It seems that online businesses are the wave of the future. The benefits of owning and operating your own online business are undeniable. For one thing, online businesses are highly profitable. This is largely the result of the fact that online businesses lack the overhead costs of storefront. If Amazon had to open stores in the real world, it’s extremely unlikely the business would be the multi-billion dollar power house it is today. Online businesses also present their owners with opportunities to travel, because business transactions can be conducted virtually anywhere.
But while online businesses are increasing in number, there will always be a need for real world business places. You can’t dine at a virtual restaurant. And a virtual water-park is unlikely to make much of a splash. Still, there is a place for online business in real world business, and that place is in promoting one’s brand.
Traditional advertising is on the decline. Signs, billboards, and listings in yellow-pages were all well and good fifteen years ago. But times have changed. If you’re looking for a bite to eat or a place to have fun, you’re not going to bother flipping through a phone book. More likely than not, you’re going to rock a Google search on your smart-phone. It’s simply easier. There’s less effort and you lose less time researching.
Many tech-savvy business owners and entrepreneurs have acknowledged this trend. Successful businesses need a web presence. And the most obvious way to start a web presence is to construct a website. But simply having a website is not going to cut it anymore. Everyone has a website: Your niece probably has a website for her goldfish. Even if you do build a successful, well constructed and aesthetically appealing site, it’s likely to get lost in the digital sea.
The trick is promoting your web visibility, and there are several means of doing so. One of the easiest ways to promote ones visibility is to construct more than one web presence. With all of the free blog platforms and social networking sites, creating more than one web identity is a fairly simple task. Look to start expanding on sites like WordPress, Facebook, and Twitter. All of these sites allow a business owner to amass a following. The business owner can then interact with that following by promoting deals or asking for customer input on ways to improve business.
Social Media Sites are great for promoting one’s brand because they essentially offer free advertising. For example, let’s pretend you own a bar: A customer comes in one day and orders a beer. You inform the customer that he can get a dollar off that beer by “friending” you on Facebook. He inevitably accepts your offer because it costs him nothing other than the effort it takes to click “friend”. From now on, whenever you’re promoting a beer special or a band, that customer will receive alerts of the event through Facebook.
Another means of promoting one’s brand online is called affiliate marketing. When people use search engines like Google to find an item they’re looking for, the top results either pay for their ranking or are ranked highly because they receive the most traffic. Affiliate marketing is the practice that uses web synergy in order to garner more traffic for your site and promote your web ranking.
A strong web presence is essential for anyone who wishes to conduct business in the twenty first century. Those who have yet to engage in the practices described above should not be discouraged. There are many programs dedicated to helping businesses optimize their web presence and profits. So why little tech-phobia get in the way of your financial prosperity?
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