8 Ingredients to Online Success
It's Daunting
It is. Yes. But, you want to run a business. You want to grow... I have talked about this before, that many businesses are expressing frustration that they are not getting found online. The truth is, they are not the victim. Running a business is a tiring choice, yes, but business rules are pretty clear-cut. And the rules of growing your business online are also clear-cut.
Here is why it's clear-cut.
Because five years ago, when some of you were too busy to put together a solid online content foundation, your competitor was. Now your competitor (who may not be as good at what they do as you) gets found more online because they followed the new set of rules that consumers & Google were creating for the future.
Good News, It's not too late.
Here are eight key ingredients to success in the online world.
1. Ability - Here's the thing, if you don't have the ability, you will not be able to satisfy the next key. Whatever you are selling online, you need the ability to express what you are selling. Good? Ok. Next Key.
2. Strong Content - Strong content comes in many forms. Promotions, videos, articles, and images are all forms of content. How do you know its strong content? People react to it. If 1000 of the right people read your content, do you get someone to comment, like it, rate it, call you, or disagree with you? Whatever content you create, try to form some form of a measurement system to make sure it's strong/reactive.
3. Strong Call-To-Action - A Call To Action is an item on your content that makes it easy for the reader that has a reaction to keep going further into your process. Believe it or not, if you don't ask for the business or entice the business, many, many people will just keep on going. My Call To Action is titled, "Reach out to me if you really want to get found online."
4. SEO Optimized - Ok, this is for a much longer lesson, but for the time being, if you create content that people want to react to, it's likely SEO Optimized. People react to concise, clear, easy-to-follow information. So too, do search engines.
5. 6. & 7. Distribution - We have put these three together because, quite frankly, it's HUGELY important, and quite sadly, very few people do these three well. If you don't have a critical mass distribution of your unique messages to a targeted audience by a trusted source, you are wasting your breath.
Here are the 3 Distribution keys.
(1) You have to distribute to a critical mass of people. Strong Distribution.
(2) You have to distribute content to the right people. Targeted Distribution.
(3) You have to have the content distributed by the right people. Partnerships.
8. Consistency - If only I could write one piece of content, the whole world would knock down my door to do business. If you are not willing to take the time to think about putting together and executing these 8 Keys over and over again, you are in for a tough one.