Like most businesses, startups need to have an exceptional online reputation.
Most startups struggle with establishing an online presence. Entrepreneurs spend loads of time in developing their offering that they forget that they need to pay attention to marketing their products.
And what better place to start marketing your products or services then online.
Here is a guide for startups on how they can build a great online reputation:
- Have a great website.
Having a good looking website has become a necessity for businesses today.
Think of a website as a piece of online real estate. You undoubtedly don’t want to miss out on this opportunity.
A great website starts with a great design. The color scheme for your website should match your startup’s colors.
Make sure to include a contact section where you have a Google Map which shows directions to your location. You would also want to add your name, address, and phone number in text form on your website. Add live chat app for website in your website too because that way you can keep connected with your visitors and get to know their views/problems.
Your startup’s website shouldn’t be cluttered with bits and pieces of information.
The information you put on your website represents your startup. You would only want to show the best side of your business to the world.
The loading time for your website should be fast. If you make your visitors wait too long for your website to open, you’re going to lose them for good.
Also, you need to pay attention to your website’s SEO from the get-go. Without good SEO, people are not going to be able to find your website. If they can’t find your website, they won’t get to know about your startup.
Make sure that your website has a lot of referral links from well established and high ranking sites.
Your website needs to be responsive. If people see that your website is not designed for mobile devices, you’re going to have a high bounce rate, which is a bad thing. In fact, Google penalizes the search rankings of websites that aren’t mobile-friendly.
- Make your presence known on social media.
Social media has become a critical resource for startups and entrepreneurs.
A little more than 3.4 billion people use social media. If you want to be successful, you only need to appeal to a tiny fraction of those people.
There are different social media platforms for different audiences.
Your startup should have a company profile on LinkedIn. Engaging with professionals will allow you to keep up with the latest trends and increase your startup’s online presence.
If your startup is more of a creative business, you should also make it a point to be on Pinterest. The platform is full of creative people and is a great place to get more ideas and inspiration.
Instagram is the trending platform right now. A younger audience is using this platform to post images and supporting content. With the right strategy, Instagram can help your startup become popular.
Twitter is a fast pace platform where you need to be tweeting by the hour if you want to stay relevant. Twitter is a great place to send out updates and let people know what you’re up to.
Snapchat is a social media platform that particularly appeals to a younger audience.
At the very end, we have Facebook. Even if you hate Facebook, you simply cannot ignore it. With 2.4 billion monthly active users, Facebook has an absolutely fantastic audience base.
While Facebook’s organic reach has reached an all-time low, it still makes sense for your startup to be on Facebook.
You don’t need to go all-in on all of these platforms (ideally, you should be doing just that), but you can start by identifying which platforms have the highest number of your target audience and target those platforms first.
- Encourage customer reviews.
Genuine customer reviews show that you have a real business and that people are engaging with your business online.
Customer reviews are a double-edged sword.
On one side, customer reviews allow you to identify the areas where your business is performing well. Excellent customer reviews can undoubtedly raise your morale as well as make you satisfied with the work that you’re doing.
On the flip side, however, not everyone is going to be pleased with your business. Often, you’re going to have to deal with customer complaints and negative reviews that can leave you questioning the reason why you started a business in the first place.
One strategy is to acknowledge all the kind comments and ignore the negative ones. Job done, right? But this strategy isn’t very beneficial for your business.
You can’t wish negative reviews away. You need to acknowledge them and face them if you want to be seen as a mature business.
Being empathetic and offering to help an unsatisfied customer will show that your business is willing to go the extra mile for your customers.
If you don’t, people will assume that your startup is precisely how the negative comments and reviews describe it.
- Start a blog.
One of the best things that you could do to build your startup’s online reputation is to start a blog.
By starting a blog online, you are letting your audience know that you are an expert in your industry. Share meaningful and relevant content that will help your audience on your blog.
A blog will help your startup get more customers by increasing awareness and showing credibility.
Blogs also tend to increase your website traffic, which is an overall plus.
Ask your readers to write comments at the end of the blog. You’ll get deeper insights into what your audience thinks about your content. It will also allow you to identify your audience’s pain points.
- Share your achievements.
If your startup is relatively new, it is understandable that you might not have a lot of achievements to boast. Instead, what you can do is have a list of things that you wish to achieve, your vision, on your website.
Make sure to share every landmark that your startup reaches. Most startups are destined to fail, so it’s important to let people know that you are different.
Once you’ve been around for a while, you’ll have several achievements that you could share.
Keep in mind that not every achievement is worth sharing. You don’t want to spam your audience; what you need to do is to stay on your audience’s minds.
- Share UGC (User Generated Content).
User-generated content is a unique content that users of your products or services generate.
User-generated content is one of the most significant endorsements of your products and services.
Posting user-generated content on different social media profiles will help your online reputation. When people see that other people have interacted with your brand, they’ll be more inclined to do the same.
- Use online tools.
There are many online tools that can help you build your online reputation, but I’m only going to mention one.
Google Alert is a service that Google offers. Google Alerts sends you an email when a new result, which may include a web page, blog, research paper, etc., matches one of your related search terms.
By using Google Alerts, you get to know how people are feeling about your startup. If they aren’t positive, you need to analyze what has changed recently.
Google Alerts also helps you stay on top of trends. Find a significant trend, and if you have an appropriate product, create a Google Alert for that trend.
- Develop influencer relationships.
Influencers are a great way to increase your online reputation.
If you’re a new startup, you would need to engage with influencers who share the same values as you first.
Once you have a list of influencers and you’ve established a reasonably reasonable relationship with them, it is now time to form partnerships.
By partnering up with an influencer or micro-influencer, you can increase your brand awareness. You can also leverage their audience to promote your brand.
Keep in mind that the mutually beneficial relationships you form with these influencers or even micro-influencers, for that matter, reflect heavily on your brand. Choose your partnerships carefully, and your startup will do alright.
- Display customer testimonials.
Another way to build your online reputation is to display customer testimonials on your website and on your social media profiles.
Customer testimonials help build your brand image by telling your audience that your startup is a legitimate business that is providing value.
When posting customer testimonials, it is better to include the logo of the brand that you served or a picture of the customer you served. It is by no means mandatory but certainly helps in making the testimonial more authentic.
Conclusion:
As more and more people are spending their time online, it has become essential to have a positive online reputation.
People currently, and in the future, will be judging your startup based on your online presence.
Working on your online presence today will prove to be an investment for the short and long term. Entrepreneurs that are serious about building a brand presence online will be way ahead of the competition.
Author Credit
HamzahAdil is a digital marketing executive who loves to write about entrepreneurship and startups. Social media and viral trends are also of great interest to him. He is currently working for a startup that has developed a new live chat application called SwiftChat. Live chat softwares help businesses by providing support to online visitors at a much more reasonable price.
