RYAN Media
My name is John. You may not feel that there is any significant value in that name. Its just a name. Nothing special and if we were in the real world, you may not give it a second thought. You would base your opinions of me on what you see me doing. How you see me dressing, the things I may say, and the type of car that I drive to decide whether I am successful or good at what I do. In the online world though, even a name matters because no one can see your name and simply feel confident that you are the answer to their problems. They cannot see you. They see only your web page among millions of others, if you are lucky enough for them to see it. This is where your online presence can help you.
The Online Presence
An online presence simply means that your business is available on the world wide web and that is easily found by people who are in search of the products that you have to offer. To have a good online presence, you have the ability to draw traffic to your website through online search engines. For instance, if you have a website that sells pressure washers. If someone goes online to search for a new pressure washer, they find your website, click on your website, and browse your site. This is your online presence and you have the opportunity to make the sell, provided they find what they want from your website and feel confident that they can depend on you to deliver it to their door. However, to get to this point, you must first build up your online presence so that people can find you. This is where a lot of small businesses fall short, because it is not easily achieved.
Building Your Online Presence
The first step in creating a strong presence in the cyber-world is to build a website. It can be a basic starter website if you are new to the online world. The home page view should include all of the important information that your potential customers and clients want to find. This includes your hours of operation, what you can provide, where you are located, how they can contact you, and more. If you are hoping to build an online store, you can also include this on your homepage and subsequent pages of your website. The next step will need to be building yourself up using SEO (search engine optimization). This will make it easier for search engines to feel that you are worth looking at for most browsers and this will lead to your website being on the top of a search engine’s list, where the browser will be able to find you easily.
Attracting People that Matter
For any online business, you need people to notice you are there if you want to succeed. Therefore, building your online presence should also include social media where current customers can tell others what they love about your website. You will be able to post updates often to social media websites and the people that love you will share it or comment on it, which will show up to their friends. Blogs are also a great way to keep in touch and maybe visitors will share the blog posts as well. Anything you can do to keep a constant flow of interaction between you and your clients will benefit you by building up your online presence in a positive way and before long, people will not say, “John who?”
In the business world, appearance is everything. You want people to view you as respectable, dependable, and qualified to tackle whatever business you are in to. Depending on the business, you may have to go all out on your reception area. For instance, consider the type of company you would expect to find when you visit a media company? Someone that spends their life promising to get you to the top of a Google search. If you are like most, you would want to know they put effort into building the ultimate epoxy resin computer station.
As the owner of a media company or any other business, you have to consider your appearance. What will people see when they walk through your doors? You have to impress them with more than simple words. You have to create an office that reassures them, you are the right choice for their needs.
One of the simplest ways to ensure that people stay to actually talk to you is to create a space that is both welcoming and modern in style. This means having plants that aren’t dead, a beautiful fish aquarium, achievements and success stories on the wall. Those types of things make your space feel professional, but not sterile. It is welcoming.
Running a successful digital marketing campaign and an online business is not as easy as most people think. It takes a lot of time, effort, and tools that go way beyond a computer and keyboard. You have to be versatile and VERY responsive to what is going on in the digital world. At times, it may even depend on a digital Swiss Army knife.
Part of successful business ownership in a digital world is providing your clients and customers with a very personalized shopping experience. You need to provide answers to questions before they ever have a chance to ask. You need to also be ready if you have failed to have that answer already there. If you are more responsive, reply to questions quickly, they will feel like they are your priority. This will make them come to you for that product or that service that you provide them with. However, ultimately it means that since you cannot always put life on hold to wait, you need to always be connected with the right tools.
Kind of like a smartwatch can include access to email, phone calls, and more while telling time, there are also other digital multi-tools that serve dual purposes. There is also a digital clock face with screwdriver tools and bottle openers for you to carry with you when you camp. Swiss Army knives are quite popular with techies who may also want to spend their weekend camping out in the wilderness.
When you live and work in an online world, you have access to unimaginable amounts of information. It also means that you spend your days inputting data into the online world. Writing business emails, working on projects, and more is all done via the World Wide Web. Often, the information you are working with will be backed up to a cloud somewhere. What happens to those things if you are unexpectedly faced with a power outage? You may not have time to save what you were working on. You may not be able to reach important contracts and it can seriously stop you from doing business. This is why we suggest finding a favorite backup power supply and accessories to make it work well for you before you lose access to power.
When computers first came around, people wrote out everything of importance and stored the information in a file cabinet. It was cluttered and often annoying to sort through, but it was always within reach. Computers made it easier. They allow us to store important documents, receipts, and more in an area that is convenient. You simply type in the file name and the computer does the work. Or we have the option of using an external hard drive, which protects us in the event of a computer failure. They still rely on power though. Any of these options are still wise. As an online worker or someone who works from a remote office, you have to prepare for the worst. Save often and save in places that are accessible by phone, other computers, and more. This helps, but it may not be the ideal solution in every way.
The internet is a wonderful place. It is a world that we all choose to live in to some extent, whether we pay bills online, shop from home, socialize with family and friends, or even work. The truth is, each year, there are more and more people opting to telecommute. The problem is, sometimes it is hard to stay focused on work when you are working from home. Do you know how to increase productivity while telecommuting?
Working from home is a great thing for a lot of people. It makes it easier for those who may be stuck at home because of a disability or their other circumstances, to be productive and have an income. A person who needs to stay close to home because they are a caregiver for an elderly loved one, can still maintain a sense of independence without breaking their bank account. A couple who wants to live their life, having adventures and traveling, may opt to work from home where they have the freedom to travel when they want to. There are a lot of different jobs available. They include transcribing, running your own websites, blogging, freelancing, and all other types of jobs from employers. The only issue with working from home, is that it can sometimes be very hard to stay focused well enough to get the job done.
Moms and dads that work from home often feel that they are overwhelmed. It is hard to entertain children while trying to be productive and get their work finished in a timely manner. Children become a major distraction because they often feel that if mom or dad is home, they are not working. For those parents, it is often tempting and wise to look into 
The online world is a great place to seek out information and go shopping for things that you cannot find in your local area. However, according to many potential customers, it is also a very “cold and impersonal” way to shop, especially if they are trying to hire someone to do something for them; such as repair their air conditioner. They often feel that the ability to look at a person and judge them based on their “gut” is missing when it comes to online experiences. This is why website builders should never underestimate the importance of the about us page.
An about us page makes a potential client or customer feel connected to you in a way that is sometimes missing from the “online” world. Through this about us page, they can learn how long you have been in business, learn first and last names, your company’s location, links to your public social media accounts, and more. You, as an online business, become less a “website” and more of a person, by including these small details about yourself, your company, and your goals. If you simply have a store, this may be less important to the potential customer, but there are times and situations that make it more valuable. For instance, a person who is looking for a carpenter to take care of some home improvements, will want to know that you are able to do it. They will want to know that you have experience, see past projects that you have taken part in, and get a sense that you will not cause more damage to their home.
Building trust, establishes a relationship with your clients. You can build trust with them by providing whatever they want in a timely, professional manner, but you have to have something to get them to choose you over a hundred others who are offering the same thing. How do you get your foot in the door to help them trust in you? To give them an idea of who you are and let them develop a “gut instinct” about whether they can trust in you to provide what matters to them. If you think about it, you wouldn’t want to hire a babysitter or a day care for your child without getting to know the person who will be with them while you are working. You would visit, sit down and speak to the person, and if you didn’t feel comfortable with them, you would go on to the next potential person. In the online world, we miss out on this “meeting” phase, but an about us page, can allow the client to feel as though they are interviewing you.