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Your goals may vary, but one thing remains consistent throughout the life and evolution of your business: you must have a solid digital presence. A robust digital company is essential to connect with online users and increase growth.
Read on to learn why and how to build your digital presence.
What is Digital Presence, and Why is It Important?
Your digital presence is how your brand or business appears online and includes how easy it is for users to find you. Your target audience, whoever they may be, is constantly online. Consumers use the internet to research, compare, and purchase their desired goods or services. Every phase of the buyer’s journey occurs online, and how you present your brand directly affects your success.
When people use Google Search –– or any other search engine –– they’re presented with relevant results according to the search engine’s algorithm. An optimized digital presence increases the likelihood that online prospects and customers will find you and click on your pages.
Remember that your business is just one of many offering solutions consumers search for. It’s your job to cultivate a robust digital presence to position yourself to attract, engage, and eventually sell to this online audience. If you don’t, another business will.
In this article, Emulent ’s digital marketing experts walk you through five strategies to build your digital presence so you can reach your business and brand goals.
Be Where Your Audience Is
To expand your digital presence and reach your audience, you’ve got to know where they are –– specifically, the channels they frequent online.
As we said above, your audience is actively seeking solutions to their issues, and they’re doing so online. By building your digital presence where your audience searches and spends time online, you can better engage with them, earning clicks and conversions.
Your target user is undoubtedly utilizing search engines like Google or Bing. But they’re also probably active on various social channels: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
And while there may be some overlap between social channels, each platform accomplishes different purposes, and you must know how and when to interact with users on these platforms.
For example, your Instagram promotion strategy will look very different from LinkedIn marketing tactics. This is because the purpose, mood, and content genre differ from platform to platform. However, when you know where your audience hangs out online, you can tailor your marketing and engagement efforts to draw them in and bolster your digital presence across multiple channels and platforms.
Consistently Create Content
Content is everything when building your digital presence. The more quality, relevant content you produce, the more potential you have to reach your audience and win their loyalty.
Every time you publish content, Google crawls and indexes your site page. When a user enters a query in Google Search, if your content matches their search, your page will show up in their results, and they can click on your site.
Without a strong content strategy, you won’t see the traffic or engagement required to grow your brand. In addition, content creation allows you to further optimize your site for SEO, which is how you’ll drive valuable users to your site.
When you create site content that matches the user intent of your target audience, you expand your digital presence while providing value to your audience.
Create Value
When potential customers search the internet for answers or solutions, they don’t have time to waste on businesses or sites that don’t provide what they want. Therefore, every aspect of your digital presence should value your user.
You can create value by producing content designed with your audience in mind. The following content types provide immense value while increasing your digital reach and digital presence:
- Blogs – Blogging is the most common way to deliver value to your site visitors. Blogs provide an avenue to go in-depth on specific topics, products, or ideas that might benefit the reader.
- Video – Video content provides engaging, efficiently consumable information to users. Video allows brands to educate and engage across devices. With most video engagement occurring on mobile, brands must create value through video to strengthen their digital presence.
Prioritize SEO
Search Engine Optimization is how your site gets noticed by search engines and presented to online users. It’s one of the best tactics you can implement to build your online presence.
Actively Engage
Showing up online and in search requires an active digital presence. Consistent publishing, updating, and adding to your content, site, and other channels help you appear in search results. Additionally, an active company shows users that your brand stays up-to-date and engaged on relevant issues and topics.
Posting to your owned properties, like your site and social media, reminds followers that you are there, providing the value they want.
But your online activity shouldn’t stop with one-way engagement. Two-way communication with your audience builds trust and confidence in your brand. Communicate with followers on social media. Respond to online reviews –– positive and negative –– if possible.
An active digital presence is a solid digital presence. Plus, when you’re active online, you keep abreast of conversations surrounding the industry and market in which you operate.
Conclusion
Your brand or business must have a digital presence to make it. And to win your market share, you must build a digital company that broadens your reach and compels users to commit to your brand.