10 cost conscious ways to increase online visibility

In the real world, everyone is involved in a start-up.

Whether you are the ‘real deal’ start-up with a half dozen people trying to take over the world or a corporate project team working on the next release, we all have different ‘start-up’ projects that need to get some extra love and attention online.

The following ten items will help you do just that!

10 Ways to Get More Online Visibility

1- Competitive Intelligence

Look at other market competitors to find SEO and SEM keywords to use on like-minded phrases. In many cases a larger competitor will be broadly addressing a market and a start-up can tactically pinpoint specific problem statements.

• Free tools to check out:
• SEObook.com
• Google Insight

2- Engage where your competitors are

Track all the accounts related to your industry conversation, including employees, vendors, and clients. Offer better and more relevant advice to the market whenever a conversation starts. In many cases traditional competitors won’t have the processes in place to respond to timely customer interactions. This is an opportunity to engage consumers with helpful advice, customer service, and goodwill.

• Recommended Reading
• Competitive Intelligence by Listening

3- Analyze client lists

if you find 5 to 20 employee accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, take a careful look at how followers/friends overlap. This usually details a handful of high-value and high-touch clients that you can go after.

• Free tools to check-out
•  WhoFollowsWhom
• MentionMap
• Foller.ME

4- Plan for Failure

When looking at your market, create a list of 15 to 20 businesses in it and write up a promotional campaign based upon them ‘dropping the ball.’ – you will typically see a monthly opportunity to capture low-hanging fruit. In many cases competitors will have monthly customer issues, project failures, or bankruptcies you can take advantage of.

Example: When CompUSA went bankrupt, the web savvy TigerDirect.com immediately launched into action and bought “CompUSA.com” to redirect thousands of relevant shoppers.

5- Understand analytics

The more your understand about social and digital analytics the easier it becomes to examine both internal and external digital data. Many ‘old school competitors’ are 2 to 5 years behind the digital curve. As a start-up don’t go after technically savvy leaders, but strategically go after laggards with no defenses.

• Free tools to check-out
• Woopra

6 – Activate your team (employees, family, friends) with social media

Compile a database with employees, family, and friends online and offline activity. List out Website, Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Linkined, etc and stack rank people you have access to. Coordinate an incentive system for motivating 10+ of these people to spread the word on your behalf (also write down any groups they belong to in the real world.)

• Recommended reading:
• Enabling Employee Social Media
• Creating an online sales pipeline

7 -Understand Twitter Conversations

In many cases it is difficult to create a Twitter conversation that stands out from all the other noise, but there is a huge amount of value in sifting through the noise and getting actionable intelligence from it. Take some time to use the following tools to sort, sift, categorize, and archive a few relevant Twitter conversations.

• Free Tools to Checkout
• SocialCollider –
• Cloud.li –
• PostPost
• TweetSheet (visualize hashtag clusters)

8 – Do some written interviews

Use human nature in your own favor. Instead of trying to sell your product, review social profiles of people in your market and ask them honest questions that allow them to demonstrate expertise. Experts often like to share a little ‘ego driven’ insight and it opens up an opportunity to return the favor in a two way conversation.

• Recommended Reading
• Partner Outreach in Ten Steps

9 – Do some video interviews

While written interviews are great, video interviews have the side effect of ranking incredibly well for search engine keywords that are important to you. Simply by interviewing the people on your team and answering frequently asked questions you can typically get top results for a handful of very important keywords that will drive great exposure for you.

• Recommended reading
• Online Video Training
• Video Editing Tools on a Budget
• HD Mobile Video Kit

10- Detail the influencers

Almost all of the steps above are magnified if you understand some of the key factors of who influences what, why, where, and when. As you think about the word ‘influencer’ make sure you don’t get caught up in the hype about top 10 lists that are mostly vanity/ego lists. Create some tangible business requirements when detail who your influencers are.

• Recommended Reading
• Gaming Klout
• Tools for Finding Influencers

Good Luck on the Next Project!