Interested in Building Your Online Platform? Here’s How to Get Started(Part Two)

written by Vicky Lynch

If you checked out our recent blog post (link to last post) on why it’s important to build your platform online, you may be wondering how to get started. And believe me, you are not alone. 

At Guide My Brand, we work with entrepreneurs and authors everyday to help them build their brand and thought leadership. Some of them have a fantastic platform established online, and others don’t. Whether you’ve been too busy building your business and personal brand to focus on your online presence, or you just don’t know where to start, we can help!

Remember, it doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do if no one knows you do it! 

Here’s 3 Steps to Establishing Your Online Platform:

1) Create a website. 

If you have a budget, you can outsource this part of your business. Web designers will work with you to customize your site to reflect your brand visually and can work with you to create copy with built in keywords and backlinks to help drive traffic to your website. 

No budget? No problem. Our site is hosted and built through SiteGround with WordPress. They have great tutorials to help you build out your site, with step-by-step instructions. You’ll just pay a small yearly fee for your domain and hosting. 

Remember to link any social media business pages to your website and include a contact form so that anyone visiting your site is able to easily reach you. 

2) Pick one social media platform to focus on. 

Ideally, you’ll have more than one in time. But it’s much easier to build your profile and followers on just one platform to start, and then branch out once you are established. 

You may need to do some investigating to figure out which platform is the best for your business. Does your business have a visual element? Maybe Pinterest or Instagram is the right platform. Do you want to engage with your customers in a group, rather than on a business page? Perhaps Facebook is best. Another factor to consider is which platform do you find most intuitive? 

Once you’ve got one platform down and nurturing your audience has become second nature, then it’s time to add another one. 

3) Engage with others online.

Now that you’ve laid the groundwork, it’s time to go out and join the conversation. Share your thoughts with them and their followers. Share their thoughts with your followers. Look into writing some contributed articles or guest blog posts online that link back to your social channels and that you can embed on your website.

It’s not going to happen overnight, but stay consistent. Over time, you’ll figure out what your followers are interested in and bit by bit, your online platform will grow. 

Interested in taking your brand and thought leadership to the next level through earned media hits? Schedule a call with us here to chat about your PR goals.