Chapter 20

Ten Ways to Develop a Platform

Not so long ago, starting an online business primarily meant creating a website or selling on a marketplace such as eBay. The landscape has shifted as I write the seventh edition of this book. Yes, websites are still important. But the notion of what constitutes a “website” has expanded to include a blog, a storefront on eBay, or a site hosted by any of a number of intriguing niche marketplaces.

The ultimate result of this combination of online sales and marketing efforts is a platform. The term should be familiar to anyone involved in publishing. In the world of book writing and marketing, an author platform is all-important. This is a base of readers who are already familiar with and like your work or your services and to whom you can market future books. An author who gives seminars and who has thousands of followers on Facebook and Twitter has a platform of devoted fans eager to hear about new books or seminars.

The same principle can apply to e-commerce. Your ultimate goal is to develop a seller platform. You want to have repeat customers, subscribers to your newsletter, readers of your blog, and followers on social media. You become the “go-to” person when it comes to widgets, or what’s-its, or whatever you sell or create. It’s a matter of branding yourself, and it’s something that’s easier than ever to do online. You find ten options for developing a brand and a platform in this chapter.

Following Wilco’s Example

It’s always helpful to find an example to follow when it comes to sales or marketing. You might know a seller in your field who seems to do everything right and who has developed a recognizable brand. If you need a suggestion, consider the well-known rock band Wilco, based in my own hometown of Chicago.

Wilco (www.wilcoworld.net) made headlines in 2002 when its record publisher rejected its album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The record company gave the band all the rights to the album; they started streaming it online to their fans. It turned out to be the band's most successful album to date, selling 670,000 copies. In addition to having an online store, Wilco has more than 500,000 "Likes" on Facebook and 92,000 followers on Twitter. Followers on Facebook can listen to concerts online; they let people listen to their music online before they sell it on CD in their online store. It's all about driving fans to their various locations online and building a community to sustain long-term sales. The community page on their website (http://wilcoworld.net/community) points visitors to many online forums where they can connect with like-minded fans.

Creating a Logo

A logo is like a storefront sign. It gives people, in one glance, a visual representation of what your business is and what you sell. Is it really necessary to have a logo? No. Does it hurt your business if you don’t have one? I would argue yes. The web became popular in the 1990s because it was visual; suddenly you could see images and colors, not just text links. A logo can go a long way toward making a business seem “for real” in the minds of your customers, and your own mind, too.

A good logo is professional-looking. It represents who you are, what service you provide, or what you sell. But it can be simple, almost homemade-looking, like the logo for the Enchanted Hen website (www.enchantedhen.com).

Even if you have no artistic ability, you can still make a logo yourself that consists of only type. There are some really good precedents for this. The logo shown in Figure 20-1 is an example; so are Google’s and eBay’s logos.

Although simpler is better when it comes to logos, if you are creating a business or a brand that you want to promote for years to come, it's really worth your effort to spend some money on a professional designer. You can find one on the online employment site Elance (www.elance.com).

See Chapter 5 for more on creating a logo and how it can help your business.

Listing on EveryPlaceISell

A business with multiple storefronts and points of entry benefits by having a single location where all those venues are brought together under a single virtual "roof." A website called EveryPlaceISell (www.everyplaceisell.com) provides such a home base for free.

A typical EveryPlaceISell listing not only lists the various storefronts operated by a single individual or company, but also includes background information about the owner, something that customers might not be able to find elsewhere. There’s no reason not to list on this site; you gain another place to reach customers and another page to link to (which should improve SEO).

You can put a link to your EveryPlaceISell page everywhere you appear online, including Facebook and Twitter. It might be especially effective to include this link as part of your e-mail signature file as well.

Being a Social Marketing Maven

Social marketing can serve many purposes that go beyond keeping up with friends and family and sharing news stories that you find interesting. It can meet some of your business goals as well. Keeping up with your customers and sharing stories about your company or your field of business is the same kind of activity but with a different emphasis.

E-commerce, like more traditional kinds of business, is built on concepts like trust, brands, and reputation. The better you can brand yourself and prove that you are either an authority in your field or someone who has desirable merchandise, the more successful you’ll be. Social networking is simply the practice of connecting with people online to build loyalty, establish a one-to-one relationship with your customers, build a sense of community, and let people know about your products and business.

You can go beyond sharing to offer freebies, conduct contests, and even post items for sale through a social networking site or, at the very least, advertise them online. See Chapter 13 for more.

Developing an E-Mail Campaign

I'm involved in an e-mail marketing campaign as I write this chapter. My nonprofit spiritual community is promoting a visit by our teacher, who is coming to our center in Chicago. We're conducting a planned series of mailings using the e-mail service Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com).

That’s the first thing you should consider when you think about progressing from occasional e-mail sender to organized e-mail campaign conductor: Pay a modest monthly fee for an e-mail service provider (ESP). An ESP doesn’t just help you keep track of mailing lists. It streamlines the process whereby individuals can subscribe or unsubscribe from those lists, which is required by law.

ESPs also help you with designing and revising e-mails so you don’t have to create them from scratch each time. You can save an e-mail as a draft before it goes out; you can resend e-mails with a single click; you can copy e-mails and revise them with new content as needed. But among the best features is the report function: You can keep track of how many people opened your e-mail and how many clicked links in the message, for example.

Posting on Your Blog

Over the years, I’ve seen one business principle play out over and over again: The more generous you are with your knowledge, the more business you’ll get. For many people, a blog provides a way to share your knowledge, experience, and interests, as well as news about your products or services.

A business blog has a special purpose. It shares news and the views of a businessperson who’s knowledgeable about a particular area of commerce and who wants to connect with people who are interested in the same subject. Setting up a blog isn’t difficult thanks to tools like WordPress; putting substantive posts on it regularly is the challenge.

A blog is another way of building your platform. By inviting comments from readers and responding to them, you give your customers another reason to visit you. And people who are impressed with your knowledge may well check out your store.

One of the biggest benefits of having a blog and updating it regularly is that you improve your search engine placement. Google, for example, likes pages that are updated frequently; it ranks those pages higher in search results, as I discuss in Chapter 11. To find out more about blogs, see Chapter 13.

Giving Something Back to Your Supporters

There's a business I'm familiar with, a small Chicago company that sells organic and heirloom food products, called The Scrumptious Pantry (www.scrumptiouspantry.com). When they were just getting started, the owners went on the revolutionary fundraising site Kickstarter, where anyone can raise money from sympathetic individuals for a personal project or a cause, trying to raise $12,000, and they reached their goal and then some.

Look up this business on Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com/projects/61608863/tasty-packaged-food-from-small-sustainable-farms), and in the right column you see all the things The Scrumptious Pantry is doing to keep up with its donors and give something back, including providing donors with a recipe a day for a year. This, of course, is a great way to market and expand one's customer base and build a brand.

On their website, the owners invite visitors to join an heirloom club, and they provide recipes as well. They’re putting it all together with a newsletter, an online store, a blog, Facebook and Twitter links, and all the tools to help them assemble a platform of dedicated supporters and customers.

Popping Up on Other People’s Websites

One of the most effective ways to build a name for yourself (and, by extension, a platform) is to spread your name around the web as widely as possible. Luckily, the proliferation of blogs and discussion areas means it’s easy to do so.

Look for sites that sell items that complement the things you sell. Ask if you can trade advertisements or links: I’ll place a link (or ad) to your site on mine, if you do the same for my site. Because the other site isn’t a direct competitor, the owner should be receptive.

Look for blogs that discuss topics or areas of business that relate to what you do, or that focus on your own area of expertise. Ask if you can write a guest blog post. If the response is yes, write a useful post that (ideally) provokes discussion.

Be available to people like me, who write about online business. If someone asks you for an interview, jump at the chance. Having your name and the URL of your website in an article on a well-traveled venue is like business gold. It can be available in Google search results for months, even years; a half-hour of answering questions can lead customers to your site for a far longer period of time.

Publishing Your Own Newsletter

Your main goal as an online businessperson should be to make sales. But at the same time, you need to gather names and e-mail addresses, and one of the best ways to do this is by creating a newsletter. A newsletter doesn’t have to contain a series of detailed stories and photos. It can be a set of announcements, too. Here are some ideas of what a newsletter might contain:

Announcements of special sales and promotions: “Check out our spring cleaning sale this weekend,” for instance, or “Half Off All Fishing Tackle This Saturday!”

New products: When you introduce new merchandise, feature it with photos, a short article, and suggestions of how the reader might use it or benefit from it.

Instructions on how to use your products: If you sell shelving or organizational products, for example, create a special report showing how to use your products to organize a home or garage.

Keepsakes: Offer a recipe book, for example.

A bonus: If someone subscribes, offer a 33 percent discount on his or her next purchase, for example.

Once you sell to someone, put his or her name on a mailing list. It’s easy to do so. Record the information in a word processing or spreadsheet file. The spreadsheet option is especially good because the contents can be easily exported to a mailing list service.

Send that person a newsletter or e-mail that tells about your new products or that simply describes what you’re up to.

Before you start gathering your customers' contact information, check with your marketplace to make sure you know their policy on e-mail marketing. Some venues (notably, Amazon.com) prohibit the use of customer e-mail addresses for marketing.

Keeping Your Content Fresh and Up to Date

Do you have a favorite blog, comic strip, or newspaper columnist website that you like to visit each day? I certainly do. With luck, your customers will want to visit your site, eBay Store, or other sales venue every day as well. Of course, that won’t be the case unless you come up with new material on a regular basis.

I know what you’re thinking: You have so many things to do that you can’t possibly revisit your website every day and change headings or put new sales online. You have to get the kids off to school, pack up some merchandise, run to the post office, clean up the house — the list goes on and on. You can’t be in two places at the same time. Two people can be, though. Consider hiring a student or friend to help run your site and suggest new content for you.