Written by: Wendy on September 30, 2010 @ 2:39 pm
In this last post from the series, The Four Pillars of a Robust Internet Presence for Small Businesses, I’m going to focus on perhaps the most important pillar of all—your personal interaction with customers and your employees.
The fourth pillar doesn’t require any sort of technical know-how, but rather, it focuses on reinforcing the existence of your online presence by talking to your customers and educating your employees about the website, blog, social media channels, online assets such as video and the eNews program. Everyone needs to be on the same page, so they can be “in the know” and share information about your website and these various tools. Talk to them about your newsletter. See if they are interested in participating in the blog. If they are, most likely they will also share these links out from their personal profiles. It gives everyone, including your customers, a stake in the outcome. In fact, if you can involve your customers to participate (using contests, opportunities to post on the blog, writing testimonials to share) all the better.
In your place of business, make sure you include information about your online destinations…with a sign-up sheet for the newsletter, the website printed on your business cards, stationary, envelopes, printed advertisements—even things like refrigerator magnets and pens—as well as other collateral material. If you visit tradeshows, make sure you distribute items with this information printed on them to let people know where they can go to get more information about your business.
Even though this fourth pillar seems pretty simple and obvious, it’s amazing how easy it is to be overlooked.
In conclusion: All four pillars of a robust internet presence are the product of your passion for your business. Hopefully these tools, as well as the development of a blog workbook to warehouse ideas, will give you what you need to mine your expertise and put it online.
Happy blogging!
Tags: blog, enews, internet presence, social media, workbook
Catogories: interconnectivity