smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

The size of SMEs makes them well positioned to use new technology quickly and gain competitive advantage – if they know how. Here, Xenios Thrasyvoulou, CEO of website for freelancers PeoplePerHour.com, and SmallBusiness.co.uk provide some top tips on how to make a big impact on the net.

Sell online

E-commerce is no longer an application that is expensive to implement and demands thousands of pounds in agency fees. With payment systems like Paypal, Google Checkout and MoneyBookers in widespread use, e-commerce is essentially now a plug-and-play application you can do yourself or with the minimal cost of a freelance coder.

Social network

With the phenomenal spread of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, you now have a massive target audience at no cost. The trick is to do it intelligently so it’s not perceived as spam. Create an audience in groups and forums and gradually build your credibility. Then – and only then – hit them with your message. Most people make the mistake of putting their brand out straightaway with limited or no impact.  

Use SEO

Many people still perceive search engine optimisation (SEO) as a black box and shy away from it completely. Equally, many companies make the mistake of wasting money on agencies that promise first page rankings but never deliver. So, it’s worth educating yourself a little about SEO, and you’ll soon realise that there’s no black magic. A good start is to simply type in the search terms relevant to your business and see who comes top. You can then use a plethora of free tools available on the web to analyse those sites. For example, Yahoo!’s ‘Site Explorer’ reveals how many sites link into them – itself a key determinant of SEO. And there are a myriad of others like SEOchat.com, which tells you the density of the relevant keywords on those pages. Those sites will also identify what other factors determine page ranking (there are dozens of them).

Create a user community

Allowing your customers to interact with one another online and share feedback can be the best way of developing a sense of ‘belonging to your brand’. A common mistake is to over-censor the community to avoid ‘negative publicity’. Often, if you let your customers complain about a perceived problem it’s the quickest and most effective way for the issue to go away. The chances are they’ll find someone else who’s encountered it that can guide them through a solution. In the meantime, you have a live and vibrant feedback system that will be invaluable to you in improving your product or service.

Open source applications

Web 2.0 brought us a plethora of open source and off-the-shelf applications for no cost – something never before accessible to this extent, especially to small businesses. Customising them to suit your purpose is also becoming simpler and cheaper by the day. For starters, if it’s open source you’ll be able to find myriad online resources, forums and communities to guide you through what you need to do. You’ll also find hundreds of coders who have worked with that technology before.