Make your life easier and do these tasks in the above order.
6) YouTube is More Than Cat Videos! YouTube is the second largest search engine. It s bigger than Yahoo, Bing, Aol, and Ask.com combined. (And you thought it s a place to watch cute cats or share funny videos.) YouTube processes more than 3 billion searches a month. When people need answers, they turn to YouTube. Even if you don t feel comfortable creating videos (it s way easier than you think), claim a channel with your business name. You don t need expensive equipment! My client, an attorney, uses his iphone to create compelling videos. He simply researches what people in his niche are searching for and records videos that answer their questions.
7) Other Branding/Social Media Tools Twitter Yelp LinkedIn Instagram Pinterest Podcasts
Setting Up Your Website
Do Businesses Still Need a Website? In mid-1993 there were only a total of 130 websites Crazy, right? Today, there are over 1 billion! Having your own website is not a luxury anymore; it s a necessity. Some marketing consultants claim that one no longer needs a website in order to succeed online. While it is possible to do well online without having your own website, it is by no means ideal.
Website VS Social Media: It s All About Control Your website is the only online medium that you control 100%. From content to design to sharing options, it is an equivalent of being a homeowner in real life. Social media networks, especially Facebook, are known for constant changes that are beyond your control. Some of these changes will directly affect how your content performs, including your sales and your bottom line. You just going to have to learn how to deal with it and move on
Template vs Custom There are two types of websites: template-based or custom. The best analogy for a template is prepackaged food. Let s take premade mac & cheese as an example: all you need to do is heat it up and it s ready to serve. A template is a premade website. Unpack it, upload your own content (text, pictures, videos) and you can go live in a matter of hours. Best templates provide more options for customization: you can change colors, fonts, and layout (to a certain extent). To continue with our food analogy, custom website is like dinner made from scratch. A web designer that builds a truly custom website does not use any kind of templates.
You Will Love Wordpress! If you re reading this, chances are, you want a quick and cost effective solution. For that reason, I recommend using Wordpress. It s a free, open source website publishing platform with awesome blogging features and user-friendly content management system (CMS). There s no shortage of designers who create beautiful and functional Wordpress templates, called themes. Search engines love Wordpress websites, so once you launch your site, it will be indexed by Google very quickly.
Your Online Empire So Far Website Facebook Google+ YouTube About.me Page Other Social Media Profiles (Your Choice)
IDX = Easy Traffic IDX (which stands for Internet Data Exchange ) is a must! Whether you work with buyers or not, they will give your website needed flow of traffic. Having IDX on your website means visitors will be able to browse properties for sale even if they re not yours. Any reputable IDX solutions has an option to place your info next to the property search, maximizing your chances of getting a call even if a prospect was looking at the property represented by a different agent.
Converting Traffic to Leads Although your website does many things for your business (represents your brand, provides information, educates your prospects) the ultimate goal is to capture leads. To do that, you need to create a funnel.
What s a Funnel? A successful lead capture system includes the following: Give-to-get; Lead capture mechanism (way to collect opt-ins, like MailChimp or Aweber); A solid follow up sequence (a set of pre-written emails to follow up with your prospects).
If You Like What You See Thanks for reading this I hope you found the information valuable. If you apply these steps, you will end up with a solid online foundation. If you think that your website is not using its all potential to collect leads OR if you have no lead capture system whatsoever, you may want to check out this product. It includes video trainings, an action planner and a set of email scripts, among other things, so you can turn your website into a lead machine. Thank you so much for your time and I ll speak to you soon!