Your company is up and running. Now it’s time to start creating detailed listings on relevant directory sites and start converting promising prospects into clients…
Congratulations! Your company is on the move. Now, the question is: what are you going to do to capitalize on its momentum?
Start by creating detailed, accurate listings at the most visible, relevant directory sites and social media platforms on the web today. These five are particularly fruitful for a particularly wide array of businesses — though you’ll want to assess your company’s unique needs before allocating too many resources to any specific platform.
-
Merchant Circle
MerchantCircle is one of the web’s top directory sites. It’s not quite as widely known as Yelp, perhaps, but that doesn’t stop more than 100 million consumers from passing through its virtual doors every year.
MerchantCircle is especially useful for consumer-facing businesses; verticals like Real Estate and Arts & Entertainment harbor deals galore. Another perk: a super-easy local search feature that connects businesses serving discrete geographies with prospects in their backyards.
-
Crunchbase
Crunchbase pulls double duty as a no-frills repository for up-to-date corporate data (including funding stats, if you’re keen to share) and an ideal place to showcase key employees. It’s particularly useful for serial entrepreneurs with multiple irons in the fire. Health entrepreneur Steve Dorfman, for instance, gets a mention for both his companies in his Crunchbase bio.
-
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is another “double duty” platform. It’s a great nerve center for B2B firms’ marketing apparatuses and a fantastic place for key employees to connect with potential partners and establish thought leader cred. For bigger, geographically dispersed firms, there’s tremendous value in the ability to quite literally connect prospects with the most relevant role player available. As an (overwhelming) example, computing giant Dell’s LinkedIn page connects to roughly 125,000 employees’ personal LinkedIn profiles.
-
Facebook
Facebook needs no introduction, nor do most businesses need any encouragement to set up and populate Facebook pages of their own. Using the world’s most popular social media platform efficiently is another matter entirely, however. Under the right circumstances, Facebook is versatile enough to stand in for — or even replace — your company’s main domain. Not that you’d want it to, necessarily; it’s just nice to know what’s possible.
-
Twitter
Twitter is another high-authority platform that’s great for businesses looking to burnish their digital visibility and connect directly with prospects (assuming they can filter through all the noise).
One use case worth exploring: using “pinned” tweets to convey critical, non-time-sensitive news and information to consumers and others who might want to know. Digital engagement platform Marketo’s Twitter handle has a great example touting the company’s strategic partnership with B2B sales platform Clari.
How’s Your Directory Footprint?
It’s a big digital world out there. And, as you’re well aware, these aren’t the only five online directories and social platforms that draw crowds. Depending on the nature of your business and the composition of your core buyer groups, you may well conclude that you need to focus on other properties — and/or that some of these properties aren’t worth the trouble.
That’s up to you. After all, you should know better than anyone else where to find current clients, promising prospects, and curious seekers of value ready to enter your sales funnel. The fun part is convincing them to convert.
