7 Ways Businesses Can Build a Strong Online Presence
If you are a business owner, then you must acknowledge the power that having a strong online presence brings to a business.
If you don’t, then you may fall behind your competitors who know the importance of having an online brand presence.
Strong branding in the online realm has many benefits that drive people and businesses to invest in branding programs and campaigns on the Internet. One, it will make it easier to recognize your brand, which is crucial when customers are making purchasing decisions.
Aside from that, it generates customer loyalty so that your previous customers who’ve completed a transaction with your business will come back to transact again. Additionally, it will ensure that you have brand ambassadors willing to recommend your brand to their peers.
With these benefits, it is recommended that you find ways on how to build a strong online presence if you haven’t yet. With that said, below, you’ll find seven ways businesses can create a strong online presence.
Understand what your business goals are
The most common problem that businesses have when they’re creating their online social media presence is that they don’t have a goal in mind. They believe that having a social media or online presence and posting on occasion is enough effort.
However, an aimless social media account and inconsistent approaches mean that you are hardly going to get results that you want. That is the reason why the first thing you should do before starting to build your online presence is creating a business goal.
You should also make sure that you are creating realistic expectations for your business. You can’t expect an increase in profit when you’ve only started building your community and don’t yet have a strong connection with your consumers. However, if you keep at it long enough and with smart steps, you should be able to reach the goals you’ve set.
Develop a solid platform
Once you’ve set your business goals, what you should then focus on is developing a solid platform to start off your online presence.
The best place to start with your business’s platform is your very own website. If you have a fast loading and clean-looking website, it can attract visitors to look over your business more.
Aside from that, creating a high-quality landing page experience is an excellent way of optimizing your site for search engines.
Your website should contain all relevant information about your business. Make sure that the site is easy to navigate and that you create relevant content inside your website.
Make sure that your homepage, or any other website page for that matter, is as uncluttered as possible. That will contribute to a positive brand image showing your reliability and professionalism. Otherwise, your website will seem distracting and messy and unappealing to website visitors.
Keep optimizing and improving
The key to a thriving business online is to know about how to optimize your brand for search engines.
Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of tweaking your website or content so that your site will rank high on search engine results. There are many ways you can optimize your site for search engines.
One of which is by incorporating keywords on all the right places. Keywords are the terms or phrases that will help search engines filter out the right sites based on the needs of the users who searched online.
If you already have a website and content, then you might want to look back and reoptimize or optimize previous content. That will make sure that your previous efforts aren’t going to waste.
Plus, it’s always a great touch when you continuously look for ways to improve upon yourself.
Produce consistent and valuable content
Another common mistake that a lot of brands or businesses do when they try and make a breakthrough online is that they aren’t consistent. Plus, they tend to create content for content’s sake and try to ride on trends that aren’t relevant to their business.
According to VoyMedia.com, “The key to creating a strong online presence is consistency”. It doesn’t mean that you should post content all day every day to be able to have a strong online presence. As long as you stick to a schedule, then you should be fine.
Consistency does not only refer to the frequency with which you post content. It also refers to your consistency with the tone and personality of your brand throughout all your social media accounts and even in your articles.
When you’re consistent, and you create valuable, relevant content, you establish yourself as an industry expert over time. You will build a strong community based around your brand, and you will have a stronger online presence than ever.
Engage and be social
The problem with traditional media is that too often, the brand’s communication with its target audience is very one-sided. Instead of having a conversation, all you’re really doing is broadcasting a message hoping you’ll hear positive feedback in some way.
Nowadays, if you don’t try and have engaging and personal conversations with your target audience, it can make people dislike or have a negative impression of your brand. That is the reason why you should always be engaging and social on the Internet.
Although you don’t have to ride every trend that comes your way, you need only be responsive to customers. Luckily, social media is a powerful customer service tool that makes it easy and convenient to address customer concerns.
Aside from that, if you’re engaging enough and create great content, then you are more likely to attract potential clients. Don’t forget to also connect with key influencers in your industry to make it easier to engage with your target audience.
Establish relationships
Speaking of being social, creating a strong online presence will most likely mean that you have to connect and build a rapport between you and key players in your industry.
As briefly mentioned before, you shouldn’t neglect the connections you could have with key influencers in the industry. Influencers in the online realm already have a strong community and are an established authority in the field.
With that said, it is crucial that you discern who your key influencers are. There are a couple of factors to look out for.
One, you should look at their engagements instead of their following. This is because engagement shows a better overview of the people who regularly support them. Two, you should also identify who their key demographics are and whether or not they coincide with your target market.
When you have a connection with the right people online, you will have access to an audience that you previously wouldn’t have. Remember to maintain a good relationship and not just create a strong connection at the start of the relationship.
Write guest posts for related blogs
Last but not least, you should consider writing guest posts on leading blogs within your industry.
Much like how you try to connect with key influencers, the principle is the same when you write for other blogs. They have the following and the authority that you need to create a strong online presence.
Aside from that, writing for other blogs is a great search engine optimization technique because if other blogs with authority link your site, search engines are more likely to rank your website higher.
Wrap up
A strong online presence does not only offer intangible benefits such as customer loyalty and brand awareness, but it can also influence conversions. That is the reason why any business should try creating a strong online presence for themselves.
