Small Business Design Resources

Small Business Website: Should You Use Your Own Name And Photo?

When working on your small business website design, one of the main questions you will need to answer is the question of your website’s identity. Assuming you are a small business, maybe even a one-person-shop, do you disclose this on your site, or do you pretend to be a bigger business than you really are?

This is one area where there are no hard and fast rules, and where either approach can work, so each business should do what feels right to them.

The “Human” Route

Establishing yourself as a small, family-owned business, for example, can have a big advantage when it comes to giving you credibility – especially in social media (which should be an integral part of your marketing campaign). Social media participants typically expect to have conversations – the last thing they want when they access their Twitter account is to find that the people and businesses they follow are trying to sell them stuff.

Now, of course you ARE trying to sell them stuff! You’re a business after all. But the more subtle you are about it, the more you humanize your online presence, the more receptive social media participants will be to accepting you into their networks. The more forthcoming you are about “hey, I’m here to sell,” the less people will be inclined to follow – unless your product is truly one of a kind, awesome and everyone wants it (in which case you’ve made it! Congratulations).

In the above scenario, using your name and photo on your website and in your social media accounts and emphasizing the human side of your business can be a very smart move. One of my clients, for example, chose to say on their website’s “About” page and in their Twitter bio “we are a small, woman-owned business.” This humanizes them and makes it easier for people, and especially for other women, to connect with them.

Of course, you shouldn’t lie about your true identity! If you’re not a woman, then you can’t say “woman-owned” and if you’re not a family-owned business, then you shouldn’t use that line either. But whatever your identity, you can find an angle that would humanize you and make it easier for people to connect with you.

The “Corporate” Route

Another option for small businesses who are trying to establish their online identity is to go corporate – to establish themselves as large (larger than they are), highly professional businesses and to mask the fact that they are in fact small. This approach can and does work, because the risk with the first approach is that people will not take you seriously, while the second approach – if done right – can make it easier for people to trust you as a business, even if they can’t connect with you on a more personal level.

If you choose the second approach, you should avoid using your name and photo on your site and on your social media accounts – use a professionally designed logo instead – and always use the plural form, rather than singular, when talking about yourself.

Conclusion

So, which approach should you choose for your own small business? As I said above, this is completely up to you, since both approaches can work. I would say it probably depends on your space – is your business in a space where being personal and human would result in higher levels of trust, or would a glossy, corporate look and feel create more trust?

Finally, you can certainly combine both approaches, going with a glossy, professional “corporate” look and feel for your website, but humanizing your business by using a name and a real photo on your blog and on your social media accounts.

How YouTube Can Benefit Your Small Business

How To Effectively Use Twitter For Business

Many small businesses have been resisting Twitter for a long time now, but the reality is that more and more of your customers are using Twitter – and so should you. A basic rule of marketing says that you need to be where your customers and prospects are. If your prospects are using Twitter, and your competitors are using Twitter, then NOT using Twitter could turn out to be a costly business mistake.

To properly use Twitter for business, you need to start by shaking the notion that Twitter is “stupid,” that you “don’t get it” and that it’s basically a huge waste of time. Twitter need not waste your time at all. In fact, most businesses spend about ten minutes per day twittering. A selective, disciplined use of social media in general and of Twitter in particular works beautifully for small businesses that can’t afford to hire someone to tweet all day for them. Ten minutes per day is all it takes to connect with prospects and to build your brand on Twitter.

Five Useful Tips for Using Twitter for Business

1. Add a personal touch. A cold corporate account is a turnoff – even if your customers are businesses too. Your tweets should include company news and info of course, but you should also have conversations – real conversations with followers. Many businesses add the name of the person who tweets for them to their bio as another great way to be more personal.

2. Use Twitter Search. One of the most important uses of Twitter for businesses is to respond to customer issues. Use Twitter Search to find out who’s mentioning your company on Twitter, and respond as necessary.

3. Don’t be too pushy. Tweets about your products are fine, but you should also tweet general industry news and links, retweet (which basically means repeat to others) what others are saying, ask and answer questions. If all your tweets are promoting your company and your products, you are not using Twitter properly.

4. Twitter is a great platform for promoting your blog posts. When you do, it’s a good idea to add a personal touch by introducing the topic, or asking a question about it, then providing a link to the blog post. Tweets that simply say “New blog post,” then give a link to the post don’t normally generate a lot of responses, because they’re not very interesting!

5. Be generous. Don’t promote just yourself. Promote others too, link to them, and be nice. There’s no need to promote direct competitors (although following them if they follow back and congratulating them on successes is good manners), but do make it a point to be generous with anyone who is not in direct competition to your business.

Above all, don’t be afraid of Twitter! Many small business owners worry about wasting entire days on Twitter and especially about the possibility of Twitter backfiring if used by customers to criticize them. But Twitter only wastes your time if you let it, and although it CAN be used to criticize your company, it can also be used by you to promptly respond to criticism, provide excellent customer service publicly, make things right for your customers and make your brand even stronger.

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• 10 Newbie Twitter Mistakes Made By Businesses (socialmediatoday.com)
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