7 Tips to Transition your Business from Offline to Online

As an online business training and software company, we often get a lot of  small business owners who come to us asking to help them grow their business online.

So I have put together 7 tips on creating an online presence for entrepreneurs:

1. Have a long term perspective about your brand. Word travels fast on the internet so be intentional about your activities online.

2. Do some market research. Find out where your customers are hanging out online and start contributing to the conversation using social media. If the majority of them are on Facebook, then start networking with them on Facebook. The point is to be highly targeted when connecting with your prospective customers online. Otherwise, you can easily waste a lot of time.

3. Put a simple marketing plan together. Putting your intentions to the written word is a powerful exercise that will help you achieve your goals. Be sure to include an action plan. Keep it simple by writing out who is responsible for what by when.

4. Play to your strengths. The point here is to keep it simple by doing what you are good at. Don’t make it so hard on yourself. If you are great at writing, then start a blog. If you are great at speaking, then start vlogging (video blog). Start with one thing that you are good at and then incorporate another thing once you’ve got the first one down.

5. Join industry groups online. There are a gazillion like-minded groups and industry associations on the internet. Check out what your industry is doing online and be sure to connect and network with your colleagues. You never know when a collaboration can turn into something that is mutually benefitting.

6. Track your results. By measuring the outcome of your actions you will see where you need to make improvements to get the results you are looking for. There are a ton of measurement tools on the internet to track your web traffic. Google analytics is a good place to start.