Basic digital presence

- It may seem overwhelming, but the minimum viable plan has such a long list of checkpoints, so it helps to break them down by category, and be more specific about each deliverable. In this video, I'm going to review the basics of your digital presence, which in short, are all the places on the internet where your company, brand and product needs to be. If you're at the very beginning of your business, one of the first things you need to do, frankly, even before you confirm your name, is to see what properties are available in the different digital domains. You need a memorable, resonate and searchable name, and step one is to search to see if it's available. Once you've confirmed your name, immediately secure your URL and different social media handles, and once you have your URL, you need to get started with your website. Your website is your digital home base, the place where people come to check you out. Most websites have a similar structure. The home page describes your business or product, as well as the most important thing for customers to know, plus the call to action, which isn't necessarily just buy, it could be join, learn more, or sign up, for example. Make sure you have a clear about us page with your company story and key employees, as well as a very clear contact us page or section. It's better to design for simplicity and clarity than try to say everything you want to say on your site. The most important lesson is design and write your site with what your customer needs to hear versus what you want to say. This holds true for most digital properties, especially digital advertising. You're so constrained by space, you need to be 100% clear on what is important to your perspective clients. So, despite the stat that you're more likely to be hit by lightning than click on a banner ad, these formats do work to raise awareness of your business. Digital ads are sold and measured on impressions, and you need to think of them as billboards on the internet roadside. Just because people don't click doesn't mean that they don't see them. Some of the best digital advertising now happens within social media platforms. These groups know their customers so well that they can be very specific with how to target your ads. Speaking of social media marketing, make sure you set up your core accounts. Try to get the same name across all the different platforms. Now, an inactive social media account is kind of like a party that no one attends. So, make sure that you're posting updates, responding to comments, and starting conversations. If you're not sure of your own voice, follow relevant thought leaders and share their insights, or follow hashtags or topics in your field, and engage in the ongoing conversation. If you're truly at a loss as to where to start with social, bring in a contractor or engage in agency. They will set you up with the tools and topics you need to get started, and just because someone may have grown up as a digital native, it doesn't make them a social media expert. An often underappreciated digital outlet is search engine marketing. There's two types of search results. Organic results appear in the left column of search results. They are a result of, a, how popular a page is for that particular term, or b, whether the meta tags that you have on your website match the term that people are searching for. Paid search results are basically ads that are served up in response to a search term. It's an efficient way to test what resonates with your customers. The first step to buying search terms, which you can very easily do online with Google, is to check how expensive certain terms are and set a budget for how much you want to spend. For search to work best, it's ideal to have all the other aspects of your digital presence very well defined. A job well done would be to see your digital properties or references to your business come up first when people search for your company or product or brand. The advertising industry moves so fast that soon you may be able to buy a hyper targeted video ad to appear in your customers' streaming videos. That day is coming soon when most advertising will be digital advertising, so make sure that your digital basics are covered off well.