Six Tips Small Business Owners Should Follow To Build Online Presence

Are you still a brick and mortar business owner who doesn’t have any kind of online presence? Then this post is for you. In case you are an experienced internet marketer then please don’t read further as this post is mainly for the business owners who are still new to the online world.

What follows next are the few basic tips which will help you in building online presence for your small business.

Get a website and blog –Okay. This is the basic one so I won’t spend more time on this point. The only tip which I will like to share is to hire a professional web designer who can design an elegant and beautiful website for your business. Since the visual appearance of your website may influence the decision of your potential customers, it is very important to have a decent and easy-to-use website.

Join social media websites – Social media websites enjoyed a tremendous growth in 2009 and will continue to grow in 2010. According to a study about the impact of social media websites on consumer behavior, more than 50 percent of online consumer takes their decision on the basis of information they get from these social media websites. Create a profile on all social media websites and communities where your target audience spends their time and try to develop your relations with them. More is the number of social media websites you join; the easier it will be for your consumers to find you.

Get listed in popular business directories – Get yourself listed in local business directories like Google local business results, Yahoo local business listings. Also search for the other local business organizations websites or directories which are related to your niche and get your self listed in them.

Distribute few Press releases – Once you’ve launched the website and get yourself listed in free business directories. Write some press releases about the launch of your new website and submit them to free press releases sites. If you have any contacts in local newspapers agency then use them and see if they can help you in getting some exposure.

Add some useful content on your website – Write six-seven unique and useful articles about your industry and publish them on your own website. Send those article links to the bloggers who write about your niche, your friends, current clients, family and request them to promote them. Also you can submit those articles to few of the popular social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, Mixx where it can attract some traffic.

Set Google Alerts – Go to google.com/alerts and set alerts for your company name and keywords related to your niche. Google will send you an email notification every time someone mentions your company name or the keywords you have set in your Google alerts account. Monitor all the conversations related to you and participate wherever required.

These are the six easy tips which according to me every business owner should follow for building a basic online presence for their small business. Do you have some additional tips then feel free to share them in the comments.

Rajkumar Jonalla is working for Fortepromo promotional products which create high quality promotional flash drives for IT companies that help them to promote their brand in the market.