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How to Create a Professional Online Presence For Your Startup Business

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The Internet has made it easier than ever for budding entrepreneurs to start a business, but the nuances of “being online” can be confusing. If you’ve recently launched a startup, the first thing you’ll want to do is create a professional online presence, so people know who you are, what you do and how to reach you. Whether or not you intend to sell your products or services online, it doesn’t matter; you still need a website and some active social media profiles for your business to grow. With this in mind, here’s how to build an online presence for your startup business in five easy steps.

Step One: Do Your Research

Before you start marketing your business online, you need to know who you’re marketing it to. Find out who your target audience is and how they use the Internet, and then you can target your efforts more successfully. You probably already know your business goals (perhaps to turn a profit or fill a gap in the market), but you also need to think about the goals of your customers. What do they want and why are you best placed to provide it?

Step Two: Create a Website

As a startup business, your first investment should be a professional-looking website. There are tools you can use to set this up for free, but if you want to make an impression and stand out in your field, it’s best to consult with a web design agency. Web design can be tricky; as well as layout and branding, you also need to consider security, mobile responsiveness and search engine optimization to help people find and use your website.

Step Three: Get Active on Social Media

To connect with a modern audience, you need to know how to use social media for your business. Refer back to your customer research to decide which platform is most likely to reach your target audience. The key here is consistency: you don’t have to be on every site, but you do need to provide communication and consistency if you want to build trust in your brand.

Step Four: Promote Your Business

Social media provides the perfect platform for promoting your business, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s free or even easy. Paying for ad space and running targeted campaigns is an excellent way to drive traffic to your website and build a following. Without investing at least some time or money, you’re unlikely to make much of an impact.

Step Five: Keep Up the Good Work

Now you have a professional online presence, which will attract high-paying clients, help spread the word about your products or services and enable you to build a glowing reputation. The work doesn’t end here, however. Creating a professional website and setting up your social media accounts is just the first step in marketing your startup. You also have to maintain your online presence to keep growing your business.

How to Set Up Your Business’s New Website the Easy Way

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These days, the first thing most customers will see of your business is your website. They’ll be most likely to find it via a search engine or some form of online advertisement. But what matters is what they think when they eventually click that link and see what the website can actually offer them. You want them to be impressed and satisfied with the experience, but it’s not always as simple as that. First of all, you need to get your new and improved site up and running; here’s how.

Compare the Pros and Cons of Each Potential Platform

There are many different platforms out there that you can utilize for creating a new website for your business. Whether you use WordPress, Squarespace, or another website builder is up to you. Each platform offers something new and interesting to users, so it’s up to you to find the one that’s right for you. Compare the pros and cons until you’ve come to the best fit for your needs.

Find Tools That Streamline the Process

There are plenty of great tools out there that you can start to make use of when you’re trying to streamline the process. You can try Unbounce for free if you want to. It’s this kind of thing that you should be doing if you want to get ahead of the competition because there’s no way to succeed if you don’t. It needs to be as straightforward as it possibly can be.

Create the Most Important Pages First

Some page matter more than others when you’re trying to create a new website. It’s pretty much always the case, and you can’t get away from it. You want to think carefully about what you want to achieve and where you want your customers to look. You can’t afford to ignore the pages that matters most, so these are the ones that should be sorted first.

Choose a Simple But Effective Theme

Themes matter a lot on websites because them immediately set the town and make it clear exactly what kind of tone you’re trying to set from the get-go. Ideally, the theme you choose should say something about your business and what kind if values you’re trying to push forward to people. It certainly doesn’t have to be over complicated, but it has to cut through.

Engage People With Imagery

People aren’t going to be impressed with nothing more than the words you deliver; you also need to engage with them on a visual level too. You can’t ignore just how impactful images and video can be on a website, so don’t underestimate those things. The right images can go along way.

Your business’s new website could be exactly what’s required right now if you want to push on and reach out to younger demographics. If your website still looks like it was made in 1999, the changes can’t come soon enough. It’s not an overstatement to say people won’t take your company seriously if your website looks like a joke.

Lending Credibility To Your Small Business

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Credibility is crucial to business success, after all, if you customer haven’t got faith in you they are very unlikely to pick your over your competitors in the first place. However, for small or one person businesses being seen as credible can be something of a problem as they often lack the resources and staff to execute it properly. Luckily, there are some ways that you can raise the credibility of even the smallest business, keep reading to find out what they are.

Professional branding

One way to increase the credibility of your small business is to ensure that your visual branding is on point. Visual branding includes thing such as business cards, headed paper, and logos as well as company colors and marketing materials for shows and exhibitions.

Clear, visual branding is essential to credibility.

Remember though that there is nothing that says amateur outfit more than a poorly drawn logo that you got off someone’s brother on Facebook! With that in mind, invest in an experienced professional to design your logo, and get the best quality cards and paper printed that you can. It may seem like only a little thing, but it can genuinely help create the credible image that you are looking for.

Outsourced services

Next, another way to increase the credibility your small business is to use outsourced services. In particular, it can be useful to find a virtual office service that will be able to answer your call and take messages, as this present a much more professional and credible image to customers calling to place an order.

In fact, using such a service can be hugely useful to you in regards to productivity as well, as you don’t have to suffer constant interruptions to the task you are doing and therefore can be more focus on the job in hand. Something that means it not only useful in creating a more professional image but can also benefit you practically as well.

Endorsements

Endorsements are a fantastic way of boosting your business’s credibility, and these can work in two different ways.

Firstly, you can get key influencers to endorse your product. This can be useful as such influencers will have a specific demographic that they appeal to and this will raise your company’s credibility with them.

The second way that endorsements can be useful for credibility is by approaching professional bodies or organizations for their seal of approval. For example, a first aid company may seek the support of the red cross, something that potential customers will associate with increased credibility.

However, if you do go down this route, be sure that you follow official channels and guidelines. Also be very sure that you have permission to use another organization’s logo on your packaging or website before you go ahead.

Great reviews

Lastly, another worthwhile tactic for boosting your company credibility is to work on getting the best online review possible. We are not just talking about carefully selected testimonials here either, but authentic and independent reviews that have the power to convince new customers to go with you over your competitors. Something you can find out more about how to do here.

If You Haven’t Thought About Outsourcing, You’re Missing Out

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If you are just in the middle of getting ready to launch your business, there might be some avenues of freeing up time and energy in the early days that you haven’t considered yet. Most entrepreneurs are ready for long hours, the grind but you don’t have to accept that as rote. There are a few things that you can outsource early on and maximize your time for running the business and getting creative.

Bookkeeping – this is pretty much a vital part of keeping your business running well, and keeping firm hold of your finances. Head to a couple of freelance sites, have a chat with other business owners and see if you can find yourself a bookkeeper you trust and has a proven track record.

Accounting – they go hand in hand, and excellent bookkeeping can help your accountant make the most of those deductibles, and they are experts in the field. You won’t get silly mistakes or in hot water for not completing something correctly.

Appointments – while you might want to be the point of contact for all appointment setups, it is highly likely that you would benefit from something like TimeTrade, Setmore or SimpleBook.me. They are automated systems that check availability, book appointments, notify you or the person responsible for the meeting, plus they have many other functions to explore.

Storage – Rather than have a lot of paper or HDDs hanging around, look into ways to lighten to load and make your data accessible anywhere. Use of Cloud storage or an outsource fax server can help manage how you’re sending data to employees and clients.

Admin tasks – If you have a lot of admin tasks, and are spending more time taking care of those than managing your client work, then it might be time to think about hiring a VA. A virtual assistant can take care of a lot of tasks for you:

  • Social media management and scheduling
  • Research
  • Blog Writing
  • Data Entry
  • File Management
  • Commenting and responding to social media messages
  • Transcription

And, so much more. If you manage to find a VA that understands what you are trying to achieve they can be a tremendous asset to you and your business. It’s like having two of yourself.

Social Media scheduling – Set up something like Hootsuite, SocialOomph or Buffer. Other platforms work just as well, but those are highly rated. It will take you, or your VA a few hours to curate a month or more of content across all of your platforms.

Do you have the time to manage your content marketing? If not, hire a freelancer to take care of that for you. It is basically the use of easy to read and digest content, that educates and informs your target audience without being salesy. Lead generation, relationship building and vital.

Look at what you aren’t great at. Every CEO in the world has at least one thing that they aren’t great at taking care of or getting done. Check what yours is and spend the time to find someone who can take care of it for you.

4 Simple Strategies to Improve Your Business Success Rate

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It does not matter if your business is a budding startup or a few years old, you can always implement new methods to improve its success rate. Any business requires specific tactics to improve its functionality. In fact, without a proper plan in your mind, your company may suffer drastically. One of the reasons behind it is lack of business knowledge. However, that can be overcome by learning about the strategies and using them. Moreover, your business can always double or triple its revenue through the utilization of various approaches. This post lists four such ways of improving the success rate for your business.

Professional growth

Regardless of the nature of your business, you should always aim for professional development in your field. This technique will support you in coping with your clients, giving them a reason to trust you. Professional growth can incorporate methods like researching your business field, paying attention to client needs, etc., to improve your services and products. A few hours of research every day can have an absolute effect that your customers will admire.

It will not break a bone to take on new challenges. This is something most business owners are doing, as it can help you grow professionally and lead your company to success. New challenges may mean new business opportunities that are not only risky but can also lead to significant financial losses if you don’t take the right steps.

Another often overlooked way to grow professionally is finding a mentor outside of your organization. As a leader, you need to upgrade your skills by getting help from outside experts. This could either be people in your industry or a different one.

Read online materials to know common leadership weaknesses and mistakes. This can help you make the right decisions that will lead you to growth. For example, learn what mistakes people are making in various industries and identify solutions to such problems. Furthermore, identifying leadership weaknesses can help you become self-aware, which will help direct you on the right path.

Quality services and products

Many businesses are present in the marketing that might provide similar services and products like yours, but you will need to prove your worth by offering quality. You may need to plan, assemble and follow a strict business plan that formulates high-end quality.

Customer experience

Customers define your business, so it is essential that you offer them the best experience possible. Our customer should find value in your product/service. In fact, he should feel fully satisfied with the purchases he makes at your firm. Furthermore, you should not give up improving the experience for your customers. You may even feel like your method is not working to improve the success rate, but do not give up. You can choose multiple ways to find the one that gives the best output. Beacontranscript.Com is a new platform that will motivate you with its vast collection of business, tech and startup stories from all over the world.

Serving the customer religiously

While the business is yours, it does not mean that you can do what you prefer. You will have to understand the needs of the clients too. Many executives ignore the suggestions and feedbacks of the clients, and it can turn out ugly for the growth of your business. There is no shame in accepting a mistake during a business deal. Your service or product may be high in quality, but you will need to serve the customers adequately for making them rely on you. The idea is to understand the customer through his/her shoes. Do not ignore this strategy, as it will help you connect with your potential clients better.

For successful business growth, the above techniques have proven to be capable. Any entrepreneur who follows them exhaustively has achieved tremendous success in his/her business. Some of these methods do change in the implementation technique over time, but the fundamental principle for each one of them remains the same.

Update your website. 

Right now, we spend more time online than ever before. While many of us are trying to reduce the amount of time we spend online in our personal lives, there’s no denying that it can have a wonderful impact on your business. This is due to the fact that having a strong online presence can help put your business on the map – whether you focus on growing your social media presence or updating your website.

As your business grows, you must ensure that your website is up to date and prepared for an increase in traffic. However, you also have to ensure that you stay relevant and continue to top the charts on google rankings. While this may not seem like much of an issue, many customers will select one of the first five suggestions that appear after an online search – meaning ranking anywhere other than the top could cause your website’s traffic to drop considerably. And reduced traffic = reduced sales. 

Thankfully, there are various ways in which you can get around this problem. For example, you can work with an SEO agency who can help you generate content for your website that helps you appear more often in Google searches. They can also help you to utilise backlinks to your advantage.