I think about this question all the time, because it takes me back to a state of mind that my clients usually find themselves in.
They are at the foot of a mountain, at least in their minds, so how do I get them to place the first foothold? How do I get them to think of the best path to the summit?
I need to see things through their eyes and understand what they need to hear.
This is what I would tell myself if I were to start all over again.
Just Write
Get good at writing. You’re going to need it. Whether you’re writing articles, creating scripts for videos, writing social media posts or emailing subscribers. Writing will be a major part of your online business.
The best way to get good at writing is to practice it.
You could start by jumping straight into writing publicly (the best option, more on how to do that later) or you could start a journal and make sure you write something in it every day.
Write about what you’re good at, what you’re interested in, what moves you emotionally (in a good way and a bad way). What you will find when you look back at what you write is that there will be certain trends in the things you write and, of particular interest, the things that bring out your best writing.
Don’t overthink it. Just write 300 words a day, even if it makes no sense. Get used to writing every day. Let the improvements come naturally. Trust in your brain to improve itself over time.
There other methods of improving your writing that you can supplement your practice with. If there is one area to invest your time and perhaps money at the beginning it is in improving your writing skills.
Start Showing Your Face
Building an online presence is all about creating content and promoting your content. You need to make sure that all the great content you create actually gets seen by people.
If you want to get noticed then you need to make ‘points of connection’. These are every action you do online that make people aware of your presence.
This could be writing articles, commenting on other people’s content, sharing somebody’s video on social media and so many more.
Choose a platform to begin making your points of connection and be relentless. Add in more platforms as you get more comfortable, confident and efficient.
Right from the start, challenge yourself to do 30 straight days posting on your first chosen social media platform. Even though you don’t know what subject your online business will be about, there is no harm in building your online presence from day one.
Try to give some form of value in every post, don’t just make it about you.
Choose Your Platforms
Later, when you start arrowing in on your online business’s niche, you will want to choose your best platform a little more carefully. Right now, it’s just about getting stuck in.
Selecting a platform could be a random choice, or you could try a few out and see which you prefer.
To make it easy, I would always recommend LinkedIn for social media posts and Medium for articles. Both of which can be up and running within 30 minutes. If you already have a big following on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram then, by all means, make use of that as a springboard.
Make use of the in-built audience on these platforms to fast track building your online presence. You will need to create your own ‘home base’ in the form of a website later, but there is not a lot of point until you can start sending traffic there regularly.
Build your name first, then cash in later.
When you start writing on Medium, share your stories with friends and family to get a few people reading them straight away. But also share on your chosen social media platform.
Learn From What You Create
Online business is a constant experiment, especially when you first get going. I mentioned before that you will learn a lot from what you write and it will be very important to look back at what you have done at each step of the journey.
With your social media posts, you get immediate feedback on what performs well in terms of subject matter, your writing, images, videos and timing. Use this information and try things out.
With your articles, once you have got a decent amount up on Medium, you should be getting some people reading them. This is especially true if you are also sharing them on LinkedIn or whichever social media platform you have chosen. You might not learn a great deal from what people are reading early on, but you will certainly be able to see what subjects you keep being drawn to and what makes you write with a passion.
That is how I would start. It is a journey and there is no shortcut, so make sure you start off on the right foot.
Keep it simple to begin with. Find your feet. Then just keep going. Relentlessly.