Creating An Online Presence For Your Business

If you are an entrepreneur or starting a new business, building your online presence is a very important huddle to cross as it can be time consuming and, at times, frustrating. The online presence for your business is a vital process in ensuring the growth of your business as it serves as an avenue for potential clients to find you, interact with you, get to know, like you, trust you and refer you to another potential client. As much as building the online presence for your business could be very difficult, knowing what to do will make the process lighter.

WHAT IS AN “ONLINE PRESENCE”?

This is sum of all the identities you’ve created online and the interactions from those identities. It is potentially not limited in its reach and when built with the right tools and knowledge it can serve as the biggest marketing tool for your business that will in turn increase your income.

There’s a lot that goes into building your online presence, from establishing your business goals, to actually creating your different profiles and accounts on social media, to building a website, all the way to figuring out the best ways to engage and interact across these different mediums. If you are not sure of where to start building the online presence of your business from, we have outline a few steps to guide you through this process and set your business up for growth and profitability.

STRATEGIZE

This is the first and most important step in building an online presence. This step also determines how well your business do online. Building an online presence like building a house begins with strategically planning and setting achievable goals and as you grow your online presence, you should constantly check if your efforts are helping your business achieve the goals as set out by you. Write down your goals down and ensure that these goals are SMART goals so you can always refer back to them by tracking and measuring your progress at any point. Don’t just build an online presence for your business because you’re “supposed to”, build it strategically so that it can help your overall business goals!

BUILD A SOLID PLATFORM

Your website is your online home, a centralized place where people can go learn about what you have to offer, contact you, interact and engage with your content. It is therefore necessary to ensure that you properly articulate your message and make the sure that your website is easy to navigate. More importantly, it is advisable to use your website as a means of converting potential clients to paying clients. Things like a clear message (what your business is all about), easy-to-use navigation, an opt in giveaway (so you can start building your email list), a contact page, an about page, and some type of valuable content are required.

In addition to having a web platform, you might also want to consider SEO. The great news is that there are tons of great resources available online or around you to get you started. With the Google Keyword Planner and other free resources available you are already one step into having a successful SEO campaign for your business.

OPTIMIZATION

Building your web platform and delving into SEO gives you the first step into a having a sustainable online presence however the journey does not stop there. A sustainable web presence requires constant improvement researching and tweaking to stay ahead of the competition and to be visible in the web space. Optimization is the act of constantly improving on your online presence through content and technology to maintain a sustainable online presence. Many a times we want to wait until we have all the right content and features for our web presence before we launch and this leads to procrastination. The better approach is to launch a presence no matter how little and continuously improve on it. Having an online presence is a marathon and not a sprint, the longer you wait to get started the longer time it will take to achieve your business goals.

Having an online presence is a marathon and not a sprint, the longer you wait to get started the longer time it will take to achieve your business goals.

CONTENT

There are two sets of people online, the content creators and content consumers; to your advantage there are more people consuming contents than creating contents. Research has shown that online is the first place people go when looking for an information. As we speak there are possibly hundreds of thousands of people seeking information about the product or services your business provides, with the right content you can convert some of those information seekers to customers. Be it a blog, a podcast, videos, and ebooks your content must be informative, consistent and valuable to your prospective market.

The success of your entire online presence is premised on the type of content you offer. If you intend to benefit from the stream of content consumers that are consistently online today, content marketing should be your priority as it gives you credibility in your industry and niche. Your online growth and visibility depends on the consistency and viability of the content you provide.

ENGAGEMENT

Having an online presence as a business ensures that your business is visible to everyone on the internet but the idea is not to be visible to everyone but to the right set of people who are seeking the products or services that your business has to offer therefore it is advised to streamline your online presence to platforms that will give you the largest engagement with your target market online. Having an online presence does not mean being everywhere but being where it matters.

Having profiles on all the social media platforms may not yield the desired results as opposed to being on tested platforms where a number of your prospective clients can be reached. with that you can do more and channel your energy where it matters. The key to having a sustainable online presence is consistent engagement where it matters and to whom it matters. As a business, your online presence should be channeled towards finding and engaging with prospective customers and converting them.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

Being online starts from being visible through your website, social media profiles, content marketing and other digital marketing platforms but the ultimate goal is not to be seen but to be known. As a business you need to aim for profitability by building relationships with the right people. To get known, online find your circle and build relationship with them. There are communities online that are related to your industry or niche, people who are seeking solutions and services your business provides, people with similar interest, that is where you want to start building relationships from by becoming an active member of that community.

At first you will seem like a newbie and you will be given the cold treatment but as you consistently engage with people in that community, they will begin to warm up to you and begin to trust you. There are two sets of community you need to be a part of; the first is communities of people in the same line of business as you are, this will keep you informed about the best practices in your industry. Secondly, communities of people who constantly seek your products, services or similar products and services. This will help you ascertain what the consumers need.

PARTNERSHIP

It is impossible for a tree to make a forest, therefore your online presence needs the input or contribution of other brands who have established online presence to grow your own online presence. In the early stages of building your online presence as a brand, you will need the validation of more established brands to win the trust of your target audience. Look for brands who have influence in your industry or related industry and seek to add value to them by providing a content that will grow their brand and that will in-turn grow your own brand. Every brand has a sphere of influence and you want to leverage on the various sphere of influence of the brands you partner with to grow your own sphere of influence.

Your online presence has the capacity to turn your homemade business to a multinational brand, however my advice is that you start building the online presence of your business and organization today with a baby step as small as listing on local listings and watch it grow by adding platforms, contents, and features as you grow.

In the digital space influential marketing is one of the fastest way to grow your online presence and this can be achieved by partnering with existing influential brands. Many business people feel this maybe expensive but in most cases you can add value to the influencer and not have to pay for the endorsement you get in return. Appearance on podcast, blogs and other platforms to push and grow your online presence can be achieved through strategic partnership.

Your online presence has the capacity to turn your homemade business to a multinational brand, however my advice is that you start building the online presence of your business and organization today with a baby step as small as listing on local listings and watch it grow by adding platforms, contents, and features as you grow. Keep tweaking and making adjustment to your strategies and technologies, tracking your progress through testing. Start today by building your online platform, create valuable content consistently, establish your online presence through engagement building long lasting relationship and partnerships.