5 tips that every entrepreneur needs to grow an online business

Growing a successful online business as an entrepreneur can feel daunting and overwhelming. But if you follow these 5 tips you can grow an online business, with more ease and less stress.

You can start and grow an online business without feeling so overwhelmed

The online world is inundated with people sharing tips on how to grow an online business. But a lot of times, those tips aren’t applicable to everyone, they aren’t accessible to everyone starting out, or, they are confusing and hard to do alone. By the way, no one is meant to grow a successful business alone. We all need someone to help us and guide us and hold us accountable for intentional action.

But, even before hiring a business coach, you can take steps to grow an online business without feeling like you are climbing a mountain with no lifeline.

Let’s take a look at how my 5 C’s of personal branding can be applied to help you grow an online business

Clarity is the first step to take to successfully grow an online business

If you want to start and grow an online business, you must have clarity. When you have clarity, you have more confidence. And when you have more confidence you also trust yourself more. Likewise, when you have clarity and confidence and trust yourself, your soulmate clients are going to have clarity be confident, and trust you.

So where do you begin to discover clarity?

Purpose

It starts with knowing your purpose and what you can do to truly make an impact and serve others. If you make a list of your values, visions, and passions you will see overlap in the three. Where that overlap occurs, you will discover your purpose. That thing that you can do to feel fulfilled, but also make an impact and serve others.

Soulmate client

Once you have clarity around your purpose, it’s time to discover who your soulmate client is. Who are the people you feel called to serve? What specifically do the people need from you? Know exactly what the problem is that people have and how you can help them with it.

How you can help

If you are struggling to identify how you can help people, look at what your purpose is and all of the experiences that have led you to where you are today. Your soulmate client is 10 steps behind you. That may look like 10 years, 5 years, 3 years, or a few months, but all of the experiences that you’ve grown through are what they are going through at this moment.

Clarity means aligning with your values

The key to clarity is aligning all you do with your values. Your purpose involves your values and therefore, if you want to connect with your soulmate clients to grow an online business, you must stay aligned with your values, your visions, and your passions.

You must have clarity around your purpose, the impact you want to make, the service you can and want to provide, who you want to serve, how you will serve them, where and when you will serve them, and your mission for serving them, in other words, your why.

Keep in mind that it is challenging to achieve clarity if you are struggling with mindset barriers. Similarly, if you aren’t aligned with your values, you may feel more fear and anxiety which will result in procrastination. I can’t emphasize enough how important having a positive mindset is to achieve clarity.

Being Cohesive is the second thing you need to grow an online business

When I talk about being cohesive, I am referring to your brand identity and your branding. Your personal brand is what others think, say, and feel about you. Branding is how you communicate what makes you unique from all others in your area of expertise. And your brand identity is your color palette, typography, and logo, identifying factors, but now what truly differentiates you? Click here to read more about the differences between a personal brand, branding, and brand identity.

Become recognizable, memorable, and sharable to build trust to grow your online business

In order to stand out as a personal brand and become recognizable, memorable, and sharable, you need to use all of these things cohesively from your website to your social media platforms. In order to grow an online business, you must have trust. Trust determines buying practices. The more recognizable, memorable, and sharable you are, the more people will trust you.

Think about stopping the scroll on social media. You want people to see your content and immediately think, that’s Jane, I love her and know she provides value so I don’t want to miss this post. They stop and consume your content, and their trust in you grows.

The third thing you need to grow an online business is consistency

Consistency doesn’t refer to the thickness of cake batter when talking about how to grow an online business but rather being consistent.

Consistent messaging to grow an online business

When talking about being cohesive I didn’t mention your copy or messaging. These are very important and they do need to be cohesive, but they also need to be consistent.

Every piece of content you create should be clear and consistent about what you do, who you serve, how you serve them, and why you serve them. You never what to confuse your audience. Confusion will break trust. And we know that confused people never buy.

The more consistent you are with the content you create on your website and all other platforms, the more trust you will build.

Consistently showing up for your audience helps grow an online business

You also want to be present consistently. The best part about being present is that you get to choose what works best for you. Do you want to write a blog post once a month or once a week? How many times a week do you want to post on social media? What about emailing your subscribers? How often do you want to show up in their email inbox? You get to decide so that you can be consistent, showing up in a way that works for you. Following recommendations of people online is not necessarily going to work for you. Some people show up on social media multiple times a day. If that doesn’t work for you and you can only show up 3 times a week, make that choice but stay consistent so that your audience knows when to expect you and can see that you are consistently showing up for them.

The more consistent you are, the more trust you will build. In addition, the more consistent you are with your messaging, the more people will see you as an expert.

The fourth tip to help you grow an online business is content.

Your content will become the deal-breaker for your audience getting to know you, understanding what makes you unique from all others in your space, and building relationships. At the end of the day, your goal is to build trust. You build trust by building relationships. Your content from your website copy, blog posts, email marketing campaigns, and social media post is what will help you emotionally connect with your audience to build relationships and trust.

People often dislike social media and the demand for creating content. However, if you look at creating content as an opportunity for developing relationships and building trust so that you can grow your online business it won’t seem so daunting.

Ultimately, your content is your branding. It is your effort to differentiate yourself, create an emotional connection with your audience, build relationships and community, and convert them to soulmate clients because they trust you.

Repurposing content to make your life easier while you grow your online business

In addition, repurposing content makes content creation easier. You can begin with a blog and repurpose the blog into multiple social media posts and an email to your audience. It takes people 7 to 20 times to see or hear something and remember it. This statistic is justification for repurposing your content to ensure that your audience gets to know you as the expert you are.

Lastly, you need a community to grow an online business

Your community begins with your family and friends. You might think they will get sick of hearing your messages or seeing you on social media, but they love you and want to support you, and will share you with their friends, neighbors, and extended family.

Your community is not only a referral source but an opportunity for collaboration. The more you create opportunities for collaboration, the more your community will grow. For example, when you are a guest in someone’s Facebook group, when you collaborate for an event when you collaborate for a social media post or guest on a podcast or blog, you are reaching a larger audience. The collaborator’s audience will immediately trust you because the collaborator trusts you.

As you develop relationships on social media and through networking, build your community and extend invitations for collaborations and joint referrals.

Summary

All of the Cs are connected and result in trust. Clarity builds confidence which builds trust. Being cohesive helps you become recognizable and memorable, which in turn helps people trust you. Consistency in messaging and presence builds also helps you become recognizable and memorable and is the key to meaningful content. Content is your gateway to developing relationships, differentiating yourself from all others in your space, and building trust and community. Your community is your fan base will who ultimately share about you and hires you.