Building your company’s online presence can be time consuming and frustrating. However, it’s incredibly important for the future of your business. Building your online presence won’t just happen overnight, but it’s very important as it enables any current customers or potential new leads to be able to find your business, get to know what you do and ultimately to trust you.
However, building your online presence need not appear such a daunting task if you know where to start. Your online presence is all the identities that you have created (both personal and business-related) and the interactions that these identities have had online. When used successfully, your online presence can help you to spread brand awareness, and even gain you followers and customers – in fact, it can help you achieve many of your business goals. It can take a lot of time and energy to build your online presence. From establishing your goals to building your website and social media presence, there is a lot of work involved. Read on for five tips that will help improve your business online presence, to help you plan how you can start raising your business profile.
- Set your goals
Firstly, you need to define and understand both your long-term and short-term business goals as these will help influence which areas of your online presence need to be developed first. When you start to review which areas of your business need attention, you should ask yourself how will the changes you make online help you to reach your goals. Keep a list of the goals or challenges that you set, so that you can refer back to them in the future. It’s important too to understand that you aren’t building an online presence just because you think it’s something that you ‘should’ do. Make sure that you make strategic decisions so that you can meet with your overall business goals, all while ensuring that your company benefits and grows in the interim.
- Be social
Being social means getting your business out there, without appearing like you are trying too hard. Make sure that you explore the best social programs to meet with your business needs and requirements. Just because your competitors have a Facebook page, it doesn’t mean that you must. When it comes to using social media, then consistency is key. You need to regularly post and engage to ensure that you gain and retain followers. Sites such as Intense can help provide you with a better understanding of the various social channels. Once your social media is up and active on a regular basis, you can start to develop the content and topics that you use to engage with your audience and to ensure that you are following key marketing trends. By just using one hashtag or engaging with one specific customer, you could turn yourself into the Internet’s next big thing overnight.
- Track your progress
How will you know if all of your efforts are paying off? Luckily, online tools enable you to track your progress to see if you are making a difference to the number of likes and followers that your pages are gaining. If you aren’t taking time to use these analytics to review how your pages are performing, you won’t be able to recognize key trends or identify why your traffic has had a spike (either upwards or downwards). Remember, that using analytics are important but there is no one-size fits all approach. Different companies will monitor different areas, so make sure that you take the time to see that you choose the right analytics for your business. If you are struggling to improve your online presence, then consider revamping your website content or try using different types of blog posts on LinkedIn or your social channels. Remember that your followers will get easily bored, so by surprising them with a new piece of content or an article type, you will regain the attention of anyone who keeps an eye on what you are saying and producing online.
When it comes to copy, you can’t get complacent either. Make sure that you regularly update all your social channels and articles on your company site too, to keep things fresh and relevant. An outdated social presence will reflect badly on how customers perceive your business, so make sure that you use regular updates and experiment to find the best type of content for you and your business needs.
- Grow your relationships
If you truly want to ensure that you are seen online, then you are going to have to take the time to grow your relationships too. Try finding an online group or community that shares the same interests as you, or whose business operates in your industry. Now, you can start to build relationships by actively engaging in the group and sharing ideas and thoughts with your new online contacts. You could also try engaging with any groups who fit the same description as your audience or avatar, enabling you to gain insights into what your consumers want and need. When you are reaching out online, always ask others for help first rather than broadcasting your business or service. Once you have built new relationships, users will start to reach to you for advice, enabling you to begin sharing your content over time.
- Be patient
Building your online presence takes hard work and dedication, sadly there is no quick fix. You will need to ensure that you are patient and consistent in your approach to ensure that all your efforts pay off in the long term. Start small. You could begin by first giving your social media presence some much needed attention. Next, take the time to check into which types of content work for you and your business and don’t forget to use analytics to help identify any areas of your website or digital channels that need some attention. Make sure that you grow your online relationships and take time to learn and obtain advice from others. Once you’ve done all this, you are bound to see your online presence improve.
