Contributor: Lauren Baldwin, Editor, Bizcrowd
From Facebook and Twitter, to WordPress and Google Analytics, there are tons of websites and services out there that can help you run and promote your business online.
Depending on the type of business you’re in, you might choose to make the most of one, two or several. But to get you started, take a look at our guide to the services you should know about.
Facebook
Chances are you already use Facebook for your personal life, but do you make the most of it for your business? According to meltwater.com, Facebook is the most popular website in the world and the average user spends eight hours a month on the site. So, if you have a business, you need to be on it – get started today with meltwater’s beginners guide to Facebook pages for your business.
Twitter
According to statisticbrain.com there are over 9,100 tweets every second. Twitter offers a great platform for you to connect with new and existing customers. But if you’ve never used it before, it can be difficult to know where to start. How do you say everything you want in just 140 characters? Find out how to engage your followers and reach new customers with Twitter’s small business guide.
bit.ly
bit.ly is a URL shortener. It takes long URLs — usually to a page on your website — and turns them into much shorter links. This tool is ideal for Twitter where the 140 character limit can restrict what you want to say. Iag.me explains that the added benefit of bit.ly is that it has a great analytics function. This means that you can quickly see how many people clicked on your link — and analyse how effective that tweet has been.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is fast becoming the recruitment channel of choice for employers and employees alike. According to Forbes.com, LinkedIn is the ideal way to find the talented individuals you need to achieve your goals. LinkedIn is also a valuable networking tool. Before attending an event, use it to research attendees and target the people that you want to meet so you can get the most out of the event.
WordPress
Wordpress is a free, customisable, blogging and content management system. According to socialmediatoday.com, it’s used by more than 18% of the world’s top 10 million websites. But, it’s also perfect for small businesses, as it requires no design or programming experience to get a fairly decent website up and running quickly. Simplybusiness.co.uk has created a really handy guide with everything you need to know to get started with WordPress.
Google Adwords
Put simply, Google Adwords is a way to advertise your business. You choose keywords that relate to your business and when someone searches for that term in Google, your ad is displayed. This means that you’re only advertising to an audience that you know is interested in your service. You can also set your ads to only appear to people searching in a particular region. And the best part? You only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
MailChimp
MailChimp is an email marketing service already used by over five million people. It allows you to send emails and newsletters to your subscriber base, as well as being packed full of features to help you learn more about your customers. But before you send anything to your customers, it’s important to get the basics right — ‘From’ address, permissions, content, language etc. MailChimp has loads of useful guides to help you get started.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is another free tool from Google, which allows you to see how many visitors you’ve had to your website, where they’ve come from and what they’ve done whilst on your site – plus much more! This is vital to help you improve your site and see how successful your marketing activity has been. Iag.me says that if you already have a website or blog, then it’s likely that you already have Google Analytics installed! Learn more and get started here.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management system that allows you to run all your social media platforms from one secure, web-based dashboard. Add your Twitter, Facebook, Google+ accounts and you can run them all from one place, using the same content across multiple platforms.
One of the features that the Bizcrowd team love is the ability to schedule in tweets and posts for the future. For a small business, this is perfect as it allows you to stay in contact with your followers while you’re getting on with other work. Just don’t forget to check back regularly so you can respond to any messages and tweets.