What is the definition of an online presence? Is internet popularity or notoriety an indication that your company has a good online presence? Well, it’s certainly part of the picture, but not all of it. After all, an individual or business can be well known on the internet for very negative reasons. Ideally, your goal is to increase your name recognition on the internet while also increasing the positive associations people have with your products and services.
As you improve your online presence, revenue and customer conversion rates are also going to improve. Not sure where to start? Here are a few ways in which you can help increase your internet presence.
Make a Commitment to Online Presence Management
There’s no way around it. If you want to improve your online presence, you must dedicate man hours to managing your internet profile. This means acting proactively, influencing the way that your business is presented on the internet. To do this, you must first establish guidelines on how your company is to be presented on the internet. This includes social media accounts and your website.
Then, you must establish guidelines on the ways your company will interact with others on the internet. This might include the following:
- Designating a person to craft social media posts, and responses to posts
- Monitoring relevant websites for commentary about your enterprise
- Using analytics software to track website traffic
- Modifying your social media pages, website, WordPress, etc. to make sure that branding and messaging are consistent
Create and Use a Social Network Presence
No matter what business you are in, never make the mistake of assuming that you don’t need to establish a social media presence. Building a social network is a must.
Here’s the truth. Even if you don’t have a Facebook page, blog, or Twitter account for your business, your business is still active on social media. You just aren’t participating in that activity, nor do you have any control over it.
When you create a presence on social networks, you control the ways in which your business is presented on the internet, and the ways in which you use social networking to interact with others. You’ll want to begin by identifying where your company can best present itself on social media, and making a plan to stay active once you establish your presence.
Remember that it all Boils Down to SEO
Well, maybe not all of it, but certainly a lot of it. Let’s face it, you want to be on the first page of returned search results. You certainly don’t want to find yourself anywhere beyond page 3. So, what do you do? You keep track of Google’s and other search engine’s ever evolving
Some of this is fairly organic. Many of the changes made by Google and others is truly a good faith effort to prevent spam websites and other charlatans off page 1. For example, you can help yourself by insuring that your content is valuable and not a vehicle for keyword stuffing.
However, there are also more advanced issues to consider when it comes to
Commit to Blogging as a Marketing Tool and not an Indulgence
Starting a blog is easy. WordPress and other packages make it easy to create, write, and publish blogs. Maintaining a blog, on the other hand is not easy. All too often, business owners create blogs, publish several posts in a short amount of time, but then fade away. In some cases, the issue is time. In other cases, the issue is that they don’t understand what it is that they should be writing about. In any case, the end result is the loss of a great opportunity for a company to develop and grow their online presence.
This is why it is so important for business professionals to approach blogging as a business obligation. What does this mean? This means that blogs must contain high-quality content, and they must be published on a regular basis. Maintaining a blog is well worth the effort. If you cannot commit to the upkeep of your company’s blog, please consider passing those duties to an employee or a consultant.
Create and Deliver Excellent Content
When you first began learning how to do business online, your focus was most likely on creating your company website and establishing an ability to conduct online transactions securely, that is why you should design your content writing strategy properly.
Now that you have accomplished that, it’s time to explore ways to drive customers to your website so that they will actually purchase your products and utilize your services. To get this done in a way that is both effective and inexpensive, you should adopt content marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy.
If you are unfamiliar with this relatively new form of marketing, content marketing is a new approach to attracting customers. Instead of approaching marketing with an advertising mindset (eg: Come and buy my products!), the strategy behind content based marketing is to educate, inform, and even entertain customers without a hard sell. The result is the development of a relationship with customers and potential customers, branding establishment, and ultimately increased web presence.
Of course, just as is the case with creating a social media presence, your content must be consistent, relevant, and of high-quality. This means committing to producing content on a regular schedule, and publishing that content where your customers will read it.
Create an Interactive Experience
When customers visit your website, one of the best things that you can do to make them return is to provide them with an interactive experience. You can ask them to take a fun quiz, to answer a survey question, or simply to provide their opinion on an issue. You might even consider offering an incentive, especially if the feedback you receive can be used for market research. If customers know their name is being tossed into the hat for a freebie or discount, they’ll be more likely to stick around.
If you have an issue with bounce rates, getting customers to spend a few moments taking a quiz or answering questions is an excellent way to get visitors to stay for a few moments.
Find a Friend
Try to find a friendly, non-competing business and build a relationship with then. Then, consider ways in which both businesses can form a symbiotic relationship. This might include guest blogging, link backs from articles, or even giveaways for website visitors. Collaborative marketing is trending so when you develop an excellent relationship with another firm, you can be assured that the internet presence of both companies will be improved.
Images: “Online Presence word cloud concept/Shutterstock.com“
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