From Blog Content to Social Media: How to Build An Online Presence For Your Business
March 26, 2019 - 12 minutes read - Business Growth, Contributed PostsYou need to create an online presence for your startup or small business. That’s the advice you receive in nearly every article written about launching or growing a small business. What is often missing, however, is instructions on how to do this exactly. It’s certainly a more complex undertaking than just creating social media accounts and publishing a website.
Your online presence will only do you good if people actually come to your website; read your blog posts; and, engage with your social media posts. The phrase, “If you build it, they will come,” just doesn’t apply here. So, let’s start with the basics of establishing your presence, then making that presence work for you.
Building Your Website
Your website is going to be your business’ home on the internet. It will be the place where people come to learn about your brand; become educated about your products; and, ultimately, make purchases. It must be easy to navigate, mobile friendly, fast loading, optimized for search, and offer a great user experience. Here are the steps you’ll need to take:
- Pick a domain name for your website that is memorable and relevant to your business.
- Register your URL and choose a web hosting option.
- Build your website or hire a professional web designer.
- Set up Shopify or other e-commerce options if applicable.
- Create the content for your site.
- Publish your site.
Many of the strategies that follow will focus on driving traffic to your website, so it should be as close to perfect as you can make it.
Creating A Social Media Strategy
Ethan Dunwill, content manager at Hot Essay Service says, “Too many small businesses nullify the positive impacts of social media marketing by jumping into it too quickly and doing too much. You don’t need to be everywhere all the time. Slow down, create a road map, and work from that.”
If you haven’t developed some detailed customer personas, it’s time to do that. One attribute that should be part of each persona is the social media platforms where they are likely to spend time. Start with the platforms where you are most certain to connect with your target audience and then answer the following questions:
- Will we focus on native content, paid advertising, or both?
- How often will content be shared?
- Which team members will be authorized to share content?
- What are the guidelines for publishing and sharing content?
Blogging And Other Content
Businesses create and share content for a variety of reasons. They can use it to provide information to their customers, create engagement, establish thought leadership, connect with industry influencers, drive traffic to their website and improve their online presence overall. There are several types of content including:
- Blog posts that are hosted on your own site.
- Articles and guest posts that are hosted on other websites.
- Web and landing page content.
- Advertising content.
- Videos and other visual content.
Blog posts, articles, guest posts, and visual content are the types of content that are most likely to help you connect with your audience, earn engagement, and establish thought leadership. It’s imperative that the content you publish is well-written and relevant. It’s not unusual for businesses to seek outside help with this task. Here are some sources to consider:
- Grammarly — A free, easy to use Grammar Checking Tool.
- Supreme Dissertations — Offers businesses professional copywriting services.
- Canva — This easy to use tool helps amateurs create engaging visual content.
- Rewarded Essays — Another reputable source for copywriting, proofreading, and editing.
- Buzz Sumo — Use this to help find trending content and for competitive analysis.
In addition, plagiarism is a very frequently occurring issue in the online world. If someone is caught on data appropriation, it can damage future success and lead to a bad reputation. The thing is that it can happen even accidentally; however, many people copy-paste other’s works intentionally. There is only one way to eliminate any risks concerning the plagiarism level is to use a credible program that examines the text. Luckily, there is no need to buy a program or upload software and install it on one’s PC as there is a free check for plagiarism opportunity online. You just put your text in a special box and click “check my essay” to get a full dispatch immediately. It works very fast and gives out a full report on uniqueness level, sources related to inspected text and emphasized words and sentences. Aresearchguide online plagiarism checker is another free tool you can use.
SEO
SEO is the process of optimizing your website and content so search engines place links to your website at or near the top of relevant search engine results. This is a complex undertaking. Many people hire professionals just to handle SEO for them. Implementing SEO means:
- Understanding search engine algorithms and keeping up with changes to those.
- Testing your website for SEO optimization.
- Identifying relevant keyword phrases and optimizing content for those phrases.
- Creating and publishing quality content on your website.
- Earning backlinks from other sites.
- Performing on-site SEO optimization such as creating a site index, making pages mobile friendly and using tags appropriately.
- Optimizing for local search results.
Engagement
Yes, ultimately this is about making sales. However, the point of creating an online presence isn’t to use the web as a podium or loudspeaker. It’s to engage people in conversations and develop ongoing relationships. It’s about establishing your company’s reputation and growing your brand. The interactions you have with people online is engagement. This comes in the way of social media shares and likes, comments, and online discussions.
It’s key that you create and curate content that motivates people to engage with you, and that you are responsive when they do. As you might expect, the best way to create engagement is to share content that grabs attention. Don’t be afraid to share strong opinions. Post content that answers questions and starts interesting conversations. The amount of engagement you get is also influenced by the quantity of content you post. Active social media accounts earn more engagement, but that’s not the most important consideration. Your social media content should have a consistent voice that aligns with your branding.
There are resources that can help you maintain that consistency including GrabMyEssay and Hemingway App. These resources will help you find professional writing assistance, analyze your writing for quality and readability, and use text to speech to create content that is natural.
Landing Pages
Low funnel content includes advertising and other promotional content. This is the content that is used to engage customers who are close to making a purchasing decision and then eventually lead those customers to your landing pages. A landing page is a web page that is designed to provide customers with more information about a product, service, or special offer, and then encourage customers to answer a call to action. This might include subscribing to a newsletter, downloading a trial, requesting a price quote, or purchasing something.
Your landing pages are the last thing that people will see before they decide to convert or not. They should inform; clarify any offer or details that could be ambiguous; evoke a sense of trust; and, make it exceedingly easy for customers to convert.
Analytics
You can use website and social media analytics to learn how fruitful your efforts are at creating an online presence. This is software that tracks and reports on website traffic, video views, click through rates, time on page, and other factors. You can use the information from analytics to determine which efforts are working and which need to be re-tooled.
Final Thoughts
Creating your online presence is a complex and ongoing process. Whether you decide to take on this task yourself or use outside help, the information here should help you to create a road map to establishing your business online.
Bridgette Hernandez has a Master in Anthropology, which she says has helped her quite a bit when it comes to understanding consumer behaviors and preferences. While she may have only obtained her Master’s degree last year, her work at ISaccurate makes it clear that she is able to present information in a creative manner that is always informative and accessible to her target audience.
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Tags: best online marketing, Business Online, Online Marketing tools