These days, any serious business owner has a website or blog to help market their business. A website with your own domain name (URL) establishes a professional online presence and offers a central hub for all of your online and offline marketing efforts. However, if you have not updated your website recently or posted fresh content to it, it’s time to enhance your online presence to improve your chances of succeeding in a competitive niche.
Mobile-Friendly
If your website is more than a few years old, chances are it might not be mobile-friendly. With the boom in Smartphones and tablet computers, this should be your first enhancement. Smart Insights tell us that mobile us is rapidly catching up to other mediums and is expected to eventually eclipse them. If your website looks choppy or doesn’t load on a mobile device you are turning away a wealthy pool of potential viewers and clientele.
Blogging Boosts Business
Second, do you have a blog? A blog is a fun and interesting way to present fresh niche-related content on a regular basis. Write the content, or commission it, upload it, and set the publication date. Your blog will be updated regularly without you having to work on it every day. There are some really great tools like Co-Schedule that can turn content creation from a pain to a joy. That being said, never be afraid to outsource something that isn’t your strong suit so that you can apply your talents where they are needed the most – developing your business.
Optimizing
If you are working in a small company or are a solo entrepreneur, you might be thinking that you have no idea how to do either of these tasks but you also have no budget to hire anyone. The good news is that you can kill two birds with one stone with a completely free program – WordPress.
There are two ways to accomplish this. The first is to set up a free blog at WordPress.com. This basic version of the program is mobile-friendly and will show you just how easy WordPress is to use. (Take note of THIS BLOG who uses just that!) Link to your site and vice versa to drive more traffic.
The second way to do this is to download a copy of the free program at WordPress.org and upload it to the main folder of your website, or to a subfolder, such as one called blog. Install the program and start adding content.
The full version of WordPress includes 2 key items that can really help your niche business take off. The first are themes and the second are plugins.
Themes and Plugins
Themes set the overall appearance and functionality of the site, such as a text-based blog versus a photo blog. Search through all the free professional-looking themes available to find the one that is right for the look and feel of your business.
Plugins are little mini-programs that add a range of functions and tools to your pages and site. These can range from social media links that will let you promote your site on all your accounts and allow your customers to promote your site as well to a number of exciting niche options that will make your site a magnet for customers, such as:
- Auctions
- A forum or discussion board
- Top niche products lists with links to buy
- An article directory
- A membership site, free or paid
- A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) portal
And much more.
If your site isn’t getting the kind of traffic you want or enough repeat visitors, update your site/blog, add functionality, and see what a difference it can make to your profits.
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