January is already flying by, and if you’ve managed to catch your breath, I hope you’ll stop for a bit and start planning out your marketing efforts for 2015 if you haven’t done so already. What are the top three things you need to do to get ready for 2015 and get your client-gathering mojo on?

First of all, your potential clients are pre-judging you by your online presence. It’s just the way it is, so you have to pay attention to it. If you want to attract the right kinds of clients to your business, you have to get your online presence spiffed up.

These are my top three things that most business owners need to do, especially in 2015 now that the economy has rebounded and people are ready to do business with you.

Your LinkedIn Profile Is An Online Résumé

LinkedIn is where potential clients go to check you out. It’s your online résumé, with all your street-cred and experience. It may be that you set it up a long time ago, and kind of forgot about it. When was the last time you looked at or edited your LinkedIn profile? I mean really looked at it.

I admit that I hadn’t looked at my LinkedIn profile in a couple years, and I decided to get mine cleaned up last year. Agh, there was a bunch of stuff that was no longer true (my business and focus had changed), and well, it just needed updating. It’s like your website. Stuff goes stale after a while.

By the way, please send me a link request on LinkedIn if we’re not connected, and leave me a note below that you did. I love connecting with new people.

Another thing that’s really important is to get recommendations (testimonials) because they become a permanent part of your profile. Nurture those recommendations from your happy customers. There’s even a handy button “Ask for a recommendation”. Edit your profile, and scroll down until you get to the Recommendations section. Hover over the headline of that section and click the “Ask to be recommended” button. You can send it to one or more people, and I like to just say, “Hi John, I’m trying to build my business, and I wonder if you could take a minute to let us know how we’ve helped you.” That’s all you have to do. Some people will do it, some will forget, and I’ve never had anyone say, “No.”

My good friend Sydni Craig-Hart has a great video here on how to get testimonials from your clients. (Be sure to read my comment at the bottom too for another tip.)

Get Your Website Mobile-Aware Now

I’ve been saying for some time now, that if you built your website two years ago (or longer), it’s time to refresh the design. Your website probably isn’t mobile-aware, meaning that it reformats the content to fit the device. Have you ever tried to navigate a restaurant website (or any other kind for that matter) on your smart phone, and tried to get the drop-down menus to work right? Bah. It’s frustrating.

A good mobile-aware version of the website will leave your customers in a happy mood because your website gives them a responsive “fat finger” menu for cell phones, and rearranges all the content to fit the device, whether it’s a cell phone, tablet, laptop or full-sized computer.

Furthermore, Google is now starting to notify website owners that they need to “fix the mobility issues on their website“. If Google is sending notifications out, they clearly think it’s important to take the time to do, and probably penalize sites that aren’t mobile-aware.

How do you know? There are a couple ways you can test things. The simplest way is to pull up your website in your browser. Take your browser out of full-screen mode, and resize it down by dragging the right or left margin in to squish it down. If you get a scroll bar across the bottom, it’s a fixed-width site, and you’re probably not mobile-friendly. You can also use this ScreenFly testing tool for free by just putting in your web address. They’ll show you what your website looks like on any device. Try your website, then compare it to ours (bayareasearchengineacademy.org).

Start Creating Content

Content is still king. If you haven’t set up a blog (make sure it’s mobile-aware!), this is the year to do it. It’s easy to set up a WordPress blog, even if your website isn’t on WordPress. Just get basic hosting, which should only cost you a few dollars a month. Add a sub-domain to your web address, so you have http://blog.yourdomain.com and link to it from your website. They don’t have to look the same even, but should be similar. As an example:

Put together an editorial calendar for the year of what you want to communicate to your customers and clients. Make sure you have installed and correctly set up an SEO plug-in on your blog too. There are many excellent mobile-aware templates from companies like StudioPress, and others that make it super easy to create a great looking blog without much cost.

Your blog can contain lots of information that is easy to create:

  • Articles
  • Videos (embed the YouTube or Vimeo video directly in the blog post)
  • Event notifications
  • Etc.

So if you want to start building a relationship with your future clients, so they get to know, like and trust you, these are my top three things you need to focus on now. Do you agree or do you have any other ideas? Comment below if you do.