Looking for ways to promote your small business in Adelaide?

So you’ve made the decision to start up your own business. Congratulations! However, there are probably a hundred different things running through your mind. There is so much to consider and organise, such as your business name and ABN, what your logo is going to be, how you’re going to do your record keeping and what accounting systems you’re going to use, writing a business plan—the list goes on and on.

In general you will also find yourself constantly putting your hand in your pocket to pay for all of this. This means you probably need to get some customers—fast! For the small business owner cash flow is critical to keeping your new business ticking over. Therefore you need to spread the word that you are open and looking to do business.

Fortunately there are some simple, cost-effective methods that the new small business owner can us to promote your business.

1.    Make the most of your documents
Use every piece of paper that leaves your business, such as order forms, invoices and all other business stationery, as well as your electronic documents, as a way to showcase your contact details, including your business name, address, phone number, mobile, fax and website address. Don’t forget to make the most of your email signature as well. There are many times that I have used someone’s email signature as a way of finding out their phone number to call them.

2.    Build a positive online presence with well-written articles
Think of articles as the electronic version of word-of-mouth advertising. If you are a real estate agent, for example, you could write an article on preparing your home for open inspection. This would ideally include some helpful tips on what to do and what not to do to get the best possible sale price. This kind of free advice is not only useful to potential customers, but it can also set you apart from your competition, particularly if you are giving advice on a niche topic.

3.    Share good news with electronic press releases
There are plenty of free press release sites to choose from. A press release contains newsworthy information that is engaging. Has your business recently expanded? Do you have a new product? Have you or your company won an award? All of these are examples of what your press release may be about.

4.    Become active on social media
We are spoilt for choice when it comes to the kinds of social media platforms available today, some of which we covered in a previous post. Each platform has its own benefits and features, so it can be worthwhile trying a few out to see which one suits your business best depending on who you want to reach and what you want to say. The great news is that it's free to set up social media accounts.

5.    Give out some freebies
Everyone loves to get something for free, and I’m not talking big, expensive items. There are some very affordable online options available which allow you to print your logo on just about anything, including magnets, pens, USB flash drives, mousepads, keyrings and more. Small items such as these can go a long way in creating goodwill and building a positive impression of you and your business.

6.    Share your thoughts by writing a blog
A blog is basically an online journal that is available on the web. It is a great place for people to get to know you and what your business is about. Just like this one!

7.    Start creating videos
Sharing your knowledge with ‘How To…’ videos can be incredibly helpful to others. You can start your own YouTube channel to post your videos as well as share those of other users that are relevant to your target audience. You don’t need to have a slick production team, all you need is a smartphone.

8.    List your business with free online directory sites
Local business directories such as Google Plus Local, Bing Places for Business and Yahoo Local are all important ways of helping your business get found online. Make sure that you include a good description of your business and a link to your website.

9.    Reward returning customers
A loyalty reward card encourages customers to keep coming back to your business. Do you go to the same coffee shop because your tenth cup of coffee is free? If you do, then you already understand the power of a loyalty card for repeat business.

10. Run a competition
Running a competition is good way to entice new customers. It’s also a great way to get people talking about your brand. Social media sites can be great for promoting your competition and can also attract new followers for your business.

Today’s online options are incredibly affordable when compared to traditional advertising such as newspaper, radio or television ads. When you start a new business, you’re full of passion and enthusiasm—harness that energy and make the most of every opportunity to promote your business.

Written by +Denise Angus

Is your website at its optimum health?

Quite often, the day-to-day running of a small business can be all-consuming, what with keeping up with paperwork, handling enquiries, filling orders, etc.  So if you’ve had your website for a while, you may want to take stock of how it’s performing before we get too far into 2014. Now is the perfect time to give your website a health check.

Here are a couple of things for you to consider.

Is your design letting you down?
Does the design of your site need to be reviewed, to give it a more up-to-date look? If you don’t believe the look of your site matters, you’re wrong. We live in a visually-driven world and first impressions count. If your website looks old and dated, potential new customers may get the same impression of your business. Is this how you want customers to perceive you?

Are you losing customers because your contact details are hard to find?
These are vital to your business. Can your phone number, fax number or email address be found quickly and easily? Have you moved to new premises and not updated the address on your Contact Us page? It can be easy to overlook these details, so make sure this important information is up to date on your website.

Are you showcasing your best work?
Images are particularly important if they relate to the goods and services that you offer. If you’re a builder, for example, it might be worth including some photographs of recent projects to showcase the quality of your work.

Are you getting social?
Have you created a Facebook page for your business? Are you part of the Twitter community? Are you set up on Google+ and LinkedIn? Social media platforms allow you to connect easily with people far beyond your immediate customers, community, and location. If you believe that word-of-mouth advertising works for your business, then you will love social media as it takes that approach to a whole new level. Social media is the equivalent of word-of-mouth in the digital age. To read more about social media platforms click here.

Does your website showcase all of your products and services?
Product ranges and the services that businesses offer change frequently, so f you're selling something new or introduced new services, then you’ll need to update your website and make sure it reflects all that you can offer. At the same time, if you no longer stock or sell a particular product, you’ll need to remove it from your site so that you can make sure it reflects you and your business accurately.

Have you got video content?
Video content is one of the fastest growing sectors on the internet and one of the most valuable elements you can add to your website. If you want to help your visitors and customers see your products in the best light, or help them to choose the right model, then a short video is a great way to do this. 

Is your website mobile responsive?
Mobile responsive design means that the design of your website is adaptable so that it can easily viewed on all types of devices, from large desktops, to tablets, to smartphones. With more and more people searching online using smartphones, you need to make sure that your website offers them a positive user experience.

Is your content working for you?
Is your content still relevant to your business? Your website needs to convey clearly who you are and what you do. If writing doesn’t come easily to you, seek the services of a professional copywriter to produce your website content. It can also be a worthwhile experience to have a fresh pair of eyes read your existing content. For instance, have you ever re-readsomething that you’ve written several times and not noticed a spelling error, yet someone else found it immediately? Typos and grammatical errors give a poor impression of your site, but are easily fixed. it never hurts to get some assistance to ensure that your website content is as clear and effective as possible.

Is the copyright year in your footer current?
This may seem like a small and somewhat insignificant point to mention, but if your copyright date says 2007 then you are quite obviously saying that your site is old! The date being current on your website tells readers that your content is current too. 

What are your competitors doing? It doesn’t do any harm to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing with their websites. If everyone else in the industry is upgrading their sites then you need to pay attention. Technology is evolving, design trends are moving on, and the way businesses are using their websites are changing, so it’s important to have a handle on new developments. Social media too is having a big effect on how websites look and function and so this is another reason why you need to keep up to date. While you may not need a complete redesign of your website, it’s important to keep your online presence up to date—don’t let it and your business get left behind.
Written by +Denise Angus

What is a Domain Name?

Simply put, your domain name is your website address e.g. www.example.com.au. In today’s world it is a valuable part of your business identity—no two organisations can have the same domain name—and as such is an important marketing tool for helping internet users to reach you easily.

Domain Names must:

• be at least 2 characters long;
• contain only letters (a-z), numbers (0-9) and hyphens (-), or a combination of these;
• start and end with a number or a letter, not a hyphen; and
• not contain hyphens in the third and fourth position (eg. www.ab--cd.com.au).

How do I choose a suitable domain name?

It is important when choosing your domain name to remember that users must be able to associate it with your organisation, such as your business name e.g.www.mikesplumbing.com.au or a generic name that defines your business type e.g.www.adelaideplumber.com.au

Domain names are often referred to simply as domains and domain name registrants are frequently referred to as domain owners, although domain name registration does not confer any legal ownership of the domain name, only an exclusive right of use.

A Domain Name is Not the Same as URL

To be technically correct, a domain name is commonly part of a larger Internet address called a URL. A URL goes into more detail than a domain name, providing much more information, including the specific page address, folder name, machine name, and protocol language.

• Domain names are organised right to left, with general descriptors to the right, and specific descriptors to the left. It is like family surnames to the right, specific person names to the left.
• The top level domains (TLD, or parent domain) is to the far right of a domain name. Mid level domains (children and grandchildren) are in the middle. The machine name, often "www", is to the far left.
• Levels of domains are separated by periods ("dots").

Domains and email

Email also relies on domain names to work. Once you have a domain name you are able to create your own email address of yourname@yourdomain.com.au. This has many advantages for branding and professional communications rather than a generic email address such as Hotmail or Gmail. 

Don't let your Domain Name expire

It is vital to renew your domain name on time, otherwise you will find both your website and email will be down. Renewal period is 2 years for .com.au domains and every 12 months for .com domain names.

Written by +Denise Angus

What is Indexing?

You have a brand new website, but you’re asking yourself, “Why can’t I find it?” Before your website can rank, search engines need to know that your website exists. For the purpose of this blog, when talking about search engines I’m going to say Google because it is the most widely used search engine.

The web is growing at a rapid rate. In fact www.worldwidewebsize.com claims that today on Tuesday 1 October 2013 when this blog was written, the indexed web contains at least 4.32 billion pages. Pretty amazing, really, when you think that you can enter a search request and within the blink of an eye you are presented with the most relevant web pages.

Therefore, you have to let Google know that you’re there. This process is called getting indexed. So what does this involve? 

Google uses software which is typically referred to as a spider, crawler or bot. These spiders crawl through your website and store a list of keywords found. Google is then able to build an internal index. It’s important to note that Google wants to index and rank everything, therefore it ranks web pages not websites.

With this in mind you need to ensure that you have quality content throughout your website, not just your home page. You need to make each page count. As spiders are crawling through your website, they are also looking for page titles, meta tags, headings and internal links. (On-page search engine optimisation is a topic we covered in an earlier blog.)

Like everything else in life, your page rank must be earned. Take the time to invest in producing quality, relevant content.  Another important factor to consider is that as Google is constantly looking for new content, it’s worth keeping your website up to date. Add new pages often, and if you have a blog or social media pages, keep these up to date too and make sure that they link back to your website as well.

Having a website built is an essential item on your business checklist but, once it’s built, don’t forget about it. Think of your website as a living thing. Do you have some exciting news, such as an award or industry recognition? Are you selling a new product, or have perhaps stopped stocking another? Does your business have a newsletter, and are you updating it on your site regularly?

Your business doesn’t stop growing and neither should your website. Don’t make the mistake of creating a website and then forgetting about it.

Written by +Denise Angus

How social does my business need to be?

Social media sites — there are so many options to consider. It can be challenging enough staying on top of the day-to-day running of a business without adding yet another job to put on your list. This is a problem faced by many small business owners these days, so why bother making more work for yourself? 

In today’s world, keeping in touch is about much more than just swapping business cards and mobile phone numbers. Social media allows you to connect with your customers and colleagues in a way that traditional mediums have not allowed in the past. For example, you can read a newspaper or listen to a report on the TV, but this is very much a one-way street. Social media, on the other hand, is a much more a form of two-way communication.  This inter-connectedness is one of the keys to social media and so your strategy should always be comprehensive rather than compartmentalised.

As Australians spend an increasing amount of time on social media, an active presence on Twitter, Facebook and other popular social platforms will get your brand in front of more of the right people. Properly-maintained social media profiles get returned in Google’s search results and allow you to join relevant conversations as well.

I’m going to start this brief overview of some of the most popular and effective social media sites available with Facebook. The reason for this is that for a lot of people this is a natural first step because many of us already have a personal Facebook account, therefore developing your business Facebook presence won’t be too daunting if you’re already familiar it. Facebook Pages are separate to personal pages, although you will need a personal account first in order to create your business Page. Facebook allows you to upload photos, videos, messages, create events and more. You can engage and grow your audience by posting regularly and people who Like your Page, and their friends, will get updates in their news feeds, so every post you make is reaching a potentially larger audience than just those people you’re connected to.

I often describe a blog as a personal diary. It’s a place where you can share your own private thoughts to the world. Your blog can be whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, on almost every subject you can imagine. In simple terms, a blog is a website where you write on an ongoing basis; these are called posts. New posts are presented at the top of the blog so that visitors can easily find what’s new. You can also link your blog posts to your other social media accounts, so again a single post can be shared beyond the immediate readership of your blog. Blogger and Wordpress are two of the most user-friendly and popular blogsites available, but there are many more.

LinkedIn is a business-minded social networking site. LinkedIn has both personal and company pages.  LinkedIn allows registered businesses to list their range of products and services on their profile page, and allows members to recommend and submit reviews of these products. LinkedIn is a great place to share new developments in your business and to connect with like-minded professionals in associated industries.

Twitter is a real-time network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news. Simply find the accounts that interest you and follow their conversations. Twitter is made up of small bursts of information which are called Tweets. Each Tweet is140 characters long, but don’t let the small size fool you —you can discover a lot in a little space, and you can also include photos, videos and links to your website or other social media sites. Twitter is immediate, and through the use of hashtags (a way of highlighting the subject of your tweet) can help you to target your tweets, so that you can reach the audience that you want.  For instance, if you are an Adelaide business, including #Adelaide in your tweet will mean that it can be found by anyone who is interested in conversations connected with Adelaide.

Google+ is operated by Google and I think this makes it a very worthwhile site in which to invest your time. After all, Google is the major search engine, so if they are providing a social platform it makes sense to use it. Google+ shares information within social groups called Circles. These circles can be divided into groups such as friends, family, classmates and colleagues. As with other platforms, you can have both personal and business Google+ pages, and you can share all types of media and links.  

Pintrest is a pin board-style photo and image sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based collections. Users can browse other pin boards for inspiration, re-pin images to their own pin boards, or like photos. Pinterest also allows businesses to create pages aimed at promoting their businesses online and such pages can serve as a virtual storefront. Pinterest is extremely popular and effective because its focus is visual, making it ideal for businesses and enterprises that have great-looking products that they want to showcase.

YouTube is a video sharing website. YouTube displays a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos. Producing videos to post on YouTube is remarkably simple, and is a very effective way of communicating what your business has to offer.  A YouTube video can also be posted on your website, your other social media sites, and can be emailed to clients, meaning that it is extremely versatile and immediate.

This is just a small selection of the social media sites available, so how do you choose which one is the right one for your business? A good place to start is to ask yourself what you hope to achieve with your online presence. Who would you like to reach? What sort of information are you trying to communicate to existing and potential customers? Are you trying to sell products or services, or are you seeking to establish yourself as a leader or expert in your field by sharing information? Are you looking to raise your business profile and increase public awareness of who you are and what you do? An effective social media strategy needs you to have at least considered these questions, so that you can direct your time, energy and resources appropriately.  Like any form of marketing or promotion, you need to understand who you are trying to reach, and what it is that you would like them to think about you and your business.

The great news is that these platforms are free, so give it a go. You won’t know which of these is the right fit for you if you don’t try. If this all sounds too daunting, just pick one to start with. Each site will give you a brief overview when you join, but the best way to learn is simply to have a go. Don’t be afraid to experiment. If you’re adding original images and informative content about your business, you can’t go too far wrong. And don’t worry, you can always delete something if it’s not quite right! Once you feel confident that you have mastered one of these platforms,  try another; you need to be persistent and keep going until you find the one that’s right for you and your business.

As with most things, you get out what you put in. Make your content fresh, relevant and engaging. Also don’t be selfish — don’t just look for people to like or follow you, make sure you do the same to others. After all, that’s why it’s called social media.

Written by +Denise Angus