Audience cheering at concert.

How To Gain Vis­i­bil­ity On The Web And Be­yond – Part 2

To­day’s tip is not your every­day on­line mar­ket­ing ad­vice, and you should not fol­low it mindlessly.

It might spark some new ideas, but it’s best to eval­u­ate each idea for what it adds to your business.

Yes­ter­day I talked about up­dat­ing and align­ing your most im­por­tant on­line pres­ences, in­clud­ing your busi­ness web site, and your so­cial me­dia profiles.

visibility-on-the-web-mindmap-1

To­day we’re tak­ing it one step further.

We’ll look at your OFFLINE pres­ences, and then move on­line from there.

What do I mean by that?

It’s quite likely that you have some busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions in the of­fline world.

  • You might be as­so­ci­ated with a lo­cal Bet­ter Busi­ness Bureau.
  • Or a cham­ber of commerce.
  • Or you might be a mem­ber of an in­dus­try spe­cific organization.
  • An or­ga­ni­za­tion of lo­cal businesses.
  • You might have con­tact with speakers.
  • Or jour­nal­ists.

And many, many more.

Step 1: Start mak­ing a list of your of­fline as­so­ci­a­tions with

  1. Or­ga­ni­za­tions
  2. Busi­nesses
  3. Peo­ple

Step 2: For each rel­e­vant as­so­ci­a­tion you find, write down THEIR on­line pres­ences. Do this the same way you did with YOUR on­line pres­ences. Their web sites. Their so­cial me­dia pro­files. And what­ever else there might be.

MindMap: Organizations and their online presences.

Step 4: Find out how you can get vis­i­bil­ity for your busi­ness on THEIR on­line presence. 

  • An or­ga­ni­za­tion might al­low mem­ber profiles.
  • A busi­ness part­ner might of­fer a link and a short description.
  • You might post up­dates to their Face­book page.

Once you have them listed, it’s ac­tu­ally quite easy to see the opportunities.

Step 5: Chose which of these op­por­tu­ni­ties are worth the time, and ex­pand your pres­ence on theirs.

  • On sites where you can post your­self, sim­ply do the work.
  • Where you need to make per­sonal con­tact, write the email, or make the call.

Even if you’re well con­nected, this isn’t more than a few hours of work. If your con­nec­tions are few, it’s a mat­ter of minutes.

It’s a piece of the puz­zle of get­ting greater vis­i­bil­ity, and it will bring your busi­ness to au­di­ences who did not see you before.