Welcome to the next installment of discussing your Digital Presence. As I sat down to write this I started out getting very deep and technical. So, I stopped, grabbed a fresh cup of coffee and started again. To talk about your company’s Digital presence we first have to lay out what that means.
So instead of getting technical, I decided to create a map. Hopefully, when I’m done, we’ll have a great sense of what makes up our digital presence as a business, why it’s important to manage it and how a well-groomed Digital presence can enhance your business, no matter what that business is.
While it may seem hard to imagine at first, your business exists in two worlds at the same time. One, the world we were born into and two the Digital world. Like anything in these worlds, things are generally made up of parts. People, for example, have a head, arms, legs, etc. You get the idea.
The part that most of us are familiar with in this digital world is your website. For our purposes, let’s make it the center of our world.
I was thinking of connecting each location by lines showing communication paths like emails, texts, Snapchat stories, and personal referrals, etc. Have you ever seen a map of the world with airline flights on it? Well, it looked a lot like that. So I settled for getting the major components on a single page. You could take any bubble on this map and explode it into its full size. Social Media, for example, includes, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, SnapChat and more. Navigating your business in anyone one of these spaces is a challenge.
Now, imagine if you were dropped into a strange country where, you didn’t speak the language, had no idea about the culture, the food was completely terrifying and told, “now run your business here”.
After a mild heart attack, most of us would try to locate some help. A guide, someone who speaks the local language, knows the customs and someone who could help us find a cup of coffee so we can sit and think for a minute. Web Anatomy can do that. They speak the language of the digital world. They know how to get around, they understand how you show up here.
Understanding and managing your digital face can make a significant difference to your business. Employees today are going to check Glassdoor to see if your worth working for. Buyers will check reviews to see how other customers were treated. Social media, well that’s an entire continent in this world. Navigating Social media takes skills equal to the best special forces teams to get around safely.
Making a wrong move here can cost your business, reputation, money, talent and more. It’s also very difficult to get it perfect and takes a team of talented people working and monitoring constantly to check the pulse of what’s going on. Kind of like a giant air traffic control tower with lots of screens and dashboards constantly watching the communication paths. A bad review caught early can be turned into an opportunity for a major win for example.
Ok so lets review, Digital Presence then, is everything people online see about your business. Your website is the center and entire cultures revolve around it, talking to and connecting with your business in the digital space.
A well managed Digital presence acknowledges all of these components and gets them working in harmony to promote your business. A bad digital presence can take away your customers, employees and ultimately your business. You need a guide like Web Anatomy to keep all your digital parts working seamlessly together.
Your brochure aka website looks great, your reputation is solid, people enjoy doing business with you, your employees are happy and productive.
As a result, your business flourishes, and isn’t that what it’s all about?
