Jim Anthony — August 29, 2019 — August 29, 2019
So, you’ve managed to make an impression on a potential investor. Congratulations, your 1% of the way home. What’s the first thing they are going to do if they are serious about a possible investment in your company or fund? They are going to check you out online. Capital raising parlance calls this due diligence.
Step one of the due diligence process is to visit your website, review your blog, and check out your social media pages. Who are you? What have you been posting? Are you tuned in to your industry? Are you a thought leader? Are you reliable, credible, knowledgeable? Investors can learn a lot about you in a flash based on your website, blog, and social media pages. Your first impression was good. However, “You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a Second Impression.” (Title of my upcoming book) You need to make this count. The good news is, it’s easy to do.
You need a website. Moreover, you need a blog page where you can continually post new content designed to inform and educate your audience. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It just needs to look professional. You can quickly achieve ‘professional’ with a WordPress or SquareSpace template.
The website is all about the content. I’ve heard recent discussions about websites versus social media. Some people think all the action is on social media and the website doesn’t matter. If you feel this way, you may be missing an opportunity. Actually, you’re missing a huge opportunity. Consider the following.
Think of it as digital real estate. You own your website and blog. You rent your social media pages. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn own your data. They could obliterate your social media presence in an instant if they wanted to. However, nobody can touch your website or your blog. You own that.
When it comes to online presence, here’s the secret sauce. Use all of these channels synergistically to facilitate activity and engagement to. Put the meatier, longer content on your blog, and use email and social media to cast out a large net and attract people to your website. Don’t think of it as one or the other. Think of websites, blogs, emails, and social media posts as all working together to build an ecosystem of information shared with fellow human beings to facilitate connection and engagement. Build the whole system, not just one or two of the parts.
Taking this approach will accomplish several things. It will have a positive impact on your brand. People will see you online, and what they see will be based on sound, informative content. Investors will observe you consistently posting quality truth bombs. How do you think that will impact their perception? If you’re the one providing useful information, then you are establishing yourself as being knowledgeable and aware of the latest trends and news in your industry. Those are the people investors want to support with their capital.
The next few posts will talk about what types of content you should be posting, frequency, timing, and other best practices. Then we will discuss how to leverage that content to get in front of and identify your top investor prospects.
This article originally appeared on the So-Mark Blog and has been republished with permission.
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