With the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, more and more daily life aspects are now conducted online than ever before. This sudden change in consumer behavior has propelled businesses to look at their online presence or channels. Listed below are the most common online presence platforms used by companies. At the minimum, besides a website, a Facebook Page and, a Google My Business listing, evaluate whether a given channel is appropriate for your business.

THE MUST-HAVE CHANNELS

WEBSITE: Even today, in 2020, some businesses were doing fine with just having a presence on Facebook either through a Personal Profile or a Facebook Page or Facebook Group. The challenge with not having a dedicated website for your business with your domain name (see the article on the 7 Elements of a Basic Website) and a simple presence on Facebook is that if your competition has both, they are almost guaranteed a higher spot on search results. Another important reasons for having your website are that you can better capture visitor behavior on your website than you can on Facebook. Facebook provides Insights for its page and limited information on Groups. Using a traffic monitoring tool like Google Analytics on your website allows you to capture various details to better your website's user experience. Facebook offers an eCommerce component called Shops for its Facebook Pages. Still, it is limited in being customized, as can adding content on a Facebook Page. Having your website allows you much flexibility that is only limited by the amount you want to spend on developing a website.
FACEBOOK: Though considered evil by a minority, there is a good chance that your prospective Customer uses Facebook. What does that tell you? That means that you have to take a multichannel approach to reach your target audience. Facebook is the largest social media network and appears to stay so for some time to come. Having a Facebook account doesn't mean that you have to disclose or share your personal information or intimate thoughts. Nor does it require you to follow someone's life happenings. You can use it purely as a marketing tool to share updates about your business by creating a Business Page and setting up a Shop to sell products and services online.
With Squarespace (as with other platforms), you can connect your website's product catalog to Facebook so that Facebook automatically displays your eCommerce store's contents from your website. The viral effect that Facebook provides where friends of friends see content that you Like or Love is a pretty powerful marketing tool. In addition to setting up a Personal Profile, you will need to use the Business Manager feature of Facebook to manage the Business Page. I also recommend setting up an Ad Account using the Business Manager to enable you to run ads on Facebook. I welcome your Facebook Friend Requests here.
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS: Google has discontinued Google+. Google+ was supposed to be their answer to Facebook. Google didn't have much success with it and, eventually, decided to dedicate its resources elsewhere. In the meantime, Google My Business has refined into a decent platform. We all know who 'owns' the Internet search results market. Google does. So, it is a given that it would give preference to its platforms over other platforms. Google My Business lets you create a business profile, post pictures, post updates, create a menu of services and products. It also allows you to post updates and images. Perhaps, essential features are reviews and the ability to customize how your listings show up in search results and Google maps. A confusing part of Google My Business is that it creates a website with limited options to customize it. You can assign a URL to it. Most businesses have their website, and I have yet to see the benefits of using the website feature of Google My Business. Examples of my Google My Business listings.

OTHER CHANNELS TO CONSIDER

TWITTER: Some folks prefer bite-size information, 140 characters or less in the form of a Tweet. Depending on your target audience’s demographics combined with your products, and services, Twitter may or may not be suitable for your business. Evaluate what your competition and others in your industry are doing; are they utilizing Twitter effectively? My Twitter.
INSTAGRAM: Facebook owns Instagram. Instagram is a highly visual platform. It is designed primarily as a mobile platform (can be used on a desktop one but has to jump through hoops) to post content. Websites are periodically updated with content. Instagram allows you to quickly capture content with a mobile device, hashtag it appropriately and share it, all under a couple of minutes (if at that!). The viral effect of Insta is different from Facebook, and it is a must for a marketing strategy to a younger demographic. ArtByPino Instagram for McAllen Architecture and Portrait Photographer.
PINTEREST: Even more visual than Instagram. The blessing is that you can use a desktop to upload content in batches and create boards. Boards have Pins - your visual post - and Pins can have web links. So, I can showcase pages from my photo book and then link those to buy a book on my website. It is a bit spooky as to the level of fine-tuning you can do regarding targeting your ads. ArtByPino Pinterest for McAllen Architecture and Portrait Photographer.
YOUTUBE: Google owns YouTube. For most demographics, video clips work wonders. Not for me - I prefer a glance at written and photographic material and then, like to decide if I want to see the video. As it turns out, I am in the minority. Folks love watching video clips - anywhere from six seconds to 15 seconds to 30 seconds to 45 seconds and more depending on the products, services, and industry. Now, the requirements for setting up a channel on YouTube are a bit more stringent amongst all the social media platforms. For example, you have to verify your domain name to link your YouTube to your website AND include authenticity. For example, you have to have a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watched content to have a custom URL on YouTube as opposed to using their cryptic URL. Many ‘you have to’s’ with YouTube, especially if you plan on monetizing your content on YouTube. Just like Instagram, I recommend having a YouTube presence. Vimeo is somewhat of a competitor to YouTube though it does not have the same reach as YouTube. The perceived quality of content is higher on Vimeo. ArtByPino YouTube channel for McAllen Architecture and Portrait Photographer.
LINKEDIN: The business networking tool. Depending on the region you are in, check to see if businesses use LinkedIn. Also, see if your target audience uses LinkedIn. While LinkedIn boasts a massive user base worldwide, I have yet to materialize any significant benefits such as prospects, business deals, referrals, from LinkedIn. Nor have I seen SEO benefits from it. The presumption is that if you create a Business Profile Page on LinkedIn where you showcase your products and services, it should help your business grow. Your team or employees should also be diligent about having an updated profile on LinkedIn, using your business name there as the employer, seeking recommendations, posting projects with collaborators, participating in forums, and establishing themselves as though leaders. Does that happen in reality? Seldom. Most folks know and use it as a place to maintain an updated professional profile to be found by recruiters. Your mileage in using LinkedIn may vary. Do let me know if you have a success story with LinkedIn. I would love to hear about it and learn from it. For those aspiring to create a professional profile on LinkedIn to further their careers, the goal is to get the ‘All-Star’ profile badge of honor. Check out my LinkedIn profile and let me know if you or your business need a makeover.LinkedIn does offer an excellent publishing platform, which is different from the sharing of posts. There is an option to write an article on LinkedIn, which is then displayed in search results on LinkedIn to all members, not just your immediate network. This feature is widely believed to help establish yourself as a thought leader.
FOURSQUARE: For a while there, FourSquare was the rage. Folks checked in and got benefits. Now, I seldom hear of anyone using the FourSquare check-in. Folks use check-in on Facebook, and I am not sure that if FourSquare provides that as on FourSquares’ website, they claim to have invented the check-in feature in 2009. It may help minutely with your website SEO to have a listing on FourSquare, certainly wouldn’t hurt it.
YELP, THUMBTACK, ANGIE’S LIST, AND OTHERS: Ok, there is zillion gazillion other networks. When is enough, enough? My suggestion is to see what others in your industry are doing - successfully - and then replicate. Yelp’s marketing folks are tenacious. Once you create a free listing on Yelp, get ready to be endlessly pursued to upgrade your listing. Also, their upgrade charges are ‘nickel and dime’ in their approach. Rates are charged for these features by the day. By the time you add them up, they run a high cost. Instead, invest that money in running Google or Facebook Ads.
NICHE CHANNELS: The most common examples are eBay and Etsy. If you are making or creating something handmade, Etsy is the platform for you. Visual Artists often use fineartamerica.com. These are niche sites or channels and have some significant advantages over your website. Your work is displayed along with millions of other folks. Collectively, the search engine optimization that it creates is something you could not realize just with a solo website. The platform is fully managed. Everything is clicking and uploading or editing. Potential downsides may be that you have to pay a certain percentage of your revenue to the niche platform, limited customization, limited ability to capture Customer information and market directly to them. You are virtually renting space and you have to abide by someone else’s rules. For example, earlier in 2020, Etsy mandated that any shop making $10,000 a year revenue on their platform would pay a 15% advertising fee on each sale attributed to off-site ads. No opt-out. The 15% fee is over and above the 8% platform and payment collection fee for each sale. Combined, this results in the seller paying a 23% fee! Additionally, they ‘encourage’ offering free shipping for items over $35. You could opt to have your website and not have an Etsy presence at all, but you are not enjoying the benefit of the higher traffic that would get by being on Etsy.

Things to consider when creating your online presence:

It is best if you have the same user or account handle for all the various platforms. For example, for my architecture and photographer business, my handle is @ArtByPino. It is the same on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube. The same thing with my web design, eCommerce, SEO and, IT consulting practice - it is @pinoshah for my website, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
When you set up your profiles, be consistent in the information you provide across all the channels. Meaning - use the same short description or tag lines, same address format, phone numbers, email address. It helps establish credibility in the online world with search engines.
Develop a schedule for posting on the various platforms. Please do not create an online presence and then neglect it. Wait till you have the time available to devote to nurturing it on an ongoing basis. Doing so makes a positive experience for your visitors. They are always greeted with fresh content and hence, helps with ranking higher on search results. Not every online presence needs new content daily. The goal is to provide quality information, not just quantity but also to do it consistently.
Scheduling tools are available to help you post in advance to multiple platforms, thereby saving you the effort to copy and paste the same content. Not all platforms talk to each other. But, it still helps save time. Remember, you can use the Instagram app and have the post automatically post to your Facebook Business Page and tweet the post out. Depending on where you host your website and blog, they may have options to post to multiple online platforms.

In the end, the purpose and goal of the above is to enable an efficient hub and spoke model. Good content that is useful to your visitors will help with your search engine optimization (SEO) and hence, help with ranking higher on search results.

As a McAllen Web or Website Design Developer, eCommerce, SEO, Digital or Internet Marketing (SEM) and, IT Consultant, I can help you with any or all of the above and help formulate a strategy that makes your business stand out from your competition, increase traffic and, rank higher on Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Book a free initial consultation to see how I can help your business grow.

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