MAXIMIZING THE ONLINE WORLD FOR THE OFFLINE COMPANY

You run a nice business. Maybe you’ve been running it for years. Your business is a “tangible” one. Perhaps you operate out of a storefront or maybe you deal in personal services, like catering or landscaping. You’ve thought about going online. Heck, everybody else is doing it. you’ve already gotten your feet wet using the Internet a little to build business leads. Maybe you even have a home page. Or maybe you’ve even gotten hold of a generic template and patched together a bare-bones website, just to show everyone that you can be as cool as they are. But, truth be told, you haven’t really given the Internet a whole lot of thought. How could you? You are way too busy running your offline business to start worrying about the online world.

So when the day finally comes when you see enough of your competitors coming up with flashier and fancier websites, will you be prepared to do something yourself? And when you do something, will you have given it enough thought and preparation to do it in a way that will help your business more than hurt it? Here are some tips to help you make your online presence most effectively complement your offline business:

1. Invest in your website. Managing the site properly takes time and effort. So don’t skimp on the resources you devote to site management. If your budget allows it, hire a full-time site manager who knows what he/she is doing – or even better, develop a web team. Make sure they have a wealth of knowledge about the Web and that they understand design techniques, color theory, spacing, etc. Many companies make the mistake of assigning web management as a corollary duty to a person already busy with “higher-priority” assignments. In some larger firms, web maintenance is often relegated to junior staff members who have neither the experience nor the clout within the organization to push the site forward to its rightful prominence. Invest in your website so that it can become a good investment for you.
2. Keep your message consistent. Your website is an online reflection of your business. Therefore, it should have the same look and feel as your store, your ads, your signage, and your business vehicles. Your brand identity should be mirrored on your site in every way possible. Pay attention to thinks like colors, logos, fonts, visuals, and even the style of language you use on your site. Remember that one of the biggest advantages to having a website is that it gives you a permanent conveyor of round-the-clock publicity for your business.
3. Use social networking properly. Prominent links to social media tools such Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn are great ways to extend your reach and interact with new and diverse audiences. But you have to be sure that you do this in the right way. Always keep in mind that the primary purpose of social networking is for people to engage with other people. It is not there for people to look at sales pitches or build relationships with businesses. Instead of creating corporate accounts on these sites, you may want to encourage your employees, as individuals, to Tweet, blog, and interact socially online in a way that lets them engage with your target community. But be very careful to institute clear guidelines on acceptable behavior and what they should and should not do.
4. Don’t try to please all of the people all of the time. If you attempt to construct a site that targets everyone, then in all likelihood your site will end up appealing to no one. You should know who your target audience is and which demographic is most important to your business. And this audience should become the primary focus of your site. Make your site appealing to everyone, but make it captivating for your target audience.
5. Pay continual attention to your site and keep improving it. Your business climate is constantly changing. Therefore, your website needs to constantly change too. Neglecting the site can quickly become an embarrassment for your business. Content can become out of date. So can design and style. And we all know how fast technology changes. You take great pains to keep your business current. You need to be just as careful to keep your website up to date.

The online world can often seem like a strange beast to a businessperson accustomed to dealing with customers in a much more tangible way. But with a little investment and forethought, the beast can not only be tamed, but trained to help your business thrive. Your business is offline and that will never change. But you can add a vital online component to it. And if you go about it the right way, that online component can be maximized in a way that will also maximize your
profits.

Kenneth McCall is director of IT for storage.com In this role he builds the systems that help customers find the best self storage units for their needs, for example Through Kenneth’s and his team’s work customers can find self storage in Los Angeles and other cities. In his spare time, Kenneth likes to bike and participate in outdoor activities.