Successfully DIY Your Online Marketing
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Being a solopreneur is cool and all, but there is the obvious downside of doing things alone, most of which means stepping out of your comfort zone to take on tasks that look harder to master than rocket science. Sure, there are a lot of things you can avoid doping right away, meaning you can give yourself a chance to learn as you go. Online marketing isn’t one of those forgiving things. Sure, it’s not rocket science, but if you want your venture to be a success you need to know what you’re doing, what’s important and what to focus on.
To avoid this, there are certain things you can do, like hire a freelance marketing consultant to take on your needs until you understand them, or go from being a solopreneur to an entrepreneur. But, if you can’t afford to take that leap just yet, then you might want to read on because we’ve got you covered on the digital marketing front.
So, without further ado, here are our top tips and bits of advice on how to take things into your own hands and still be a huge hit.
- Know Your Website’s Pros & Cons
The fact you’re reading this means you probably went down the route of building your own website too. We don’t know that for certain, but it’s a pretty healthy guess. Anyway, the reason we’re mentioning this is every web building platform has pros and cons. That said, the most celebrated is still Wordpress, but it only works well if you know how to use Wordpress and how to build your audience through this. If, however, you aren’t confident at developing a website without an API literally holding your hand through the process, we recommend you go with someone like Wix or Squarespace (which Keanu Reeves loves!). Like we said, they both have pros and cons, so research them and find out what sacrifices are worth making.
- Surround Yourself With Social Media
Even though this phenomenon has been kicking around for a decade-plus, there are still loads of people who think it is language so hard to understand it may as well be written in hieroglyphics. But it’s not that hard. It’s just a matter of networking, but on the internet. What we mean is, if you’ve ever been to a networking event and done your stuff, then you’ll be able to nail social media too. We know how scary the buzzwords might sound (yeah, we’re looking at you retweet). Instead, just do what you would do in the real world; treat people with respect, engage with them, comment under their posts, ask questions and don’t try overly hard to push your own money-making agenda.
- Blogging Is Better Than You Know
Let’s clear one thing up: blogging is not something tweenagers do because they a) think their voice matters, b) think the world cares and c) don’t want to get a real job. Instead, blogging is one of the best ways to grow your business. Sure, you might think your writing is dull and flat, but you might surprise yourself, or you might find it pretty good value to spend £300 a month on a professional creative blogger. The point is this: Google loves websites that have constantly updated websites, and that’s what a blog does. It adds more content and pages to your website, which is basically the same as adding more fishing rods to your boat. It’s good for building leads, it’s good for building brand awareness, it’s good for your credibility and it’s a mega means of boosting your authority in that sphere.
- Make Friends With The Media
Another area of boosting your presence that a lot of startups and newbies are a bit afraid of is PR. But this is one of the most amazing ways to grow your online reach. What’s more, you don’t need to hire an overly-expensive PR agent to get hold of top journalists or big-time bloggers. You just need to be bold enough to reach out to them. More often than not, you’ll probably find they would rather work with you directly than to deal with a middle-person that complicates things. The best piece of advice we can give you is to go on Twitter, start following bloggers and journalists that have a presence in your market, start sharing their tweets and commenting on their posts and get onto their radar that way.
- Focus Your Attention On Analytics
Part 1: Not all web channels are born equal. Part 2: What works for someone else may not work for you. That is why it is so important you are looking at your online analytics, making a note of which channels are producing more web traffic than the others and then focussing your efforts on these. At first, this may seem kind of daunting and like staring at that title sequence from the Matrix. But after a while, you’ll think, “why do people pay other people to do this, it’s sooo simple!” Don’t worry, you don’t have to go through these reports every day, or even every week. You could just have them sent to you every month and see how well your efforts performed over a decent chunk of time before acting appropriately and upping your efforts in the places of power. For example, if guest posts seem to be getting you lots of work, then write more of them. It really is as simple as that.
Sure, if you’re short on time but have a nice wad of cash, then hiring consultant and freelancers to take this part of the business on is a great idea. It really is. If, however, you’re short on money but have a little bit of spare time, then you should know it is totally possible to DIY your way to successful outcomes. It’s just about digging in and learning on the job, which is how everyone starts, let’s be honest. We promise it won’t take long for you to have another string attached to your bow and great results to prove it works too.
