When starting up a new business, getting your online presence right first time is key (after all it’s first impressions that count!)

Your website address

You may have already chosen a name for your business, if not, or you’ve not promoted your business name yet you should take a few minutes to think about how your name translates into a website address.

Is your first choice of domain name (e.g. obrienmedia.co.uk for O’Brien Media) available?  You can check availability of website addresses by following the instructions on our domain lookup page.  If not you might want to consider alternative domain names or consider giving your business a different name if your website is going to be your primary method of communicating with your customers.

Once you’ve found an available domain name register it as quickly as possible to avoid someone else swooping in and registering your domain name before you!

Getting your message across online

Your website is a key tool to communicate who you are and what your business is all about to your prospective customers.  Think of it as your shop window, for many of your customers it’ll be the first (and often only) place they visit before they decide whether they want to purchase from yourself or a competitor.

Social networks are becoming more and more important to all types of businesses (see our survey results from earlier this year). Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, effectively using social networking to its potential is a great way to communicate your business’ message and values to your customers.

We’ve previously blogged about getting to grips with Twitter and getting started with Facebook along with highlighting how social media can go awry (even for big businesses!).