What is an online presence?
An online presence is quite easily defined; it is what comes up when your brand or business is searched for in a search engine. It represents your brand and what you stand for.
When it comes to establishing an online presence, includes setting up your own website, social media pages, and any other publications about your business that may have been released. It also helps if you periodically put out content like blogs on your website.
Why do you need it?
There are multiple reasons why building your online presence is so important. Here are some of the main reasons why:
Enhances accessibility
The main purpose of having a website for your business and having social media pages is to make sure that people are aware you exist. Not having an online presence causes a lot of people to overlook your business in favour of others who do have one.
Reaches a wider audience
The advantage of using the internet is that anyone can access it from anywhere. So, anyone can come across your business and become a customer as opposed to people only becoming a customer if they come to your shop physically.
Helps build customer relationships
With the help of reviews and comments, you can find out what part of your business is not working for your customers and how you can rectify it. You will also be able to engage with your customers and find out directly how you can do better.
Transforms your marketing
One of the biggest advantages of online shopping is that you do not have to interact with pushy sales reps or nosy customers. You can choose what you want without any outside pressure. There is even the added benefit of not having to deliver coupons or spread the news of discounts. You can simply add it to your website, add some nice keywords which will allow them to pop up more, and there you go!
Allows you to find out what works and doesn’t for your business
After a point of time, you will be able to figure out what attracts customers to your website and what does not. So, you will be able to rearrange your website to make it more attractive to your customer base and hence, get more traffic.
How can you build your online presence?
Numerous methods can help you build your online presence. Let’s take a look at the most effective ones:
Make a website
This is the first step towards creating an online presence. You need to let people know that you exist. Having a website that people can search for and that appears will allow you to be known more easily.
Having a website will also allow you to show your brand according to how you would like to do so. You will also be able to appeal to your customer base using content and the type of products they will want to see.
Build an email list
This is a very simple yet effective method to gain an online presence. Having people sign up to enjoy more exclusive content on your website will allow you to get a list of potential customers. This will also allow you to constantly keep in touch with them!
Use SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) will allow you to find out what it is you need to target so that your website will rank high on search engine result pages. Now, SEO can be broadly divided into two types – on-site SEO and off-site SEO. On-site SEO is all about making sure you are using high-ranking keywords and doing research to find out what types of content your customer base is most into. Off-site SEO is about the maintenance of your website. It is making sure all the links are working, all your pages are leading to the right sites and all your content is correctly displayed. A combination of these two will be an excellent way of stepping up your online presence. You can learn more about it in our blog!
Be active on all social media and websites
Keeping active on your website and social media pages will make sure that your customer base will not forget about you. You will be constantly putting out new forms of content and products based on what your customers like. It does not just stop here. You should also be actively interacting with your customers through their reviews and comments. This will help establish your presence immensely.
Have a social media presence
This is one of the most important ways of making sure your online presence is well-established. Simply having a website in this day and age is not enough. You need to learn how to make a page for your website on various social media platforms. There is a whole new customer base out on these platforms and having a social media presence will allow you to tap into that. For a quick guide to gettin g started with Facebook check out this blog.
Adopt new forums (platforms)
As previously stated, you need to make sure that your brand has a social media presence. It would also help if you were able to identify any rising social media platforms and establish yourself. There are multiple advantages to this: firstly, you will not have that much competition, and secondly, any engagement you push for will most likely be free since it will be a new platform.
Produce content
One of the easiest ways of building your online presence is to have a blog a newsletter or even just articles based on the type of products you have. Once you have done your keyword research, you will also be able to figure out what type of content your customer base would like to see. The logic behind this is,that the more content you put out, the more frequently you will appear on a search engine result page. You can also put out content according to the platform you are releasing it on – videos/vlogs for YouTube, reels for Instagram, TikTok for TikTok, etc.
Develop relationships
You need to find out who are the people you need to know in your business. For example, having a good relationship with writers or bloggers in your field of business will help you get a lot of engagement as they may write about you and in doing so will give you a lot of exposure.
Research influencer marketing
Influencers are an excellent way to get your brand some form of engagement and exposure. Every social media platform has influencers with huge followings. Take advantage of that and have them shout you out! This will allow their fanbase to come to visit your site and this will help gain you traffic.
It is also worth checking out whether the niche you are in has its fan favourites. It would be good to check them out and keep in touch with them.
Check out online advertising
This is definitely one of the most effective ways to grow your online presence. Advertising on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing will definitely bring a lot of customers to your site. You can go one step further and put out ads on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. You should also try to find out what would bring you more customers – any offers you might have on your products or the content you put out. This will enable to you only advertise that which will give you more traffic.
Conclusion
In the digital era, building your online presence is imperative to increase your visibility and in turn, increase your revenue. Contact us today for a free consultation and we’ll see how we can help your business.
