Building an online presence is not much different than building an online business. While an online presence is the basis of any business, it doesn’t involve the financial and operational complexities a business has.
With almost 97% of consumers using the internet to find a product, it’s essential to build your online presence to gain revenue from online consumers. But how can you do that? In this article, we’ll discuss how to establish a presence online.
Build a Website
Whether you’re making your online identity for a business or as an influencer, your website is your pivot point. Every user looking for something in your industry will eventually come across your website or social media profile.
As websites are generally less volatile than social media profiles, it’s better to build your presence around them. Consider investing resources in making your website interactive and SEO friendly for the best results.
Embrace SEO Strategies
SEO strategies typically revolve around off-page and on-page approaches. The on-page SEO includes website speed, responsiveness, keywords, and interactivity, while the off-page strategy utilized backlinks, social media marketing, and guest content.
Optimize every page on your website for keywords and meta descriptions. Make sure to build a network of internal links around your website. Moreover, upload regular content and transcripts to your website. If possible, include case studies and whitepaper content in your SEO strategy.
Utilize Social Media
Most individuals who use the internet have social media accounts. Depending on their usage, your audience may have accounts on different platforms. You need to ensure that the majority of the interested users on those platforms are made aware of your online presence. The best approach to do that is generating content for them.
For example, if you’re in the health business, product content around healthy living and healthcare. Consider using each platform’s uniqueness to your advantage. For example, use images on Instagram, short videos on TikTok, and long videos on YouTube. Hashtags have become rather common on every social media; use them.
Leverage Paid Podcasts
Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular with each passing year. In recent times, YouTubers are even joining podcast subscription platforms. But how can they not when paid podcasts are now used as a marketing strategy?
Podcast subscription platforms are the best way to establish your brand in the community. They offer subscription programs to the creators to use their all-in-one platform and promote their content; even on Spotify.
A major advantage of podcasts is that they can be listened to anywhere. Where with written content and videos, a user needs to indulge their eyes and hands together, podcasts can be consumed eyes and hands-free.
Produce Valuable Content
The majority of online users find themselves reading a blog or watching videos before purchasing a product or subscribing to a service. Therefore, building your online presence requires putting efforts into producing keyword-centric valuable content.
If your content delivers value to your audience and resonates with their thought process, you can leverage their trust and sell whatever you’re selling. Even if you aren’t selling anything and trying to make a career out of YouTube, value-enriched content is a must.
Online Paid Ads
Brand awareness campaigns and social media ads are great for building an online presence. They also are relatively cheaper than PPC or conversion campaigns. But, you need great content and copywriting to reach the masses. Increasing the ad budget without putting effort into making the ads better is futile and draining.
Make sure that your ads are distributed on the right platforms to avoid wasting money and human resources. It may take some time, but analyze the metrics of each platform that your ads are running to determine the best ones.
Guest Posting
Creating backlinks is a critical strategy to build an online presence. The more high-DR websites link to your website, the more your domain authority increases in the eyes of search engines. Guest posting may be time-consuming and tough, but if it can be done effectively, it yields great results.
However, it’s better to produce guest posts as you do on your blog. If the content isn’t deemed valuable by the search engines, your anchor texts will do little to increase traffic or domain authority.
Refer to Metrics
From your websites to the social media pages, you need to frequently analyze your metrics to understand your audience and tweak the content approach. If you’re targeting the right demographics with your content, positive figures will start showing on these dashboards, if not, however, you need to recalibrate your approach to satisfy them.
Metrics also can help you understand the demographic you’re appealing to and make future content around their requirements. Furthermore, the keywords that you rank on can also be determined by different tools. These help marketers refine keyword research and come up with better SEO strategies.
Try Storytelling
The majority of brands are trying their hands on storytelling either by publishing customer stories or personifying their whole brand for social media. As your target is building an online presence, telling stories about yourself and your audience is a great way to increase engagement. Place yourself in place of your audience and try to strike an emotional chord. Always remember, an effective storytelling approach requires theatrics, improvisation, and a bit of exaggeration.
Influencer Marketing
There is nothing better than getting recommended by experts in the industry to build your online presence. Typically, influencers are well-known individuals in the industry who are trusted by thousands to hold valuable opinions and recommendations.
With the right influencer and content, you can generate massive engagement with your audience. Better, if you can collaborate with them on a public platform and let them recommend your brand or channel to their audience. However, depending on the industry, it may cost you a lot.
Competitor Analysis
There’s nothing wrong with not knowing the latest trends in the social media and SEO world. But, it’s tragic if you can’t figure it out soon enough with competitor analysis. Scrape your competitor’s website and social media pages to see what type of content they’re posting, how frequently, and where. Ensure that you produce better content than them.
Listen to Your Audience
Allow your audience to leave comments, share your content, and give feedback. Listen to their content ideas and negative remarks to refine your online presence-building strategy. Making efforts to include and acknowledge their remarks increases trust and engagement.
The Bottom Line
Establishing an online presence requires building a website, implementing SEO strategies, and utilizing social media marketing. You also can fall back on paid ads and podcasts to increase engagement and interaction. Furthermore, producing valuable content and listening to your audience can go a long way.
