You are very busy so lets cut to the chase and get down to it. You are a small business or have just begun a start up. Congratulations. Bold move. Wish you all the best. Here are a few essentials for online marketing to help up kick start. The prerequisite of this post is that you already have all your social media accounts in place and have/are working on a website.
1. LOGO
As much as you understand the importance of a logo, do not underestimate its role in helping market your product or service to your target audience and creating new business for you. Having a good logo is a no brainer when it comes to starting your own business or entrepreneurial venture. Do not rely on home grown favours for your logo design unless that logo is made by a contact professionally involved in creative logos, otherwise you always run a risk of creating something outside of the current style ethos. If you’re short on cash, you can capitalize on cheap alternatives online. Check out services like Fiverr or Zeerk and take advantage of the cheap options they provide in generating logos or graphic designs for businesses. These can help sort your logo and image challenges.
2. Learn your Hashtags
Do not just turn anything you write or everything you write on your social media post into a hashtag, as most small businesses do. Its important to use popular hashtags to get relevant attention. The best way to learn more about hashtags useful for you is by exploring similar businesses and listing down the hashtags they use. Also, by clicking one hashtag, you can find other relevant hashtags that go well together and begin posting accordingly. Hashtags are essential to get more visibility and building a community around your brand. Use these extensively on your website, social media pages, newsletters and blogs and encourage your customers to post about you with these hashtags too. Harness them in your offers and use them to your advantage in more than one way.
3. Quality Content
Everything you post online should be one with your brand's visual presence. Not only should your logo be on your print collaterals but reflect across all your social media content. More importantly, everything you post on social media should be treated like a window to your brand. Where most small business and start ups struggle is in this department. Whether it is a product or a service that you provide, make sure that picture or graphics you post online maintain the contemporary standards you wish to portray for your brand. This department needs your investment. In the meanwhile, when you post pictures online, pay attention to the background of your product, the light and quality of your pictures. A good phone is enough to get good pictures out there until you can hire a professional photographer or designer to create your content and provide you with quality images.
4. Timing & Targeting
Targeting is one of the best gifts of social media. You can select the age group you can reach out to, the geographical areas, the gender, people with certain likes and dislikes. Get creative here. Start direct and indirect targeting and get attention not only from people who like similar topics but also people who like something else but would have interest in your product/service too. Timing is important not only in terms of posting about the right thing at the right time, when you can harness a hot topic or a viral topic to your benefit but also to post your daily social media posts (Yes! You must post multiple times, daily) at the times when you think would get more traffic. Use coschedule.com to schedule your posts for the day of the week and times of the day for ease.
5. Website
Everything you do online ultimately leads to your website - the face of your brand. Your website should be in line with everything your social media presents and ring of familiarity in style and message. Website, apart from photography, is the only place where we recommend small businesses and start ups to invest their capital in. Hire a good website designer to build you a site that speaks for your brand. You can not take this one lightly. You can even get in touch with us if you like. In fact, let us know our blog sent you here, and we will help you out with a few freebees.
All the best!
Prerna Siddharth
MtM Agency
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