NOTE: With this article, Towel & Basin continues its celebration of Women’s History Month by serving and supporting, encouraging and empowering women who are making history today.
Getting your WAHM business launched and off the ground can be difficult.
At any given time, you are probably competing with thousands of other businesses who are also trying to get attention for their own products and services.
It can be challenging to get your business noticed. So, in addition to any word-of-mouth or traditional advertising you do, having a presence online is essential.
With an online presence, you can multiply your efforts by connecting and networking with people literally anywhere in the world where there is internet access.
Networking at its most basic is simply talking with people. But networking has changed with the internet. You can network with more people than ever before through the online tools now available. In fact, some work-at-home businesses do very well networking, connecting and selling almost exclusively online.
If you are a work-at-home mom, you want to leverage the power of the internet to network online and generate leads and customers for your own business. Here are some ideas.
Website
Build a website. You no longer need to know HTML or other coding languages to build a website.
There are applications that will almost build a site for you using templates and drag and drop editors. And there are free content management systems you can use to build your site. Or you can hire someone to design and build the site for you.
Once you have a website, you need content for it. The content (articles) on your site must be targeted to your ideal customer describing solutions and benefits your audience desires.
For example, If you are working at home selling your homemade coin purses, you might write and post articles that talk about fabric, the craft of sewing and unique gifts, all while extolling the virtues of coin purses.
A WARNING: Some people believe that with the power of social media platforms and mobile apps, you just don’t need a website.
But consider this: you do not own the social media platforms. They can change their rules (and do) any time, including removing your account from their platforms. Or entire platforms can be (and have been) sold or closed.
If any of these scenarios happen, and your only online presence was those social media platforms, your business income is at risk. Content and contacts you had on that social media platform are gone. Use the social platforms that your target audience uses as a way to connect, network and generate traffic to your website.
DO NOT rely solely on 3rd party platforms and applications for your business - since ultimately these platforms let you use their services to benefit their business. You need your own website where you can control the content, build your brand and generate a list of leads and customers.
Traffic
Having a website isn’t a “build it and they will come” kind of proposition. You need to market your website.
You can "buy" or "build" traffic - or do both. You can get traffic to your website and lead capture pages purchasing ads. This can be very cost-effective if you are good at creating ads that convert.
You can also generate traffic to your website and lead capture pages through the organic search of keywords related to and found in your site’s content.
Posting in forums, writing articles, guest blogging, podcasting are all methods for traffic generation. There are many more and some come in and out of popularity or effectiveness.
Social media is another way of generating traffic to your website – or preferably a lead capture page where you offer visitors/followers/friends in the social media platform a free, but valuable resource in exchange for their email address
Careful tracking of your advertising is critical so you know what methods of traffic generation are effective with your audience and what sources of traffic are giving you a return on your investment.
Social Media
Social media platforms are numerous and always changing. What is “hot” today, maybe gone (literally) tomorrow.
Given the ever-changing nature of social media apps, here is some guidance that is evergreen:
Unless you have a large advertising budget and can invest in hiring a social media manager, you probably cannot personally be managing and updating multiple social media accounts.
And, truthfully, your target audience is probably not on all the different social media platforms that are out there. So...
Find the one (or two, maybe three?) platforms that your ideal, target customer uses. And then, you use those platforms too.
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It might take some time to get all of these things implemented. But schedule the time to do it – and take baby steps each day to get your online presence launched and seen.
Resources
Website Built for Your Work-at-Home Business
Resources for Marketing Online
Image by Mediamodifier from Pixabay
Disclosure
Some of my blog posts contain links to products. These are products I use personally or come highly recommended from sources I trust. I would recommend them to my own family. At no extra cost to you, the product creator gives my nonprofit organization a small commission if you click one of these links on my blog and purchase something. This is a win-win-win situation where I get to recommend great products to my readers who benefit tremendously from these products when they buy. My organization receives a small compensation to support our mission and the business gains a new customer. And you pay the same exact price you would pay if you had found the product yourself!