Establishing yourself or your brand online can seem like a daunting task for a newcomer, starting can be confusing. After all, the online world is so vast, and there are endless different avenues you could go down when it comes to building a presence.
This article aims to give you some tips for building your presence so you can generate some ideas and formulate a plan to get started.
It will take time and effort, but the first step is to take action and start building. Here are some simple tips you can use to establish an online presence in 2021.
Have a Goal
Too many start working on their online presence just because they feel they have to. Building some kind of presence than building nothing at all but going about it in this haphazard way will cause you to waste so much time.
Before you put effort into marketing yourself online, you need to outline what you expect to gain from it. Once you have come up with a reason and goal for building a presence, you’ll be able to break it down and figure out what steps you need to take to achieve your goal.
Everything you release on the internet should have a purpose behind it. If you can’t think of the purpose or reason for putting out a piece of content, you probably shouldn’t be wasting your time with it.
Build a Central Platform
When people think of building a presence online, they immediately turn their attention to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Social media is great for gaining exposure on the internet, but there is one significant problem with these platforms: you don’t own them.
Because you don’t own the platforms, you have no control over them, which could prove fatal for your business.
For example, Facebook used to be the platform for advertising a business and getting eyeballs on your services for free by posting regular content. However, Facebook’s algorithms changed a few years ago, and they cut organic reach for businesses dramatically.
For businesses who relied on Facebook traffic, this was a disaster. Pages they put a lot of effort into had become almost invisible to people.
To avoid nasty surprises, all of your online marketing efforts should center around a platform you own and can control. In most cases, that platform will be a website.
Your website should be where you house all the essential information about your business and sell products/services. The website will act kind of like a virtual business card.
All your other marketing aims to drive people to this central platform. You can think of your website as the central hub of a wheel, and all the different platforms you use are spokes connected to this hub.
Once you get people on your website, you have the freedom to direct them wherever you wish. For example, you might want to funnel website visitors into an email list so you can reach them more easily with future content.
Don’t spread Yourself Too Thin
Another critical mistake many people make is to try and be on every possible platform at once. It is a good idea to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible to build your presence, but you can waste time on platforms that aren’t suitable.
Not only are you wasting time on unsuitable platforms, but you’ll also never have the chance to learn what works on the platforms that are best for you.
A better approach would be to determine 1-3 channels that you know are a good fit for you and your business. Once you have just a few relevant channels, you can put your time and energy into mastering them.
Becoming a master on just a couple of platforms will yield better results than aimlessly posting inconsistent content all over the place.
Engage
Many of the channels you will be using to build your present offer many social interaction opportunities. You should take advantage by being friendly, helpful, and engaging with your audience as much as possible.
By actively engaging with people, you can set yourself apart from bigger brands that probably aren’t as personable. People buy from people, so it is a good idea to act “human” just like you would if you were face to face with your audience.
Not only does the extra engagement help build up trust with your audience, but it will also drive additional engagement from others. The majority of social media channel algorithms factor in engagement levels, so you’ll be boosting your reach as well.
Be Consistent and Helpful
The content you put out will ultimately be what builds your presence, so it needs to be high-quality. Whether you are recording videos, writing blog articles, or designing infographics, everything you create should help people.
Whenever you are struggling to find ideas, try and think about problems or issues your target audience could be having, then try to help them out with your next piece of content. Just make sure the topics are relevant to your business.
There is a tremendous amount of content available online, so you need to start by ensuring yours is the highest-quality, most useful piece available on whatever topic your covering.
Once you have the quality of content on point, you also need to consider consistency. Just like with engagement, a lot of platforms reward consistency in their algorithms.
Being consistent also gives you more opportunities to get yourself noticed in your industry. If ten blog articles get you 1,000 blog visits each month, it stands to reason that 100 blog articles will net you even more traffic.