How to get your brand online: an essential checklist

Starting an online brand presence in a meaningful way is an intimidating task, but an essential one that can open many sales doors for businesses. Entrepreneur magazine breaks down five key reasons why an online presence is an essential for even the smallest business:

1. Visibility: With more and more consumers logging onto the Web to research products and services, if they are going to find your business, your business needs to be on the Web.
2. Reach: With a Web site, you are no longer limited to a customer base that is in physical proximity to your shop. Your place of business may be in Boston, but your customers can be in Bangkok.
3. Customer service: When customers can log onto your Web site and easily find the information they want-when they want it-their satisfaction increases.
4. Competition: A professional looking website can level the playing field for smaller companies trying to compete against larger enterprises. It's also a way to stay in the game; even if people can't find you on the Web chances are they can find your competitors.
5. Credibility: When you can point customers, partners, even potential employees or investors to a Web site, it tells them you are a serious business.

We’ve written a series digging into some of the more monumental digital tasks - like pay per click advertising - into simple, starter tutorials.

In the meanwhile, use this simple checklist to make sure that your brand has the digital essentials.

1)   Get a website

People want to find you on the internet so a simple website presence is essential. This platform should contain basic company information, such as your company name, contact details, product information, and a call to action - something your web visitors can do to get them closer to making a sale.

One thing you can’t skimp on is the user journey and responsiveness. Essentially, ‘user experience’ means designing your website with your user in mind. They need to easily navigate your website without having to guess where to click next or find information. Your website must be desktop, mobile and tablet friendly (responsive), always.

2)   Have a social media presence

Just by signing up to Facebook and Twitter and a host of other social sites is not enough to get exposure. You need to first understand where your audience consumes their media and decide if your product or business is relevant to the platforms. If your audience isn’t on Snapchat, don’t start a Snapchat account.

Next, dedicate some time to talking to your audience. Make sure you post to your pages and answer queries and comment made by your audience. This is quite a lot to maintain, so rather pick one social media platform and run it thoroughly than run several half-heartedly.

3)   Have a Google presence

Make sure that you are searchable by optimising your website and search with relevant keywords. Your budget will determine the size of your Google Adwords campaign (we talk more about this in our upcoming paid advertising post), but the main focus is to ensure that you are searchable on the Google network.

So while it may look as if you only need three simple things to be digital-trendy, there is a lot more to it than that: you need to be dedicated to making your channels work for you. According to HubSpot 78% of social sellers outsell peers who don’t use social media.

Here’s a checklist for some of the digital essentials:

Subscribe to the Penquin blog to receive the full series of blog posts on the Digital Essentials. The series covers:

• Social media
• Video
• Paid advertising
• Inbound
• Websites