10 Practical Strategies to Create an Engaging Online Presence
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Why You Need an Engaging Online Presence
In 2022 merely having a business website just doesn’t cut it anymore! Both your existing and potential customers expect a lot more, and businesses better deliver if they want to stand out from the crowd and rise above the digital noise.
While the precise nature of an engaging online presence depends on each specific business and industry, there are several common elements. And by ignoring them, businesses of all kinds and sizes settle for merely being online instead of having an engaging online presence they can use!
We already outlined the big problems with small business websites. We showed you how to build a business website that supports your online objectives. In this post, we list some of our favorite strategies that we use to create an engaging online presence for our clients. Follow along, and you will quickly get the hang of it. Some of our clients even think that building an engaging online presence of their own is fun.
Digital asset management is now essential to marketing, as visual storytelling has become a crucial part of customer expectations.
MediaValet
No matter what business you are in, you will want to attract new customers through your website, social media profiles, and your blog. To do so effectively, you need to provide the end-user with the look and content they expect to find. If you don’t match their expectations, they will quickly go away. And once they do, they most likely will not come back. That’s not a good thing!
The following ten strategies give you actionable ideas for improving your online presence. They will show you how to maintain and improve it once you establish an engaging online presence for your business or product brand. Let’s get started!
10 Practical Strategies for Creating an Engaging Online Presence
1 – Know Your Audience
Do you know who your customers are? If not, it is time to find out. Identify your customer personas and address your content to them as individuals. Consider their needs and expectations and appeal to them on an intuitive level.
2 – Content Comes First
Do you place more emphasis on the visual design of your website than the structure and content? “Pretty” only gets you so far! Without substance, people will not visit or stay, and search engines will not index you. Be sure to clearly define your unique value proposition and explain the benefits you provide to your customers and clients.
3 – Be Helpful
Does your content truly help your customers? Is it actionable, informational, or educational? Did you create it based on a content strategy? If not, your content can cause people to disconnect. Using a clear structure, visual clues, and quickly recognizable links helps users to find the content they need.
4 – Empower Yourself
Are your company and your staff empowered to “do” things online? If you aren’t, you are not going to have an engaging online presence. Ever since the Google Hummingbird Algorithm updates everyone on your entire team is now a critical player, so bring them up to speed!
5 – Start Blogging
If you are not blogging, get started! It is an essential part of an engaging online presence. Just don’t get promotional, or you will push visitors away. Instead, use great content to attract visitors, share knowledge, and build trust.
6 – Get Found
Are you making the most of the new art of SEO and findability? Search success comes down to how well the right kind of prospects can find you. It is a combo of content, social engagement, and avoiding SEO tricks that will get you into trouble.
7 – Be Social
Do you look at social media as networking? You should! It is not merely gossip and selfies. The basic human desire to do business with other people that we know, like, and trust means embracing social tools to connect with prospects. They are the audience for your content.
8 – Create Irresistible Offers
Do you craft offers that are relevant to your target audience? Searchers are looking for answers. Provide them at all levels of your sales funnel and build a case in favor of your solutions. Each offer is a touchpoint in your sales process.
9 – Keep Going
Think you can set your engaging online presence and forget it? Better think again! Getting started with your engaging online presence is only the beginning. It will not be useful if you don’t maintain it.
Building an engaging online presence takes time and effort. If you have not set a budget for ongoing content marketing efforts, analytics, content creation, and engagement, your brand will get left behind.
10 – Track Your Performance
Do you keep an eye on your analytics? It is one thing to have an idea about how many visitors your site has, but what about conversions, accessible pages, competitor activity, or even Google Algorithm changes? Watch your analytics like you watch your accounting. Nothing beats good intelligence. Or, as our SEO in Residence says: “The best way to see your competition is receding in the rearview mirror!
Creating an Engaging Online Presence for Your Business
Now that you understand how to establish and maintain your engaging online presence, you are ready to create your own. The big thing you need to understand is that maintaining an engaging online presence takes time. And for most small to mid-size businesses, that is the biggest obstacle. If you fall into that category, you may want to consider some outside resources:
- A content strategist can help you create and document your content marketing strategy and determine your target audience.
- A copywriter or editor can help you define both your content strategy and develop an editorial calendar.
- A social media strategist or agency can help you create and implement an organic social media strategy.
- An SEO expert or agency can help you define and implement an effective search strategy and track the performance.
- A community manager can be your voice on social media platforms.
If you don’t have a big budget, you should look into Meetup in your city or area. There are many meetups specifically created for business owners that include expert marketing, creative, technical, and social media resources. Are you not finding the resources or group you need? You can create a Meetup and attract other like-minded business owners.
84% of B2B marketers are outsourcing content creation.
SmartInsights
If you are a more established business with more resources, you can do some or most of this in-house. Most likely, you already have a sales and marketing person or team, so start there. With a content marketing strategy, you can create at least some of the content in-house. With someone to run your social media, you will only need occasional outside help.
In that case, you may want to establish a relationship with a temp agency specializing in creative and marketing services, such as Creative Circle, Filter Digital, or VitaminT.
You can also find reputable agencies on platforms such as Top Digital Agency and Tech Behemoths.
Still Not Sure About Your Online Presence?
I hope you found this article helpful in building an engaging online presence for your business or product brand. Don’t hesitate to contact our team for more information on why a new website design is a great way to get up-to-date. We are here to help!
Our professional website designers can build you a website that appropriately reflects your organization now and moving forward. But first, look at our portfolio and read our case studies.
Then, if you believe we are a good fit for your business website redesign needs, let’s talk! We offer a full range of consulting and design solutions for businesses and product brands.
Let’s talk if you are unsure how an engaging website will support your business objectives! Our team will listen to your concerns, evaluate your needs, and develop a list of things you need to do to improve and update your business website.
Do You Have an Engaging Online Presence?
Does your online presence support your business objectives? If not, what obstacles are you facing, and how will you overcome them? Do you have anything to add to our strategies for building an engaging online presence?
Feel free to add your comments below so our audience can benefit as well, and grab our feed, so you don’t miss our next post! And feel free to share our tips with your audience!
Thank you! We appreciate your help ending bad business websites, one pixel at a time!
By Gregor Saita
Co-Founder / CXO
@gregorsaita
