Six Things To Do Online Before Staring Your Business

Six Things To Do Online Before Staring Your Business

The Internet: one of the most advantageous places for you to plan, organize, and market your new startup business. The Internet is a place that can help your business flourish, even before its launch. By completing these six tasks before you start your entrepreneurial venture, your business will already have a heads-up on the competition, especially in cyber-space.

1. Start Your Business Plan

It is important to analyze what your business does, what its goals are, and how it is going to get there. This is called a business plan, and for many entrepreneurs, it's the first step in creating their own business. Although some entrepreneurs believe that business plans are overrated, others swear that they are the key to a startup's success. I suggest constructing a brief, bulleted list of the important aspects of your new business. If you'd like a more complete, online version of a business plan, however, visit Inc.com's Business Plan Workbook that provides detailed, fill-in-the-blank outlines that help entrepreneurs organize their ideas prior to launch and execute plans as they get under way.

2. Develop Your Website

Every successful company has a strong and organized website. Before launching a new business, it is important to develop a website that will draw customers in and benefit the company. First, purchase a company domain name. Then, it is important to research Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) so that your website will pop up on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. When developing a website, be sure to keep your eye out on competitor's websites to see who their websites are linked to. In order to create a highly-usable website, you may want to consider hiring a web designer as well as a writer to help develop the website content. Be sure to update your website regularly.

3. Organize Your E-mail

If you open your e-mail account and see that you have 276 messages in your inbox, 3,253 messages in your Trash, and 1,340 messages that are classified in the "Spam" folder, it may be time to clean it up. During the launch of a business, e-mails will be pouring in. It is important to keep these messages organized. Purging your e-mail inbox can help you avoid missing deadlines, frustrating your staff, and neglecting customer complaints. In order to organize your e-mail, you must realize that your account is not storage, it is not a calendar, and it is not a to-do list. To further organize, create specifically-named files that tier down to even more specific categories. Purchase a powerful spam blocker, update your email address book often, and avoid the "I'll deal with this later" attitude. Take these steps and you'll be well on your way (finally) to an organized inbox.

4. Start a Blog

Believe it or not, blogging has become one of the best marketing tools on the web. From the ease of creating to the convenience of interacting with possible customers and clients, blogging as given a new way for the marketers to do what they do-promote. Blogging has become such a successful means of marketing that there are some hundred thousand blogs created everyday!

Blogs can do wonders for your new business. Blogs can become press, increase visibility, give a new business life, update people about the business's doings, creates easy media coverage, and even allow for automatic feedback.

5. Optimize Your Videos for Search

Interestingly enough, YouTube has become one of the leading search engines in the world! It is important to optimize any video that your business may have for search on websites such as YouTube, Google, and Yahoo!. Search rankings give added weight to Web video, which means that it should always be optimized.

6. Utilize Social Networking Sites

Finally, one of the most recent ways to promote your business is through social networking sites. Social networking sites are extremely helpful in getting your new business a little attention. Take advantage of free (and popular) social networking sites such as Facebook (use the Fan Page application), Twitter, and LinkedIn. Another advantageous website is Coroflot.com, in which you or your business can post an online portfolio for free.

The Internet can help your business boom before it has even launched. By utilizing the right (and free) tools, your business can conquer the worldwide web. Be sure to plan, update your site often, keep your e-mail organized, blog a few times a week, optimize all videos, and take advantage of free social networking sites.

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