These days your small business needs to boost its online presence to survive in a competitive online world. Online presence is how your business appears online.
Small Business: 4 Tips to Boost Your Online Presence
If you want to improve your online presence you need to create content, have a website or blog, use SEO strategies, and also you need to use social media platforms and marketing too.
Here are some tips you need to know about how to boost your online presence and grow your small business.
1. Website or Blog
Your website or blog is the center of your online presence. When potential customers want to learn more about your business or products, your website is often the first place they have to visit.
Your website or blog need to have helpful information, responsive design, and easy page navigation to improve customer experience and attract more people to your business.
2. Social Media
Social media is essential to your digital marketing strategy. Social media platforms are useful to humanize your brand and lift awareness. Every post you make on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter is an opportunity to engage followers and promote your small business successfully.
3. SEO and Ads
You need an SEO strategy to improve your rankings and help interested people to find your website or blog pretty fast. You need to optimize your website and content to rank higher on search engines.
Also, you can use ads to reach your target audience and potential customers faster. Pay-per-click (PPC) ads, display ads, and social ads can help you to improve your online presence and generate sales.
4. Content
Blog posts, eBooks, white papers, case studies, reports are crucial to building an online presence. Content will be your most important tool for defining and strengthening your web presence.
High-quality content can help you increase your targeted traffic, engage prospects, nurture leads, and generate more sales.
Last Tip
A successful online presence needs effort and a positive mindset. Make your research to find more tips and techniques about how to boost your online presence and grow your small business successfully.
LinkedIn: 5 Tips on How To Improve Your Business Presence
LinkedIn has been growing over the past few years and keeps growing (total users and active engagement). LinkedIn has reported record levels of engagement. These days LinkedIn is up to 740 million members.
LinkedIn: How To Improve Your Business Presence
Stats show that LinkedIn usage is rising. So business activity will increase and more users will use LinkedIn more often.
LinkedIn has been sharing case studies that highlight how to use its promotional tools and options.
Here are some new tips on how to improve your business presence and grow your company page followers with LinkedIn.
The Basics
LinkedIn advises brands to ensure that they fill in all elements of their company page. Include content and descriptions that convey what their business does and who they’re looking to help.
Include pertinent keywords in your business description. LinkedIn Pages are crawled by search engines and can improve your rankings.
LinkedIn suggests that brands should add a LinkedIn “Follow” button to their blog or website to boost exposure. Also, encourage connections on LinkedIn to follow their company Page by using the “Invite to Follow” function.
Publish Leadership Content
This requires research and creation, but LinkedIn’s key point is that brands should look to publish quality leadership content.
The best way to capture the attention of LinkedIn’s audience is to publish compelling content about industry news, trends, and other relevant topics.
Creating content is easy these days. But creating great content is a challenge. You need to provide your insights and the perspective of what your business offers.
LinkedIn’s advice is to publish “well-researched, useful, and relevant content”. But it will take some time and writing skill, to put together unique, valuable insights for your target audience.
LinkedIn also suggests that businesses need to use its page Content Suggestions feature.
Join Conversations to Boost Awareness
LinkedIn suggests that brands need to engage in relevant conversations on the platform to boost awareness of their presence and expand their connections.
You can use LinkedIn’s Community Hashtags feature. You can choose up to three specific hashtags to associate with your business page.
You can then interact with these topics to boost exposure for your brand presence on the platform.
Know Your Audience – Use Analytics
LinkedIn suggests using analytics tools to view data about the demographics and traits of your page audience.
You can identify which of your posts and updates are driving the highest engagement. With these insights, you can optimize your page for better audience alignment. You can provide the type of content they find most valuable.
Encourage Your People
LinkedIn says that companies should encourage their employees to ensure that they’re linking to the company page from the work experience section of their LinkedIn profiles.
You can increase exposure and page admins should also look to re-share their employees’ best posts, notify employees of the most important Page posts to share, and help employees with a shout-out from your Page.
That’s another consideration to boost engagement and awareness.
Last Tip
These tips can help you to create a more effective plan to improve and grow successfully the LinkedIn presence of your business.
In 2020, many things have changed. We’ve seen business models disrupted, customer habits and behaviors altered, and small businesses transformed. Many of these changes involved adopting new technologies and using new digital strategies.
Now, let’s see how can you improve your online presence, reach more potential customers, build long-term relationships with your existing customer base, and build brand awareness for your small business.
Here are some tips about how to improve your online presence and increase sales.
Small Business Tips: How to Improve Your Online Presence
People will Choose Businesses with Useful Online Service
Stats show that consumers are preferring online shopping channels. 67% of shoppers report they are more likely to choose a provider with quality and useful online service.
When asked about their preferred mix between using online channels and in-person interaction, 37% of shoppers prefer to interact through online channels in a post-COVID-19 world.
94% report the overall experience they’ve had with online interactions with service providers met or exceeded their expectations.
Many reports show that people like to use a buy online and pick up system.
No matter what they’re looking for, consumers are turning to the internet to find it.
How To Improve Your Online Presence
So, if consumers are spending money online, you need to create a robust online presence. Discover how to do that.
Build a professional website
Websites are essential for every business. If you don’t have a website, it’s easy to build yourself or outsource the task to a professional. You’ll need a domain name. Many companies sell domain names, and most are inexpensive.
Your domain name does not necessarily need to match your company name. Instead, you can use keywords describing your business. You can use words that a consumer would search for when looking for a business such as yours.
Reach Your Target Audience on Social Media
Social media usage is growing worldwide. Stats show that there are about 233 million social media users. Also, 75% of consumers follow brands on social media and 97% of these consumers interact on social media with the brands they follow.
You don’t need to be present on every social media site but you need to focus on the ones that are most popular with your target audience.
Build Your Online Store
If you plan to sell products online, you’ll need an e-commerce store or site.
You can build an e-commerce platform on your site by adding e-commerce tools. Many web hosts offer e-commerce packages.
Use a hosted provider, such as Shopify or BigCommerce.
Create a store on the online marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart, or Etsy.
Your online store doesn’t have to be fancy, but it does have to be clear and easy to navigate. 95% of consumers say clear images, product descriptions, and stock availability are the primary factors that lead to an online purchase.
Important Tip: Many consumers are browsing and making purchases on their mobile devices, so it’s crucial your site and online store are mobile-friendly.
How to Increase Traffic and Sales
You have to drive traffic to your site and raise awareness for your company. There are various ways to do that.
Use an SEO Strategy
You need to optimize your site so consumers can discover you when they search online. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a component of search engine marketing (SEM). Both can get a little complex, so you may outsource this task.
About 93% of online activity starts at a search engine. That applies to online searches for local businesses as well. To optimize for a search engine, use Google’s Keyword Planner tool (free) to find out which keywords are most popular about your business.
It also helps to use those keywords in your website copy, headlines, subheads, and captions.
Use Online Directories
Many consumers are using online business directories. They are an online listing of businesses (the online version of the Yellow Pages).
Start by claiming your free listing on Google My Business. Your business may already have a listing, but if you haven’t “claimed” it, it’s probably not correct or complete.
Use your Google My Business information to create listings on the other search directories and local maps.
Use Reviews
You can use online ratings and review sites. Many consumers “discover” new businesses when looking up other companies. These sites can help you to build your online presence because consumers are using these sites.
88% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses.
74% of consumers only pay attention to reviews written in the last month.
When writing a review, 22% of consumers expect to receive a response within one day.
It’s crucial to respond to every review across these platforms, good or bad. Because customers will see that you are active with positive and negative feedback and you can provide them with excellent customer service.
Use Retargeting Marketing
A small online advertising budget can get you big results and quickly build your online presence and brand awareness.
Consumers need more than one impression to drive a sale. Retargeting ads and retargeting marketing can help you to increase your sales.
Stats show that 47% of marketers say retargeting is one of the most overlooked online marketing methods.
A great bonus of retargeting marketing is that consumers will see your products, services, and your brand name all over the web as they surf to other sites!
Google AdWords is the most popular platform for advertising. Also, you can use Bing or Yahoo. You’ll pay a small fee every time someone clicks on your ads—this is known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Use High-Quality Content
“Content is king” is a well-known phrase and it’s an essential element in building an online presence. The more content you create, the more opportunities consumers and search engines have to discover your business.
You should be adding content to your website and social channels. Also, you can post video content to social media platforms (including YouTube). Even you can use guest posts. Writing for other sites or blogs is a great way to spread brand awareness.
Last Tip
If you want to show up online, and improve your online presence, you need to be present, be active, and engage.
Instagram Marketing: How to Grow Your Social Presence On Instagram
One of the best ways to grow your social presence on Instagram is to create featured posts. That means that your Instagram posts are displayed on an Instagram featured account.
A featured account attracts a lot of Instagrammers by covering communities, unique photography styles, or specific topics that people find interesting.
These accounts are aggregators. They tend to have a lot of followers and when your posts become featured, you receive access to a large viewing audience and possibly gaining a bigger following of your own if your content is high-quality to reel them in.
Search Popular Instagram Accounts
Search and discover popular Instagram accounts. Observe the posts and study the kind of images they post, what their photographic styles are, the themes and filters they use, and the subject matter they cover.
Posting for a field incorrectly won’t help you to succeed. You can’t make a post to an account featuring natural and realistic images if your posts are saturated and harsh in style.
A featured account will never choose one of your images if the image is not similar to what they would regularly post to their audience.
The style of posts on featured accounts is also important because the account has a pre-established following that already likes the style of the photos the account is posting. So you should be sticking with creating posts of the same style.
If you can stick with that, you increase your chances of getting featured, and with great images, your follower count will start to grow.
Know the Guidelines and the Rules
Another important rule is that you must know and follow the guidelines. Ignoring a featured account’s rules and guidelines will only harm your quest to become featured.
When you submit an image to be featured, you have to use the account’s dedicated hashtag as a tag. Use dedicated hashtags correctly.
Take Pictures with Brands’ Products and Tag Them
Any brand would love to see their product being advertised. So, if you have high quality, appealing images, and appropriate hashtags, then you can take a step further when it comes to your posts.
When you post a photo go ahead and tag your favorite brands or accounts in your post. For instance, if there is a photographer, an expert, that you enjoy seeing, you may want to recreate the style and tag them directly in the post.
They will most likely see it and think of you as being a fan.
Attention! Be smart with how and when you use tags. Being picky is a smart tip, especially when it comes to getting your work featured. Save tagging your favorite Instagram accounts for when you have an incredible image or jaw-dropping photos to post, make sure the tag is on something relevant.
Another reason why you should be careful when tagging your favorite accounts in too many posts is the fact that Instagram feeds can become very cluttered quickly, meaning all of the images tagging the account will appear on the accounts’ photo feed.
Give and Receive Shoutouts
Giving and receiving shoutouts is another effective way to get featured on Instagram. By finding users that share a similar content style to you, you can talk with them about giving each other a shoutout.
A shoutout is simply posting an image and telling your followers to follow or check out the account you’re shouting out.
A shoutout is one of the quickest and most efficient ways to give your Instagram account a nice boost.
Try finding users that have more followers than you. Some users may only agree to do a shoutout if you have a similar follower count, but if you have great work and good looking posts on your account, some accounts with more followers will agree for a shoutout.
You need to make a strong connection and build rapport (relationships) before you ask for a shoutout.
Find Influencers in Your Niche
A great option to increase your chances of becoming featured on Instagram is to find with other influencers in your field or niche. By teaming up with influencers you can produce great results and becoming featured.
Successful influences have the right followers. An account just having a large number of followers will not necessarily is effective for you.
Finding a good influencer with a strong and healthy following can not only expose you to a new audience but give you more chances to build up a strong audience of your own. It is not easy to build a healthy relationship with many influencers.
After identifying which influencers you would like to engage and build a relationship with, try starting conversations on Instagram. Again, show real interest in their content by liking and sharing before you dive head-on into building a personal rapport with them.
Attempt to offer shared promotions or even contests with any influencers you’re pairing up with. Take a great picture and add captions, tag the influencer, and inform people about the contest.
By having an image featured on the influencer’s account, your account is also promoted to his followers by proxy.
Try using hashtags such as #contest or #promotion when creating the post so that way people can easily find it.
Instagram can be a powerful advertising tool for any brand if used properly. Instagram provides more engagement and interactivity than other social networks do and is a perfect platform for a growing brand, whether that brand is a person, a community, or a business.
7 Effective Tips on How to Grow Your Brand and Online Presence
Marketing stats shows that 97% of consumers use the internet to find a business or a product, service, to buy. This is the reason why you need to grow your brand and your online presence.
It helps consumers find your brand and learn about your reputation before making a purchase. All of this useful information will play a role in your customer’s purchasing decisions.
Here are 7 Effective Tips on How to Grow your Brand and Online Presence.
1. Create and Grow Your Email List.
One of the top tips to grow your brand and online presence is to create and grow an email list. An email list will engage your brand with current and potential customers on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
To grow your email list, you can create usefully, quality, content that users have to sign-up to receive. Also, you can use a call-to-action (CTA) on your website and social media pages to promote your email newsletter.
2. Create an SEO Strategy.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best tactics to grow your brand and online presence.
SEO can be divided into two categories. On-site SEO, and Off-site SEO.
On-site SEO is all about the content. You’ll want to use keyword research, including internal and external links, and create educational content that likely matches your target audiences’ search queries.
With off-site SEO, you’ll pay attention to the more technical side of things. For example, you’ll want to make sure your site is set up correctly, easy navigation, loads quickly, and mobile-friendly.
3. Give value – Help Your Customers
Your brand’s goal is to make money. But before you can make money, you have to create value and help your customers.
One way to create value is to provide educational, free content online. Not only is this helpful for your customers, but it’ll also improve your online presence.
Write out a list of your customer’s pain points and motivations. (In other words, take a look at your buyer persona).
Then, create content that would answer their questions. What information would help your customers? This is very important for your content strategy.
Another way to create value online is to give advice, tips, or techniques. You could do this through guest posting, responding to comments, or creating videos. (Youtube channel). Wherever your customers have questions, you should be answering them.
4. Use Social Media Marketing.
Social media marketing is a necessity for all businesses. In fact, in 2019 there are now 3.2 billion people on social media globally, so social media is a key tool to reach your target audience all over the world.
Having a presence on social media build trust in your customers and prospects.
Social media is a very effective way to build your credibility and reputation and grow your brand.
5. Produce and Promote Quality content.
The more content you produce, the more opportunities you have to show up online. It’s a numbers game. More Content – More Opportunities. Having an online presence is all about showing up in search engines, on social media, and video sites like YouTube.
6. Influencer Marketing.
To stay active in your community, it’s important to engage with the most popular people in your niche.
For instance, if you sell beauty products, you might consider researching beauty influencers on YouTube and Instagram. Many consumers look to influencers for their honest reviews and promotion before purchasing a product.
The more people are talking about you, the more often you’ll show up online.
7. Develop relationships
Developing relationships with people in your industry is an important way to build your online presence.
For instance, if you have a relationship with blog writers, they might feature you in their content. Perhaps they’ll ask you to guest post or appear on their podcast.
Building long-term relationships with people in your industry will help you to grow your brand and online presence.
It’s not very difficult to grow your brand and your online presence but you need to work every day. That’s Business!
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