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Online Marketing and Social Media for a Small Business

Luckily, this aspect of running a small business has reached the point where you don’t need a lot of capital to level the playing field online. It used to be the biggest obstacle for entrepreneurs from ever being able to get past the initial local marketing stage of traditional business models. These days, you don’t need a massive marketing and advertising budget to get the exposure you need to grow your business.

Building your brand online is all a matter of being savvy enough to invest your dollars in the right ways. For example, buying ads on Facebook or Google might be the easiest way to advertise online with little planning involved, but it isn’t necessarily the smartest use of ad dollars. Google Places, however, can bring in major traffic and conversion gains, just off of the fact that you get more ad-space for your dollar, and your positioning within the natural search rankings will be much more impactful.

All online marketing strategies hinge on a strong social media marketing campaign. That means being engaged on all the major social platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and don’t forget Pinterest, still the reigning champ for the highest median income, with the average user browsing pictures on a six-figure income. It’s the proverbial goldmine if your business is well-suited for it.

Launch your Website on a Budget

By doing a bit of legwork before hiring a web designer, you can avoid a lot of the scammers and “business builders” online who make their living off of their attractive all-in-one packages. All you need to do is purchase your own domain name, preferably something short with your brand’s name, and a web host where your website’s files will be hosted. It’s a good idea to do this first, not just to save money, but to also avoid being forced with overpriced hosts that compromise on security and bandwidth to handle your traffic.

Next, when it comes to finding a reliable web developer, you won’t find a better place than the freelance community for price of entry, reliable track history, and overall value for repeat business. If you know of any family or friends that have experience building websites, you could ask them for a favor, just don’t get caught up in that awkward family/friend business relationship where you’re both unhappy with the agreement, but because it’s done for a discount, you have to just go with what you have.

Choosing A Domain Name
Choosing a name for your website (domain name) is similar to choosing a name for your company. You need to invest some time on research and be thoughtful about all the possible options you have. Your domain name is the online identity of your business so you need to make sure that you come up with the best possible name. By saying “best”, it also means that the domain name should be easy to promote.

These are the 10 steps of choosing the perfect domain name for your website.

1. It should be easy to type
Coming up with a domain name which is easy to type and remember is a success in itself. Try not to use the slang words ( ex : “u” instead of “you”, xpress instead of express, etc) as it would make it harder for people to find and remember your domain name.

2. Keep it short
Usually there are higher chances of mistyping if the domain name is long and complex. You need to avoid this by choosing a short and simple domain name which is easy to remember.

3. Use keywords
Obviously your main focus would be to rank better for your focused keywords so that your website could get more organic visits. To make this step easier, it is recommended that you use the keywords or your business of service within the domain name. Let’s say you are offering glass replacement service. In this case you may choose a domain such as glassreplacement.com or glassrepair.com. Not only it would help you to increase the traffic on your website but also it would make more sense to your customers.

4. Target your area
If you are running your business locally, you may also consider to add the target city or state name in your domain name. For example, AzGlassRepair dot com

5. Avoid numbers and hyphens
Numbers and hyphens are usually forgotten by the people. Suppose you are using a numerical (2) in your domain name. It could be misplaced with “two”. So it’s better to avoid this risk. If numbers are hyphens are something that you must use, you may consider to add these with different variations just to be safe.

6. Be memorable
You need to find an appealing and memorable domain name for your business so that people could easily remember your website. Every day we come across number of different domain names but by the end of the day we only remember the ones which were catchy. Once it’s done, share it with your family and friends.

7. Research it
Your must spend some time researching on the name. Make sure it isn’t owned by another business or else you will land in huge legal trouble. Assuming the worst case scenario, you might lose a fortune on it as well as the domain name itself.

8. Use an appropriate domain name extension
Domain name extensions for example, .com, .net, .org etc are suffixes and each of them serves specific purpose. Most common extension which is used by most of the businesses is .com. This extension has been around for a very long time so it usually becomes difficult to find a good and simple domain name for .com.
These are some of the most common domain name extensions used these days:
• .co : Is an abbreviation for company, commerce, and community websites.
• .info : Are used for informational websites.
• .net : Used for technical and Internet infrastructure websites.
• .org : Are used for non-commercial and nonprofits organization websites.
• .biz : Are used for businesses, for example e-commerce websites.
• .me : Used for blogs, resumes or personal websites.

9. Protect and build your brand
After you found and bought that perfect domain name for your business, you might want to make sure that you have protected your brand name. You can do this by buying other domain extensions with your domain name. This would ensure that now on one can start a website on behalf of your business name.

10. Act fast
It is difficult to find a good domain name but once you’ve found that perfect name for your business, don’t delay. Domain names sell quickly and you don’t want anyone else to pick that name. Since they are so inexpensive, there is no reason not to grab it immediately.
Try it now!

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