About Empower by GoDaddy

Empower by GoDaddy in Partnership with AEO equips microbusiness owners with training, mentorship, support, and products to establish and amplify their digital presence in the marketplace.

The Curriculum

The curriculum consists of pre-recorded webinars, PowerPoint presentations, and worksheets.

Curriculum topics include: 

  1. Evaluate Your Company’s Brand: This course is the foundation for all other courses as it helps you specify what makes your business unique, differentiating you from the competition, a message that your website needs to effectively communicate. This course integrates basic branding concepts.
  2. Choose the Products Best for Your Business: This introductory course helps you understand the different components to building an online presence, and provides a walkthrough on how to evaluate which products are best suited for your business. It also provides an overview on best product management practices for domain ownership and hosting when others are helping you.
  3. Build an Effective Site – Website Design: In this course, you’ll learn how to evaluate what information you should place on your site, helping you communicate your brand identity.
  4. Build an Effective Site – Content Generation: This course provides specific guidance on how you can write web content that engages customers and boosts search engine rankings.
  5. Get Found with Search Engine Optimization: Learn about SEO, best practices, content marketing and optimizing images.
  6. Ecommerce Quick Start: This course will help you discover if you need an ecommerce platform and guides you on how to quickly launch an ecommerce site. You’ll also learn the critical components to running an ecommerce site.
  7. Reach Your Customers through Email Marketing: Learn best practices to grow your business through email marketing.
  8. Meaningfully Engage Your Customers through Social Media: Learn best practices for creating compelling digital content and building a social media calendar, leveraging free organic options. The course provides introductory guidance on leveraging paid online advertising options and explains how to identify appropriate goals for your investment in online advertising.
  9. Serve your Customers and Generate Sales: Learn best practices and tips on how to create a world class customer service experience and how this asset will help you generate sales.
  10. Protect Your Customer and Yourself: Security 101: If you’re taking customer information or payments over the web, you need to ensure you’re protecting the customer. Learn best practices and tips to keep your customers safe – as well as your SEO rankings, which will be negatively impacted if you run an unsafe site.

Additional Program Support and In-Kind Products

 

Each participant will receive the following tools through the program to ensure success and sustainability:

 

  1. GoDaddy products (in-kind) to establish their online presence
  2. Expert knowledge access to GoDaddy’s subject matter experts
  3. Visit #OpenWeStand for more information on how GoDaddy is supporting small businesses

COVID-19 Resource Webinars

Rethinking your Strategy and Moving to Ecommerce

With COVID-19 changing the way that we do business, this session will help participants rethink their business strategy and explore eCommerce solutions. 

View Webinar

Social Media is a Power Player

This workshop will cover how to create shareable and relevant content and
how to connect with customers on social media during a crisis. 

View Webinar

Best Practices for Teaching Virtually

With the move to virtual, this workshop will dig into best practices for
engaging your audience virtually, how to create compelling content and
how to give virtual your personal touch.

View Webinar

Staying Emotionally Healthy and Resilient During a Crisis

COVID-19 is shaping our lives in ways we never anticipated. With change can come anxiety. Join this webinar to learn tricks for maintaining your emotional health and strategies for developing new forms of resilience.

View Webinar

Empower Program Sites

Business Impact NW is a nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) dedicated to serving under-banked entrepreneurs. Their mission is to grow businesses that create jobs in underserved communities. Their vision is to enable all business owners to have an equal opportunity to succeed.

 

Business Impact NW provides coaching, classes and access to capital to community small businesses, with an emphasis on working with traditionally underserved populations – entrepreneurial low/moderate income earners, women, people of color, veterans, immigrants or members of the LGBTQ community.  

GMEN’s mission is to build the capacity of micro enterprise development organizations and small business owners around the United States of America, with a primary focus on the State of Georgia. As a statewide association they provide the primary infrastructure for assembling and dissemination information on micro enterprise development across the state. 

Justine PETERSEN is a nonprofit organization that connects low and moderate income individuals with the tools they need to access safe and affordable credit to fully realize their personal goals and dreams. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, the organization provides micro-enterprise and consumer lending, credit counseling and home ownership preparation and retention. Justine PETERSEN helps unbanked and underbanked individuals establish strong credit profiles so they can graduate to mainstream financial services and create better lives for themselves and their families. 

 

For more than 21 years, LiftFund, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, has helped individuals achieve the American Dream by providing small business lending to those who do not have access to capital from typical lending sources, such as traditional banks. Along with vital small business loans, LiftFund provides educational services at no cost to borrowers, which are essential to foster self-sufficiency. 

JEDI increases the economic well-being of people and communities through business development and local wealth creation.

To do that, they offer training, coaching, financial services, loan services and moral support to entrepreneurs in the mountains of far Northern California.

 

 

 

New Ventures Maine (NVME) is a statewide community outreach program of the University of Maine at Augusta. Started in 1978 as a displaced homemakers program, NVME’s mission is to help adults succeed in the changing economy and achieve economic security for themselves and their families. They achieve their mission by providing classes and individualized coaching in planning a career, starting a business, managing money, and building assets. 

Start Small Think Big’s mission is to help under-resourced entrepreneurs create thriving businesses in underserved areas so owners can build wealth for themselves, their families and communities. They do this by activating and engaging a top-tier network of professional volunteers who provide high-quality legal, financial and marketing services, at no cost.  

 

Kentucky Highlands Investment Corporation’s mission is to provide and retain employment opportunities in Southeastern Kentucky through sound financial investments and the provision of managerial assistance. Their purpose is to coordinate, devise, implement, and promote community, economic, and social development efforts within our twenty-two county footprint.