10 Ways to Maintain An Effective Online Presence
Maintaining an effective online presence is vital for business owners today. The main reason is that your competition and your potential customers are looking up information about you online. If you don’t put the information out there, someone else will.
If you maintain your online presence with purpose, you’ll stay in control of the message people receive when they look for you.
FREE Checklist: 10 Online Business Mistakes You MUST Avoid
1. Build a Consistent and Noticeable Brand
Take the time to actually develop a brand for your business. Your brand is more than your logo. Branding is the process of creating a unique name, message and image in a consumer’s mind. The goal is to differentiate yourself from others in the market and to attract and retain customers.
Your logo a visual representation of your brand. Set up your artwork, fonts, voice, tone, message, and so forth so that you can show it to anyone who needs to know, from graphic designers to copywriters.
2. Design a Website
As a business owner you’ll need a website for your business. Your website is essentially your storefront, business card and most significant marketing piece all rolled into one. How it affects your visitors and customers is essential to your success. Provide a memorable experience and customers are sure to return and buy again.
If you’re involved in several enterprises, you might consider starting a named website for yourself that isn’t a niche site but an informational site about you and what you’re doing – much the same way an author might have.
3. Get Listed in the Right Business Directories
You don’t necessarily want to pay fees and be in every single directory created. Some people create directories to create a directory. This type of directory is worthless. Instead, if there is a group that you want to be part of that also has a directory, get listed there.
4. Learn About SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO (search engine optimization) is the way that you adapt your website so that it can be found by the search engines and subsequently direct visitors to your website. Search engine optimization can also help you improve the content that you have on your website. The key to getting your content to rank well in search is having a clear understanding of how Google finds, analyzes, and ranks your content.
5. Provide Valuable Content to Your Audience
One way to stay top of mind for your audience and to spread brand awareness, while also building your online presence, is to regularly create valuable content for your audience. When you develop your value-driven content marketing strategy you’re putting customer value and satisfaction first. This means that more that customers will be attracted to you.
6. Build and Use an Email List
A lot of people forget that email marketing is part of online marketing and, therefore, part of an effective online presence. It may not be front-facing, but it is crucial. Email is still a preferred form of communication. To use email marketing effectively your emails need to be relevant, personalized, and engaging to build trust and credibility. You can use email to send your audience back to your website, thus increasing traffic and sales.
7. Be Active on Social Media
Social media marketing is a part of your business whether you like it or not. It’s a tool to use to get the word out about your business, help you work with your customers in the way they want you to, and to help you make more sales.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are just a few of the dozens and dozens of worthwhile social media sites. If you try to establish and maintain an ongoing presence on all of the sites available, you simply couldn’t do it. On the platforms you do use, treat them individually and create graphics and content especially for each so that it feels like it fits and isn’t just a repeat.
8. Engage with Your Audience and Customers
Don’t just send out information one way. Social media is supposed to be a conversation you’re having with your audience, customers, and even your competitors. Make it so. It’s all about the back and forth. Without engagement, there is no point, and sometimes businesses forget this. Social media is a relationship-building tool.
9. Be Approachable
Whether you like it or not, even when you have a business brand and they already know your name, they want to know more about you outside of your brand. It would be best if you were ready and willing to answer questions and be honest. Look at how you and your business communicate with customers. Your website might just be one page but, no matter what, you have to ensure that visitors to your site know exactly how your products and services can help them.
10. Get Published with Your Own Byline
A byline is a short phrase used online in blogs, forums, and online messages and tells the reader who wrote the piece. Publish with your byline to your blog, LinkedIn, as a guest blogger, and in books. Get quoted, get talked about, and get mentioned, and your online presence will build itself.
Free Checklist: 10 Mistakes That Stop An Effective Online Presence
Maintaining your online presence is an essential task for almost anyone today, but even more so for an online business owner. You can bet that your audience, customers, and competition are looking for you. You want them to find the information that persuades them to trust you. That will happen if you do the work to maintain your online presence.
In the world of online business, you’re going to make some minor boo-boos and some cataclysmic mistakes. We all make mistakes. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t. It’s all part of the learning process. Although mistakes are going to happen, you can avoid the common online business mistakes that other online entrepreneurs have made. Download my free checklist, The Top 10 Mistakes in Online Business and avoid those false moves and slipups