If you are a business owner who is interested in growing your business with the aid of an Internet marketing agency, or if you are instead a do-it-yourself marketer and social media maven, you are absolutely correct in wanting your own website to be the hub or center of your web presence, with your social media accounts as satellites or outposts that point back to the main site.
The first step in the process of building an authoritative presence on the Web is to purchase your own your domain name. After that, what you will need to do is create a hosting account with that domain name and migrate your blog and all of its content to your own domain. In a relatively short time, you can do better than being just behind the curve – you will be establishing a foundation upon which to build authority on the Web, engage with existing clients and get noticed by other people who are looking for the kinds of products and services that you offer.
Unlike just a few years ago, there are more software tools and marketing resources available to build really nice, feature-rich websites, and optimize them for search, mobile and social media audiences. Many of these platforms are even free, but you need to know how to use them correctly and tie everything together properly. My personal and professional preference is the WordPress platform, which is basically free to install on your own site – you pay just a few dollars monthly for your hosting account.
WordPress started as blogging software, but it has evolved into a comprehensive website publishing and content management system. Not only is WordPress great for small businesses that don’t have a lot to spend on a website for their company, it is sophisticated enough to power some of the larger and better known brands on the Web. Note that I am referring to the self-hosted version of the software from WordPress.org and not the software platform at WordPress.com. The self-hosted version is what you want and need.
You can certainly spend quite a lot for a custom website, and I have even spent way too much for one myself in the past, but that was prior to having the knowledge and access to the marketing resources that are available today. In my current practice, I try to keep costs reasonable for small and medium-sized businesses, but I know that even basic packages can be out of reach for many sole proprietors and small businesses.
Even so, you probably understand the need to be visible and engaging on the Web these days, and grasp the importance of making the Web work for you while you focus on working on your business. A properly crafted website will convey a level of professionalism and authority on the Web that helps to level the playing field with bigger competitors.
You are already ahead of most business owners if you contribute to your own blog – especially if you enjoy doing it. In that case, I won’t need to educate you much on how important it is to produce fresh content that is meaningful to your audience. You just need some technical know-how and Web marketing expertise to capture the benefits of publishing that content.
In order to implement a well-designed Internet marketing game plan, you can keep costs down by generating much of your own Web content yourself, but my firm can edit your content for the benefit of both the search engines as well as your human readers, and we can distribute your website and blog content over social media. Our marketing agency can also help you establish a stronger presence and grow your audience on Twitter and LinkedIn in the process.
Rawson Internet Marketing is a full-service marketing agency that offers complete packages of social media and Internet marketing resources to help you achieve your goals:
• Grow your business
• Enhance your brand
• Measure your effectiveness
• Generate and identify new leads
• Improve your visibility and extend your reach
• Retain clients and establish long-term relationships
We can create and optimize a customized WordPress website, migrate over all your existing blog content, set up and brand your social media pages, set up and configure your online tracking and analytics, produce a comprehensive Internet marketing game plan, provide marketing resources and account management to help you build and maintain a successful Web presence, and provide monthly written reporting and conference calls to monitor your progress and help you achieve your goals.
Whether you hire a marketing agency or do it yourself, the key to being successful on the web is not by having a “set it and forget it” mindset, but rather by making regular investments in content publishing, search engine optimization (SEO) social sharing, link building and relationship building.
Regardless of what you decide is right for you and your business at this point in time, feel free to subscribe to this blog and stay in touch as I share marketing resources and provide guidance that I believe will help you retain existing customers and acquire new ones. I would be happy to work with you to help your business get found, generate leads, build relationships, measure results and grow your business.
