A simple, yet vital question. When they Google, will you be there?
Why so vital? Pick your survey... Dan McDade in The Truth About Leads lifted the fog for me by explaining his research showing that 80% percent of the time buyers find sellers. How does that grab you, sales professional?
You spend your life knocking on doors, trying mightily to get in, and just about the only time you DO get in it's NOT due to your knocking! The facts demand a rethinking of our prospecting priorities.
THE focus must be on becoming highly visible to the search engines.
How? Let's first strip away the cacophony from the hoards of self-appointed social media, SEO, etc. gurus and focus on the single, simple thing most critical to being found - content. Content is king. Waste not a minute more time on anything else until you have 50 pieces of great content. Not on key words. Not on page views. Not on bounce rates. Not ANY of that stuff.
Without great content, all that other gobeldy gook is W-O-R-T-H-L-E-S-S.
It's trying to run before you walk; to walk before you crawl. Do you need a robust, highly optimized, replete-with-all-the-bells-and-whistles e-Rep beloved by Google? Absolutely!
Just please... Do not start with the bells and whistles. Start by extracting all that glorious insight, knowledge and experience from you brain and embedding it into electronic formats. Create great content first.