3 Easy Steps to Improve Your Digital First Impressions

In today’s world, your digital impressions can bolster or bust your reputation. From website to e-commerce, to social media platforms, more than ever your online presence dictates how your clients and prospects view your brand and choose to interact with you.

But the setup and maintenance of these platforms can be daunting, and time-consuming, to say the least.

Today on the commonsku blog, we’re covering 3 quick tips to improve your digital first impression:

Step 1. Keep your digital spaces well-groomed

You’ve got your YouTube, your Instagram, your LinkedIn, your Facebook, your Twitter, your Pinterest, and your website. Maybe you even have a TikTok, a Clubhouse, a company store, a podcast?

Whoa…that’s a lot.

There are too many digital properties around now for you to manage an effective presence on every single one of them, all the time. The desire to be everywhere, especially if there’s a new outlet getting lots of love from the media, can be strong and ignite a sense of FOMO like no other.

But it really is true what they say, quality over quantity is the best policy when it comes to your digital presence, and you’ll be better off if you pick your top digital properties and focus on them. (Need more convincing? We’ve got you.)

Tips to build your digital foundation

• Get a professional domain
  Self-hosting is cheap and easy nowadays. Domains rarely cost more than $5 or $10 for a year and with platforms like Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress, building and maintaining a nice-looking website or blog has never been easier.

• Simplify your channels
  It’s better to have one social media account where you are present and active than two or three accounts that sit there collecting digital dust. If you don’t have time to be active everywhere, figure out what channel makes the most sense for you and focus your energy on being successful there.

• Bump up your content
  After you’ve decided where you’re going to spend your time digitally, make the commitment to do it well. Provide quality content and engagement for the medium that you’ve chosen.

Step 2. Brush up on your grammar

Our online world is ruled by snappy headlines and 140-character stories. With the casual tone and short-form conventions that fill our newsfeeds and phone screens, it’s easy to let online jargon and abbreviations sneak into our business communication.

Email is still king of the mountain when it comes to business correspondence. Some rules may have changed over the years, but unless you know your client well, always err on the side of too professional. But professional doesn’t have to mean stuffy! You can still be fun or creative while maintaining a high level of professionalism.

Simple things you can do to amp up professionalism in your email

• Include a salutation, especially on your first email

• Don’t use text-speak, save the smileys and winks for Slack and Twitter

• Avoid using all-caps and words like URGENT

Step 3. Get down to brass tacks

Even though you should still mind your p’s and q’s, don’t waste time. Gone are the days of long multi-paragraph volumes of commentary. If you can’t say it quickly and succinctly, you should probably grab the phone or book a meeting.

This is not to suggest you have to go as hardcore as proponents of email theories like two.sentence.es, but get in there, get the job done, and get out.

If you’re sending promotional product ideas to your clients or prospects, remember that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” commonsku built an entire feature of our software to help distributors land more business with attractive proposals.

Researchers have found that “we make eleven major decisions about one another in the first seven seconds of meeting.” On the web, it’s even shorter where fractions of a second determine if someone even visits your website in the first place.

Just as you’d pay attention to how you looked for an in-person client meeting, you should pay attention to the digital face that you’re presenting to clients and prospects.

This post was originally posted to the commonsku Blog on March 12, 2014. it has been edited and updated as of June 11, 2021.