 Welcome to the journey today. We're gonna talk about how to take your home base business and put it online Let's jump in. I have a special guest our co-host Justin Neely in the house. What's up, Justin? What up? How's it going? Living the dream. Yeah So first thing that comes to mind and I get asked us a lot is Where do you start when it comes to just technology or you know because you say online what comes first? Website or domain well if you're currently offline right as a home business You got to get online and the first way to do that is with a domain name and a website That's your online real estate. That's how people find you online. That's like go daddy comm or coffee and kickflips comm It's how people get to you It's like a street address right and after that you need hosting essentially think of that as like online storage for your Website and then you need something to build the website now many people aren't web designers And they don't want to spend a lot of their time building a website So there are tons of tools out there that just help you build websites or there's WordPress if you're a little bit more Technically inclined but not me you don't have to go overboard Just have a home page have a little bit about what you do Maybe the services you provide or if you're online shop like if you're on a farmer's market You want to really bring that to life and sell your products online you can have a little online shop That's pretty easy to use and a contact page Yeah, so speaking of the farmer's market, let's say I'm out there, you know selling some plant-based soap or okay Or both I'm in So once I get a domain that makes a ton of sense because we're going from offline online Then what's next? Well the probably next step is social and that's kind of where you're the expert You want to be on your favorite platforms Facebook Twitter Instagram? You also want to be on this business directory sites like Yelp Google Pages claim your listings Don't let it just be open to the masses. That's your baby, right? It's your business. Make sure you control it Okay, so once you're on the social media, I know that's a big step But it's not where majority of your time is going to go majority of your time goes into actually Creating content so you connect with your customers, right? So you elaborate on that the importance of engagement and connecting with Potential customers, right? So we'll take the kind of the farmers market example that you have there So if I'm what were you selling hot sauce and what? Plant-based soaps, of course great combination So if I'm after you use the hot sauce I'm selling hot sauce and soap at the farmers market. I want to take it online I really want to take it into social media presence What I don't want to do is just start listing off my products and saying hey This is all the cool stuff you can buy for me What I want to do is basically start opening people up to my world the the hot sauce in all natural soaps Interesting world. So you do that by Basically showing what you do like the Instagram story is a great way to do that Just pop up cool on making the soap or making the hot sauce behind the scenes Try not to get those mixed because you don't want to like be scrubbing with hot sauce soap But open up your world talk about what you do as a business and be relatable people buy from people They don't buy from companies right if you start to really open up who you are as a business owner your day to day The struggles you go through maybe just some of the cool stuff you do beyond your business itself It really helps people connect with you and then they're more up to buy from you tell their friends about you and get a hashtag Yes, about your soap or the hot sauce. Well my soap and my hot sauce brand Yeah, so that way when customers are using my products. They can use the hashtag and then I can reshare that or retweet it right right over and over and over and that's helping you create just more content That's called user-generated content. I know you're an expert of this. It's making people Create posts and having your hashtag in there and that gives you more content to post I'm curious Email does that matter? Email marketing still a big thing should businesses do that if they're trying to go online with their home-based business Yes, email is super underrated Well, a lot of people think of email marketing as spam and it shouldn't be spam It is spam if you go the same approach of like saying, hey, here's all my products. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye But you want to really engage the conversation Engage that conversation and help your your people out if you maybe say you're doing the hot sauce and the all natural So maybe you send out recipes of your your own natural soap You would try this at home with your family or your kids Try to get different ideas and be creative about the content you give out and even if people don't open your actual message That's okay. They still see your brand each and every time they go in their inbox. That's brand That's saying top of mind. Yeah So with your website a great thing to do to start collecting those emails You can't just say hey sign up for my newsletter. Nobody cares about a newsletter You create a lead generator and what that is is just something free that you can give them in exchange for their email address So if I'm a hot sauce and now natural soap, maybe I say cool sign up enter email I'll send you $20 20% discount or enter email And you'll get five recipes to do this yourself things like that It's kind of an even exchange and then continue to build that list You're giving me some good ideas. I check my email when I wake up. I check it throughout the day I check it in the evening. So it's still with me forever Yeah, it's still very much a channel that consumers are using and checking frequently So it's another avenue if you will to reach that next customer or like you said with your regulars Just stay top of mind, right? You want to be where your audience is and your audience lives on social and they live in their emails All right, so that's a wrap on today's episode. I want to give a huge shout out to my co-host Justin Neely the expert I hope you helped your home-based business get online If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you Go ahead and share below and in the meantime subscribe to our channel. See ya