Whether you are starting a new business or your current company is just a little behind the times, it can be overwhelming to build an online presence for your business from the ground up. Because online interactions have become so critical to marketing, however, it is essential to create a web presence game plan and stick to it so that you can be seen on the internet. Fortunately, there are lots of tools out there to help you get started.
Launch Your Website
Some businesses will try to get by with only a Facebook page or other social accounts as their primary website listing. While this is better than nothing, it won’t cut it when you want to do more with your web presence than simply provide information to those already searching for your business by name. To capture new leads and create the best image for your brand, you need to launch your own website. The good news is that resources like Squarespace and WordPress make it easy to create and update websites, even if you don’t have any web design experience. If you do have some extra resources, though, it can be beneficial to hire a professional to help set your website apart from competitors.
When you are designing your site and preparing to launch, be sure that you’re targeting modern audiences by making your site mobile-friendly and well-indexed. Sites that load quickly and have a strong organizational structure are more likely to be favored by search engines, which can be a big perk as you start to work on other elements of your web strategy.
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the most essential social sites for businesses. On each of these sites, you should start accounts for your business and plan to post updates regularly. If you are totally new to social media, start with Facebook—which is the biggest and most universally appealing—and move on to other sites as you find your footing. As you fill in your pages on social sites, be sure to use the most accurate, up-to-date information and photos to represent your business. In addition, encourage your customers to follow your social pages and post reviews on these sites so that the word gets out about your business.
Manage Your Search Info
When people search for your business by name, are they getting accurate information about your physical location, hours, and website? If you aren’t sure—or, worse yet, you know potential customers are seeing the wrong information—you should edit your information with a Google My Business account. From here, you can be sure that your information is accurately listed so that customers don’t show up at the wrong storefront or see the wrong hours posted on your listing.
Plan Ahead
Once you’ve set up the basic groundwork, you’re ready to start planning ahead for future content. All the effort you have put into creating a web presence with your new website and social pages may be wasted if you do not back it up with a consistent effort to drive traffic to your site. You can achieve this with a number of different strategies, including paid search ads, search engine optimization for a higher rank in organic search results, social marketing, and email marketing. With each of these strategies, it’s important to start with clear goals and a campaign theme in mind, so that you can create consistent brand messaging that will reach your target audience. Randomly posting to your blog or sporadically updating your social accounts without a clear strategy in mind will not get you very far with visibility to consumers, but the same level of effort could pay off with an editorial calendar and social post schedule to keep your updates organized.
Post Quality Content
As you think about how you want to continue posting content online, you should recognize how much time you can feasibly dedicate to creating and posting quality blogs, videos, and graphics. Though posting regularly is important, you should not post something just for the sake of updating your site. Only post content that you are proud to show off, and your online audience will respond positively to your efforts.
As you start to think about building or improving your web presence, you may realize that you need some help to get it done. That’s where Pennington Creative can help. Our team of writers, designers, and social-media-savvy digital marketers can create the content you need to boost your online presence.
