03. Checklist To Start Your Business Online

Burhaan Pattel  0:00  
One of my friends asked me recently for a checklist to start an online business. And so this is the video. So if you're watching friend, this is for you, the first thing you need for your company is your name. And next to that name. Number two is the vision for the company. So your reason your why, in terms of why do you want to make the company? What is the purpose of the company? The third thing is defining who your customers are, what are their needs? What are the solutions that you're trying to solve for them? So those are the first three. Now that you've got your name and some of the vision and some of the purpose, you need the domain name. Now, you may, you may think, oh, why do I have to go into the tech stuff right away? Well, you're building an online business, whether you like it or not, even if it's an offline business, I would still recommend you having with a domain name, at a minimum. Buy the domain name, even if you don't put up a website yet, just reserve the name. And this doesn't necessarily mean that you have to register a company yet. I'm just saying buy the domain name. So at least you've got the name reserved.

Burhaan Pattel  1:01  
With the name and with the domain name, now, you now have a finalized name. Because you might think of a name that is not available as a domain name, right? You might think of a name that is maybe too expensive, as a domain name, take that name, and create all the social media accounts, whether you intend using them or not just create the names on all of them. And so here's the list, Facebook page, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn page, YouTube channel, possibly a medium account, if you're an artist, or some sort of a designer behance account with that name, a Twitter account with that name on LinkedIn is going to be a LinkedIn company page. And on Facebook, it's going to be a Facebook page business page. Those are the big ones. And of course, Pinterest, those are all the big ones, make sure you just reserved the name, even if you're going to be using or not using all of those channels right in the beginning.

Burhaan Pattel  1:53  
If your business has a physical address, which most likely it will, have it registered on Google My Business. So obviously, with Google My Business, you're going to use a gmail email address. And you can use a private, sort of a normal gmail.com email address. You don't necessarily need an email address attached to your domain name yet, but have that Google My Business Page, registered and up and running immediately. What that's going to do, Google is going to email you or they're going to SMS you to verify or they're going to contact you somehow, to verify your business. To verify that it's real, to verify that there's a real person behind it, they'll probably post you something in the country that I stay in Thailand, they posted me a physical document that says, hey, thank you for registering your business on Google My Business, here's the verification code, you log back into the system, you put the verification code in. And then now you're officially a registered business on Google My Business, there may be other business directories that you may need to register on. And you know what those are, so go ahead and register those.

Burhaan Pattel  2:57  
Another thing you need to do for your online business, I mentioned email, but eventually you will need an email account. Now people will say, Yeah, but you have a Gmail account. A Gmail free account has certain limitations. And while it's functional, it can work for you as a business, or in your business. Having a professional domain name, email address, gives you that little extra edge, you may not you know, your clients may not say anything about it, this is one of those unwritten business rules online. But when you're communicating from a domain name, there are certain things there's certain sort of, there's a level of status that comes along with it. And it's a level of professionalism that I think you need to say that, hey, you're serious. And this is a business, you've spent the time you've spent a little bit of money to have that email account working. Once you've got sort of the structure and you maybe your products, or maybe you know, the services that you're going to deliver on, start working on your website design, you don't have to do it yourself, you can get somebody to help design the site for you. There are also loads of templates available online, find stock images, or create images or tech, get a photographer to take pictures of yours of you if you're the face of the business, if it's a personal brand.

Burhaan Pattel  4:12
So the digital assets that you need is obviously sort of a logo for your website, which is also going to be you be used on all your social media channels for profile images. Now logo is is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of branding. And of course I mentioned this, your why and your vision, your mission. There's also the story that comes along with and there's a lot of sort of background things that need to happen when it comes to building a business and and actually creating a compelling reason for people to interact with your business. But that needs to translate into the branding of the company. And one of the elements of branding, like I said is the logo.

Burhaan Pattel  4:48  
Then you're going to create all your images for your Facebook page. So you know you've got the little header that needs to go above on the Facebook page profile. You've got, you know, the Snapchat logo that's going to go up there, you're going to have the LinkedIn business profile page that's going to have a header, the Twitter header that even Google My Business is going to require some images, a little bit of content. Once you've collected all of those assets, and you've got your design, or you're going to create those things yourself, start uploading all of those things immediately to, to those social profiles.

Burhaan Pattel  5:22  
So while your website is being designed or being built, and you've got your messaging kind of sorted out, you've got your name, you've got your profiles for quite some digital assets, you've got the branding, you've got your colors, and start creating the following accounts, Google Analytics, if you intend using Facebook ads, go to business.facebook.com. Create the facebook pixel in your Facebook Ads Manager. Another account that you need is Google ads. Again, if you're going to be doing Google advertising, at some point, even if it's a later date, a year or two years down the line, whenever just have that Google Google Ads account ready for you, and have the tracking codes and the remarketing codes ready so that it's on your website, you don't have to worry about it. Once it's there, if you decide to ever advertise that asset, that code and the data that is associated with that code will be handy will be useful for your business later on.

Burhaan Pattel  6:18  
Another thing you need when it comes to running an online business is a way for your website to communicate to you. So when people fill in a contact form, or they are looking for information, maybe they you have a phone number on your website, so they're gonna call you directly fine. But if you have some sort of contact form on your website, or maybe you decide to put up an email newsletter, you want to wait, wait for the website to communicate with you. And so you need the website, we will send you notifications. So make sure that that function is available on your website. And it's tested in that it's working from a marketing point of view, is an email list. So you're going to maybe use a free MailChimp account, or maybe, you know, using a tool like ConvertKit, or Active Campaign, or any of these other email marketing tools, to actually when people subscribe to a newsletter, that you start collecting this list. And so you can start sending them emails, email is a great way to market what you do, but also tell a story about what you do.

Burhaan Pattel  7:18  
People who come to your website who subscribe to these things have shown an interest in you. They have shown an interest in what you do. They want more information they've engaged and they've opted in. So same thing with a Facebook page. When people follow you on your Facebook page, they're looking for more information. They're following you because they like what they see. And they're looking for more information. Same thing on Instagram. Another thing I would suggest, and this is now going very much deep, very deep into sort of the rabbit hole of actually running and creating an online business is to start posting on social media, you have the you have the accounts created. And definitely you want a few followers, you want a few fans, you want a few people coming to your website. So start posting put together a content strategy, a content plan. And yeah, that that's going to help you because for people who are liking your posts, liking your Instagram posts, liking videos, possibly that's your mechanism to getting your word out.

Burhaan Pattel  8:16  
The social media and the organic sort of way of doing things is is definitely a long term play and something you need to keep in mind. And I think that's that's it that covers pretty much most of what you need. As a checklist of all the things that you need. I'm going to have all of these items listed below in the description. And we have mentioned a tool here, then I will link to those tools in the description. Some of those links will be affiliate links, which because I'm a partner, or I'm an affiliate to those companies. I will get a little bit of a kickback. If you decide to subscribe, try those things out. I have not been sponsored by anybody to make this video. So with that being said, Thank you so much. If you like this video, hit the like button. And let me know in the comments, sort of if I've left anything out if you recommend anything else, if there's a platform that I missed, maybe and again, it depends on you know what your business is about. But yeah, let me know in the comments, subscribe to the channel if you liked it. I really really enjoyed making this video for you guys. And to my friend. Thank you for asking the question. And I'll see you guys the next one. Thank you very much. Bye.