Over the last couple of days I’ve been fortunate to meet some really nice people that are either starting or already have offline business. Both groups of people, a couple currently building a hotel in Hanoi and a restaurant manager wanting to increase covers, wanted to learn more on how they could embrace the online world to attract additional customers.
After finding out what I do for a living, I was more than happy to sit down and give my thoughts on the best strategies both teams could take to increase their brand online by becoming active in the online community for their niches and to care about customer feedback.
I thought I’d recap on the 8 easy strategies offline business should be using to increase their online presence so that they can further grow their brand and hopefully drive additional customers to their businesses.
1. Comment everywhere
Youtube, Flickr, Blogs, Sites, News portals… the list can go on and on… every offline business should be leaving comments on related content. Web 2.0 to me means interaction, so dive in and interact with people that are or have been involved in your niche.
2. Actively use Twitter
Twitter is an amazing networking mechanism and you should be actively adding users that are in your area of location or niche while updating meaning content on a regular basis. Also use Twitter Search with your user name and related keywords to find other users discussing your niche, product or service. Then, interact with them!
3. Start a blog
Become an expert in your filed by writing meaningful content on a weekly basis that users in your niche will find interesting. Wordpress, the free blog publishing platform, is very easy to set up and will allow you to easily add additional content to your site with a touch of a couple of buttons. Let other users contribute content to your blog, while you go out and do the same on other blogs.
4. Network with related sites and blogs
Use Twitter Search, Google Search and Yahoo Search to find sites in your niche, contact them and introduce yourself. As the famous quote goes: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” and this is so true for the online industry. The more contacts you have in your niche the better! You’ll be amazed at the different cross-over business opportunities that will come up!
5. Advertise
Advertising doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg, so it may be worth finding out how much a banner will cost you on the high traffic sites in your niche. Also, if your feeling really adventurous, you may want to have a dabble at PPC campaigns on Facebook, Google Adwords, Yahoo and Myspace Ads.
6. Set up Google Alerts
Brainstorm keywords related to your niche and set up Google Alerts for each keyword so that whenever a site or blog mentions that keyword, Google will email you with links to the content. This is a great way to stay up to date with what people are writing about your service, product or industry. Wherever possible, contribute to the conversation.
7. SEO
Make sure your company site is at the top of the major search engines for your company name – If your site does not show up, you may want to read my article on SEO 101 and spend a day going over your on-page SEO so you can change this!
8. Search for new opportunities
Search Yahoo, Google and Twitter with keywords related to your niche and keep your eyes wide open for new opportunities – There will be tones that come up that you wouldn’t have thought of originally.
Obviously there are tones of other stuff that could be done, but I wnated to keep the list simple for offiline business that are not currently involved in the online marketing world to give them a head start to other business in their niche that are not embracing getting involved in the online community.
If anyone else has other ideas on how offline businesses, such as restaurants and hotels, can expand their online presence, please leave them in the comments!
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