How to Make a Professional Online Presence, While Wearing Sweatpants

When starting your own business, you may spend many glamorous days at home in sweatpants, digging through all the nitty gritty of what it means to run your small business.

Your online presence is your way of inserting professionalism into your demeanor from the comfort of home.

Here are a few easy guidelines to follow to create your business brand:

1. Engage in respectful debate
   One of the best ways to get people excited for your services online is by joining existing conversations with others in your industry. Be mindful that first impressions online are the same as in real life. Showcase your opinions respectfully and concisely.

Without stating your opinion, you’re recognizing that there might be differences.

2. Use high resolution images
Make sure that the photography you use in your profile photos and website are high quality. Images help make your online presence beautiful, and can be a factor for people hiring you. The same goes for logos and iconography.

If you don’t have access to any of these things, try these free tools:

• For photos: Unsplash, Canva, Shutterstock, Pixabay.
• For icons: The Noun Project, Icons8, Flat Icon, Icon Shock.

3. Spell check
It may seem like a no brainer — but check your spelling. Nothing reads unprofessional like a typo, grammatical error or misplaced punctuation. Double check every instance of writing on your social media and website.

This rule doesn’t apply for Alicia Keys perhaps, but it’s still a good one.

4. Don’t speak negatively or offensively
In the same vein as respectful debate, what you write on the Internet… stays on the Internet. If you have a searchable history aligned to your personal account that doesn’t paint you in a good light, consider creating all your business accounts from scratch.

5. Show case your unique interests and skills
As a business owner, of course you as a person and you as a business will have to be closely aligned. Get in the habit of writing and participating in ways that showcase your interests and your skills. Enter conversations based on what you know and how it can help your future customers, not your opinion.

Learning how to be your business online and in person takes time. There’s no one formula that fits all. But, the best way to figure it out is to start and see what works for you.