In this day and age, everyone who is anyone is on the internet so that they can get themselves noticed, and also keep up with competitors and friends. When it comes to your business, being on the internet can actually benefit you greatly and if you haven’t already, it’s time to take to the internet with your enterprise! Here’s why:

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Social media can make or break a business

Social media basically runs the world these days, and that’s because of sheer amount of people that use it each day. A simple fact is, if you want to get your product or service out there, putting it on social media is now the fastest way of getting it in front of the people you want. So, how can you effectively use social media for your business? Here are some tips on how to do exactly that!

• Much like Google, social media uses tailored adverts for their users. This means that if you’re choosing to advertise using social media, your product or service will be seen by your target audience and more importantly, by potential customers. These adverts work by taking note of what the user typically looks at and tailoring their adverts to something that’s going to interest them.
• Being active on social media is imperative to ensure that your post, page, or indeed your business, in general, doesn’t become forgotten about. With millions of social media posts being published each day, it’s easy for your posts to become lost in the abyss. So, to ensure that you’re putting your business out there for people to see, you should be posting regularly. You can use social media scheduling tools to help you such as Crowdfire so that you don’t have to spend all day using social media.
• Learn the algorithms of each platform. Unfortunately for us, each social media platform has a different algorithm with means that we can’t cut and copy the techniques from one place to another. Luckily, there are many things that these platforms do have in common such as when a post is popular with fans, it will appear at the top of newsfeeds. So, sharing your content and encouraging people to comment will, in fact, make your posts more visible to outside parties.
• Run competitions and giveaways using your social media accounts to generate interest. Doing this often encourages people to share your content, meaning that you’ll gain new followers to your content and your business alike. Don’t forget to link the competitions and giveaways back to your website to take advantage of much-needed traffic to your business!
• Publish content that your fans are going to find useful. Images and videos are more likely to catch people’s eyes. Spark a conversation, post something funny – it will all help people stick with your page and also recommend you to their friends and family!
• Respond to questions and comments that appear either on your posts or in your inbox. A page that appears inactive is going to lose their followers.
• Use hashtags to help interested parties find you easier. Not sure what hashtags to use? You can easily find pre-written hashtags for your niche by searching them on Google.
• Remember to be sensitive with what you’re posting. Upsetting people isn’t going to win you any favours and could result in your business gaining a bad name. Keeping your content lighthearted will avoid this from happening to you.
• Use a 70/30% rule on your accounts. Posting only your own content will bore people and it will seem spammy on your behalf. Sharing content from other businesses and pages will help break up your timeline and also give you a chance to help promote another business. It may seem backhanded, but a simple share will encourage other businesses to do the same for you.

As you can see, there’s a lot to think about when taking to social media with your business, but if you get it right, you could grow your following for your business literally overnight!

It’s now easier than ever

Not so long ago using social media and even the internet, in general, wasn’t as easy as it is now. To get to a website you would need to use a computer and if you didn’t have one at hand, you’d simply have to wait.

We’re lucky enough to now live in a generation where the internet is available at our fingertips. Want to find out the weather? Look at your phone! Want to research a business before buying from them? Research them on your phone!

It’s now also easier than ever to have problems resolved when it comes to using the internet. IT support is now faster and more effective than ever when our devices go wrong. So, now when you’re using your website or social media to try and sell your product or services and your computer doesn’t want to play ball, you can now sort the issue faster than you could have in previous years.

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It’s the fastest and most convenient form of communication

Whether you’re working in an office with your staff members and business partners, or you’re working from remote locations, using the internet is now the fastest and most convenient form for communication. Messaging platforms such as Whats App, Facebook Messenger, and even iMessage on Apple products use the internet as a way of ensuring that your messages are delivered faster.

So, even if you’re sat 5 feet away from your colleagues, sending links and useful information is now faster than moving over to them to show them on their computer screens. Consider using a program like Slack as a platform of communication for you and your team. You can create different threads and integrate other useful things such as Google Docs. Definitely worth looking into to help increase communication in the office!

A website can bring in more sales

If you haven’t already, you should be looking into creating a website to represent your business with. As mentioned briefly earlier, when you want to research a business, you head straight to the internet to see if they have got a website to check out. More often than not, if potential customers can’t find a website, they are likely to go with a company that does. This is because simply having a website increases your trustability. Here are some other things to remember about building and running a website:

• Don’t overcomplicate things. A huge mistake that many businesses make is building a website that’s too difficult to use. Keeping navigation simple and clear will ensure that people carry on exploring your website.
• Make sure your contact information is easy to find. Again, if this proves to be a task for your website visitors, they’re likely to click away and find a company that doesn’t make their life difficult.
• Integrate search engine optimisation (SEO) into your website to allow it to be found naturally by browsing. While it’s very likely that you’re going to share your website link on social media and in many other places, using SEO will help your traffic find you rather than you encouraging it. SEO is fairly simple to include in your website, but you should read this guide on SEO to ensure that you can reap the full benefits from it. You should also look at how the design of your website can integrate SEO too.
• Publish content on your website that your readers are going to find useful. For example: if you’re selling tools for the home and garden, publishing tips on DIY, how to repair tools at home, and anything related will benefit your customers greatly. This will also give them a reason to come back to your website in the future which, of course, leads to sales.
• Create and write a newsletter to keep your customers updated with what you’re doing. This could be anything from changing your opening hours to sending them discounts and promotions you’ve got coming up. Everybody likes something for nothing!
• As mentioned earlier, running competitions through social media and linking them back to your website will gain you plenty of traffic. Not only that, but people will be more inclined to sign up to your newsletter to hear more from you in the future.
• Consider giving your readers the ability to buy your products and services online rather than having to come and see you in person. Perhaps you could set up an online store and delivery service and branch out with your business?
• Finally, be consistent with your branding and voice. Consistency can help you to build your brand and improve your reputation. Sadly, not all reputations are good but you can use software to monitor all instances of your brand being mentioned online so you can actively work towards improving your relationship with consumers. Utilising the skills of an online reputation management company can help you to improve your reputation and overcome any obstacles.

As you can see, there are a plethora of reasons and techniques when it comes to using the internet for your business. So, if you haven’t already taken to the internet, what are you waiting for?