Small Business Marketing Kit For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Claiming Your Online Identity

In the bricks-and-mortar world, people in small business get away with handing out more than one business card. Marketers advise against this approach because it shows a lack of commitment and credibility in any single arena, but it happens without great consequence because all cards have the same contact information, and they’re all presented by a person whose name and face the customer recognizes. None of those constants applies online.

Online, you need to claim, protect, and consistently present a single identity for your business and a single identity for yourself. Otherwise, you’ll never achieve the kind of online visibility necessary for marketing success. If you haven’t already done so, take these steps:

Register a domain name — a website address — for your business.

Stake claim to a single user name for your business across all social media channels you may ever want to use. If you own your business, develop a strategy that links your personal name with your business name online, so that a search for either delivers results for both.

Registering for a domain name

Your domain name is the string of characters a person types into a search engine ...