June 28th, 2010
Online Business Success Consultant – What One Can Do For You!
The Good Old Days
In the not so distant past, businesses could succeed with a nice sign out front, a small ad in the local paper or yellow pages, and maybe an actual mailed advertisement every now and then. Believe it or not, you could run your entire business without a computer.
Wow how times have changed!
You Are Now Living in the Digital Information Age
People under 30 don’t subscribe to newspapers anymore. Why look something up in the yellow pages, when you can go online or search for something on your iPhone? Why listen to the radio and all their disruptive ads when you can get commercial free satellite radio listening to only the type of music you enjoy most?
A recent study indicates that 79% of English speaking American adults use the internet. The iPad sold over 2 million units in its first 60 days. There are 6.7 billion people on the planet and 61% of them have a cell phone subscription.
106 million people have Twitter accounts. Every day another 300,000 people sign up for Twitter. 37% of Tweets (messages posted on Twitter) are sent from a cell phone.
Facebook has over 400 million active users. That’s active users. Over 50% of those active users log in on any given day.
With the addition of social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn), the internet has changed dramatically.
A Website for Your Business Isn’t Enough
Even having a website isn’t enough to be successful in today’s competitive marketplace. With eBay and Amazon selling everything from used books to health food, it takes more than putting up a nice website to keep your company competitive.
Having a Website is a Lot Like Writing a Book
An author takes about 6 months to 2 years to write a book. Then they spend the rest of their life promoting it. Having an online presence is a very similar endeavor. It’s not enough to have a great looking website. It takes smart and consistent work with a website or blog and multiple social media profiles to have people find your business among the 234 million websites out there.
Being on the First Page of Google Matters
When a person types in words in a search box to find your website or blog, it matters where you show up in the results.
I wish I could remember who said this in order to give due credit. But, I’ve been on-line for 10 years and I’ve read thousands of articles, books, and blogs on internet marketing. The best comment about where you want your internet business to be was this: Would you rather have your business out in a corn field or downtown Manhattan?
Just putting up a website and doing no promotion is like sticking it out in the middle of a corn field. No one is going to find you. You’ll be paying for hosting, a web designer, a domain name, and a whole bunch of other services and it won’t get you even one web visitor.
Working with someone like myself, an online business success consultant who specializes in social media management and marketing, is what you need to get your business on the first page of Google and other search engines. That’s the equivalent of putting your business downtown Manhattan. If you sell real estate in Birmingham, when someone is searching for Birmingham Real Estate, if you don’t show up on page 1 of Google results, no one is going to visit your website. You might as well not even have one.
You can use pay per click advertising and get listed above your competitors. But that can get very expensive very quickly.
Being on the Internet is a Bit Like Being on Mars
Its a very different world than your brick and mortar business on main street. It has its own language. It is continuously changing. And to win the internet game, you have to learn and master every aspect of it even as it’s changing.
Anyone can throw up a website or blog. To be successful on the web, you have to do significantly more, And every step and component counts.
Why Hire an Online Business Success Consultant?
An Online Business Success Consultant is a person that already knows the internet inside and out. They have ample experience with traditional websites, blogs, social media, search engine optimization (SEO), and much more. You can read about the important aspects of an internet business here.
They have already successfully put their own websites, and those of their clients, on the first page of Google and other search engines for the important terms being searched by their prospective clients and customers.
They look at your business and the on-line presence you are wanting to create, and they help you put together a winning game plan by:
- doing advanced keyword research to find out what people are searching who might be looking for you and your products or services,
- helping you choose the best domain name for your site or blog,
- recommending web designers, web hosts, domain registrars, autoresponder services, social media sites, and other services,
- picking topics for articles, press releases, blog and social media posts to rank well on search engines and get targetted visitors to your site,
- helping you determine if you need to get into mobile websites and text message advertising,
- ensuring that your site(s) and media profiles stay updated with fresh content,
- analyzing every aspect of your on-line presence on an ongoing basis to determine what is working well and what needs to be changed,
- making changes to the plan as the business and the internet changes, and
- keeping you updated with trends and laws that can impact your online business success.
There’s more of course.
The bottom line is this . . . to be successful in business, you must have a web presence. The only web presence worth having is one in which you dominate your market.
An Online Business Success Consultant is your secret weapon for making that happen.
Let me take the hassle out of your online business!
Deb
Debbie “Takara” Shelor – Online Business Success Consulting, Social Media Management
