What do you do before you want to buy something/ work with someone/ go to a restaurant? Likely you ask your family and friends for ideas and recommendations, and you search online, whether on Google, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest. If you are a business owner, you know the importance of being found online.
Can your customers (and potential customers) find your business online?
Roughly half (51%) of Americans report making online purchases using their cellphones, while 15% have purchased something by following a link on social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter. Now if you think to yourself, ‘well my product/ service can’t be bought online’, that doesn’t mean people aren’t still searching for you online.
Here are a few tips to help you get found online by customers.
Google your business
When is the last time you searched for your own business? You might be surprised what you find.
Try searching by your business name and see what comes up. Chances are your website, social media profiles and any online directory listings come up (hopefully).
What you can do to improve your Google results:
- update your website and regularly post new content
- write a monthly or weekly blog post to share information and share on social media to drive more traffic
- keep your social media profiles updated and consistent
- submit your site to search engines
- make sure you have a sitemap for your website and submit to your Search Console
- submit your website to online directories like your local chamber and Yelp
Optimize your social media profiles
Once your social media profiles are setup, you still want to go back regularly and optimize them with keywords, change your cover image and make sure you are posting regularly.
How to optimize your social media profiles:
- Make sure your About section or bio has keywords included (not stuffed in there) in a way that is useful to anyone searching for your product or service.
- Post regularly each day or at least 5 times a week.
- Include relevant photos and videos.
- Organize your pages, for example, on Facebook in the videos area, add a featured video and create playlists to make it easier for someone on your page to find the information they need. On Pinterest, add showcase boards so that people see those when they view your profile.
- Customize your profiles. On Facebook you can add custom tabs by using a great service like Tab Foundry and will make that content stand out more and make your profile more interesting.
Tab Foundry creates custom informative tabs to set your profiles apart and give more value.
Promote your online presence
One thing that is easy to forget is to actually share your website and social media profiles with people to drive traffic and help people find the information they need.
Simple things like adding your website URL and social media handles to your email signature and business card are sometimes forgotten.
Add your website and social media handles to your email signature.
This doesn’t need to be complicated, simply letting people know you are on Instagram is enough to encourage more people to find you online.
Ways to share your website and social media profiles:
- Add social media profiles to your website.
- Use social sharing buttons on your website like SumoMe or Social Warfare so people can share information they enjoy and find useful.
- Guest blog or write articles on Medium and LinkedIn Published posts and link to your own website or social media profiles.
- Link to your website and profile in your email newsletter.
- Use Instagram stories or Snapchat to tell people about a new blog post to drive more traffic.
- Use Buffer and Hiplay to keep sharing your blog posts and older evergreen blog posts.
- Use Quuu Promote to get your content shared more on social media and reach more people.
Make sure to audit your website and social media profiles regularly so you can keep editing and make them better.
How do you make sure your customers and potential customer can find you online? Do you have any tips to share for how to get found online? Share below!
