Ask Google “how to start a business” or “tips for starting a business” and it will answer with roughly two billion and 186 million results, respectively. Most, if not all of the tips or advice we found offered nothing of real substance to the reader. Generic “advice” is fine for those who are only interested in reading about how to start a business, or explaining the process to a toddler. However, if you’re interested in actually starting and running a successful business, read on.
SEO statistics and tips all website owners should know
Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as “SEO” is important. Period. It should be a non-negotiable piece of any website you build, or hire someone to build. Unfortunately, many people and business owners do not know what SEO is, or why it’s so important, if they’ve heard of it at all. In fact, SEO is one of the most important “under the hood” pieces that make up a website. If your SEO is lacking, or non-existent, your website isn’t going to be seen.
Publishing a website without optimizing it for search engines is like publishing a print ad to a single piece of paper that you immediately throw in the garbage. You can point someone to it and they may go visit, but you’re not going to experience any business growth. And businesses that don’t grow, aren’t in business for very long.
What we’re trying to say is: search engine optimization is critical if you want your website to be found by potential customers.
Effectively using social media to promote your business
Over the past ten years, I’ve spent countless hours developing, launching and managing social media accounts for businesses and non-profits. In that time, I could have doubled my annual income had I collected a dollar from everyone who expressed a belief that having a personal account on any given social media site automatically qualified an individual to run a business account on the same site. That’s kind of like saying that having sent an email to a friend qualifies one to oversee an email marketing campaign seen by thousands of people every time it goes out. Unfortunately, like most other things in life, it’s not quite as easy as it seems. There is a steep learning curve, even if you have personal profiles setup on a given social media website. And social media is an ever-evolving animal, too.