Basic Training for Businesses

Most of my firm’s engagement with businesses begins with over-arching strategy. We work together to develop a plan for the organization’s communications so the company can achieve its goals. As we begin, an audit of the company’s online presence ensues, and it always — ALWAYS — reveals some, er, opportunities for improvement.

Basic Training for Your Business

There are a few items that are long overlooked, that most (OK, every) companies we’ve helped have needed to tackle:

1. How does your company look online, particularly in the business networking space. Do your employees use LinkedIn? How have the represented your organization there? Is it consistent? Are they representing your business in a professional, knowledgeable manner?
2. Do your company representatives have head shots? Were they taken, last, in 1985 in an Olan Mills studio? Time for an update.
3. Please tell me your company has a website. OK. Who has access to it, and do they know how to update its content?
4. What kind of traffic does your company website have — and WHY? What is attracting people to your company’s overall online presence? Is it what you want it to be?
5. Do you know  how to monitor what’s being said about your brand, your employees, your business online? Someone needs to, and several people need to be trained in the right ways to be both responsive AND proactive.

Don’t worry — you’re not alone in your business needing to get down to these basics, but you’ll find once your leadership embraces these, and begins to take on each one, you can return to the business of strategically making progress toward your communications goals, without the kinds of obstacles that drive your audience away.