For some small-business owners, going online can be the lifeline that keeps their business afloat.
When you’re starting a business from scratch you have everything to learn and no one to guide you. You need people to bounce ideas off, who will give encouragement, offer advice, show you what you need, and help you find it. You need access to a lot of information from multiple sources, and you need a way to communicate effectively and efficiently.
Fortunately, all of this can be had for the cost of a computer, modem and an Internet account. When you go online, you tap into a virtual office, equipped with vast libraries and staffed with mentors and friends.
Here are some of the things you can do online:
E-mail
It will never replace the U.S. Postal Service, fax machine, or that old relic, the telephone, but as an adjunct to all of the above, e-mail will make your work more efficient.
E-mail allows you to reach someone without interrupting him or her. The busy executive is more likely to answer an electronic message than return a phone call or reply to a letter. E-mail is also a terrific way to exchange documents without wasting paper. If you want a client to proof some copy, send it via e-mail.
Networking
The Internet and most commercial online services have discussion groups and electronic mailing lists where users discuss topics of common interest. On the Internet, there are Usenet newsgroups devoted to business topics, such as alt.business and alt.business.misc. You may find your best networking opportunities in groups that relate to other interests. If you have a question, want some feedback on an idea, or are just curious about what others are doing, join one of these groups.
Research
Mailing lists, discussion groups and electronic newsletters will help you stay on top of changes in your industry. The Internet also provides access to remote databases and World Wide Web sites. By logging on, you can get an astonishing amount of information -- everything from articles about companies, to stock quotes to the latest demographic statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau. If you’re interested in marketing your product or service to a particular company, look it up on the World Wide Web. You can learn a lot about a company by its web page.
Marketing
You can advertise your business by creating a page on the World Wide Web. If you do this, however, you should also provide useful information and other incentives to keep visitors coming back.
You can also post a classified ad on a bulletin board. Sometimes the most effective marketing is name-recognition. Develop yours by becoming an active participant in newsgroups. Always sign-off with your “signature,” which can include a brief description of your business. By answering users’ questions and contributing frequently to various discussion groups, you will develop a reputation for being a credible and reliable source. Who knows where that can lead?
Of course there are some drawbacks to the virtual office, the biggest being the huge amounts of time going online can gobble up. Discipline yourself to go in, get what you want, then get out. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, use a search tool, such as Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.digital.com/) or Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/). There are literally millions of Web documents, so give a precise description. If you use the keyword “marketing” because you want information on how to market your business, your search engine is going to come back with reams of pages that contain that word, few of which will be useful. Think about what you want, anticipate ways the search engine might misinterpret your request (marketing can be a reference to grocery shopping, for instance), come up with key words, and connect them with the terms AND, OR, and NOT. For instance, “small-business AND marketing NOT groceries,” will produce a greater ratio of hits to misses. When you find a Web site you think you’ll want to visit later, save its address in your web browser.
If you haven’t done so already, launch your business into cyberspace. Your subscription to an Internet server may become your most valuable business tool.
