Here’s how to get your small business heard

So you’ve worked extensively hard planning and building your business and putting everything in place. But now for the real tough part; getting your business heard.

The heart of your business success lies in its marketing. Without solid marketing strategies in place, your business may offer the best products or services in your industry but the huge pool of potential customers know nothing about it.

Getting the word out about your business can be a challenging task. And once you have you foot in the door, keeping up the momentum can be even trickier.

Heather DeSantis, founder of PR company, Publicity For Good, has shared her top strategies with Entrepreneur, for making a real impact and getting your brands name out there.

1.Position yourself as an expert

Sharing your thoughts and opinions in the form of a blog or social media posts can really build up your reputation as an expert in the industry. By showing your audience that you are knowledgeable in that area will allow them to instil more trust in your brand.

“It’s really important to think beyond the product you sell and really understand the solution that you provide. Transition from being a business owner and someone selling a product to a thought leader, someone in the trenches sharing information,” DeSantis explained.

2. Make a social plan and stick to it

The next tip DeSantis shared was too create a solid social media strategy. Take time to figure out which social media sites your target customers are frequent on. From this, you should create a profile from which you post content on regularly.

“You need a consistent plan to share on Twitter and Facebook,” DeSantis says.

“People get so stuck in not wanting to be annoying, but with the algorithm, even if you post it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that people are going to see it. With Twitter you can share daily. Facebook share weekly. You can add press coverage to your website as a blog [as well].”

3. Have a multi-platform approach

Today, the speed of communications is ever-increasing and new platforms are constantly emerging. A good way to make sure your brand voice is heard is by utilizing this ploforia of platforms and spreading your messages in an interconnected cross-platform strategy.

This will create a continuous story experience for your audience, and will create more meaningful connections because of this.

“Before clients do TV interviews, we’ll have them pre-promote it,” said DeSantis.

“When they are at the station, they will do a Facebook Live. They’ll take photos. Do as many touches as possible to get people excited to take them on the journey.”

4. Stay on top of the news

According to DeSantis, the ability to get PR coverage for clients is accelerated if the client keeps up with industry news.

“Simply by watching the news you can use that as leverage and reaching out to the media and saying, ‘I’m an expert and I would love to give you my raw, honest, opinion about this.’ By using breaking news and trending topics and awareness months, you make yourself timely and relevant,” she told Entrepreneur.