In our forced isolation people are spending more and more time online and looking for content. If you haven’t spruced up your branding, updated your website, or taken a serious look at your social media strategy NOW IS THE TIME!
Having a strong online presence is crucial to your marketing strategy, no matter what size your business is or what industry it belongs to because it is our main source of interaction and connection right now. It’s vital because quality online content attracts customers even if they haven’t heard of your brand.
Here are three things you can do right now to connect with your customers:
1 – Update Your Website
All businesses, no matter how small, should have a website. It can be extremely basic, but it is essential and should contain basic information like are you open for business, hours, location and contact information. This is true especially now! For example, if you are a restaurant please update your menu to show curb-side ordering options and instructions! If people can’t find these details, they are not going to call or visit the restaurant to find out!. There is no reason to lose potential customers over something that’s so easy to remedy and costs very little.
2 – Work on Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
In case you’re not completely sure what SEO means, how it works, or why it’s important, here’s a quick rundown:
- Who: Everyone – anyone who has information that people want to find on the internet should be using SEO techniques.
- What: The purpose of SEO is to make it easy for search engines to find your website.
- When: All the time – SEO is an ongoing process.
- Where: Major search engines include Google, Yahoo, and Bing connect people all over the world.
- Why: People tend to trust search engines, so websites that appear high in results pages are more likely to receive traffic.
Search engines LOVE NEW CONTENT! Simply updating your website or starting a blog can do wonders for your SEO.
3- Get Active on Social Media
Social media is an important part of your online presence because it plays an important role in our everyday lives. You have eyes spending more time than usual trying to connect and starving for content. The more compelling and engaging your material is, the more likely your followers will like, comment and share your posts. Engagement is key to promoting your brand – not only will it make you more appealing to existing customers, the more positive social activity that goes on, the higher the chance is that their friends will be exposed to your brand and curious to see what you have to offer.
I hear you all saying this in your heads right now… “But I don’t feel right promoting my business right now!” and to some degree you are right. Yes, please don’t do the hard sell right now, no cold calling, no high-pressured smarmy sales tactics. Instead, focus on the customer and their needs.
How can you fill their need to connect socially?
How can you solve a problem for them?
How can you help them with some aspect of what is going on in the world right now?
And how can you bring them a smile or a little laugh today?
(funny cat videos are ALWAYS a hit!)