Last Friday, I had lunch with David Wright from the Dayton area office of The Growth Coach. In addition to coaching, David has also started a side business selling SMS text messaging broadcast services for business. He told me a little about the benefits of SMS messages. However, after asking a few questions about his services, I determined that a lot of business owners are jumping into the text message arena before they have the basics of online marketing down pat. It’s like trying to take Algebra before you can add. It just doesn’t work!
I’ve seen this sort of things happen several times at Rainmaker events. People want to be on Facebook on Twitter because it’s the “in thing to do” without any kind of real strategy. It’s a sure fire recipe for online marketing disaster!
Here is, in my opinion, the order in which you should build your online presence:
Level 1: Website and personal social networking profile
Without a website and profile, you aren’t really online are you?
Level 2: Blog with regular updates.
Once you have a website, you should then add in a blog and post useful content to it regularly.
Level 3: Email list.
The money is in the list! Now that you have content, sending things to the list is easy. See why this has to be in order? If you have a list and no content, that does you no good!
Level 4: Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter.
Now that you have content and a list, you can add in your fan pages. Since you have content, you can syndicate it to Facebook and Twitter for additional traffic.
Level 5: Pay per click campaigns.
Now that you have a website and content and hopefully a website that converts, you can run pay per click campaigns to add in additional traffic. Be sure to track what keywords are working and which keywords are not working for you.
Level 6: Search Engine Optimization.
Take the top converting keywords from your Pay per Click campaign and build content around it. Tweak your site pages to build more traffic around those keywords.
Level 7: SMS text messaging/voice blasts/other technology.
Now that you have a list and have a website with converting traffic, then you can add in the newer technology like opt in text message blasts and opt in phone blasts. These simply serve as a secondary way to get your message out to your fans and build additional exposure.
Follow these tips in order and you will see your online presence zoom!
Carlos was able to affordably transform my web site from "just being there" to getting me to the top of important search engines in just a couple of weeks. My leads have improved dramatically!!
