Think about the last time you needed a sink unclogged, a massage, or a latte. You probably found a solution by searching Google, seeing them present on social media, or reading a review on a site like Yelp (or all three!). You’re now a happy customer because the business had a presence in the places you looked.
Millions of people like you use the internet every day in the same way you did to find products and services. And that’s why it’s so important that your business has a solid and broad online presence.
We’ll show you how to choose the right places to be present online, give you a list of ways to do it, and provide a few online presence examples so you can see how it works in the real world.
Contents
- What is an online presence?
- Why do you need a significant online presence?
- 18 ways to grow your online presence
- 3 extraordinary online presence examples
What is an online presence?
An online presence, AKA digital presence, is all the public information and content about your business that exists on the internet. That includes your owned online presence (things you’ve intentionally shared) and your earned online presence (things others have posted about your business).
Your online presence exists on multiple platforms. It covers every social media post, website (including your own), newsletter, review, and business listing that mentions your business, products, or brand. The more digital spaces that reference your business, the bigger your online presence becomes.
That may feel a little tough to wrangle. I promise it’s way easier to grow and manage your online presence than you may think. I’ll show you how in a bit, but first, let’s see why it’s worth the effort.
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Why do you need a significant online presence?
Your online presence defines how visible your brand is to current and potential customers as they spend time online. The greater your presence, the better chance you have of capturing the attention of the people who will eventually need to buy what you sell.
It adds legitimacy to your business
Familiarity breeds confidence. As people see your brand show up in the online places they visit, they’ll feel more comfortable choosing you.
Here’s some proof. 62% of consumers will disregard a business if they can’t find it online. Plus, 83% of US shoppers said they searched online before visiting a store.
Now, think about your own experience. Are you more likely to hire a plumber with an attractive website, several Google reviews, and dozens of educational posts on social media? Or one you’ve never heard of from the Yellow Pages? If you’re like most, it’ll be the first option.
More new customers will find you
You need to consistently generate new leads to grow your business. Considering that most people discover new brands and products online, it’s simple calculus that you’ll need to be present where those people look.
Every time your online presence increases, you also increase the chance that more people will discover your business. It’s like putting up more billboards; each new sign gets you in front of more traffic.
You’ll have a 24/7 lead generation machine
One benefit of online shopping is that you can do it whenever you like. Your broad online presence allows you to meet customers whenever is convenient for them (without being physically available at all hours). It’s like having a sales team that takes calls on your behalf at any minute of any day.
You’ll learn which channels and tactics deliver the best results
There are dozens of free and paid ways to get more customers and grow your business online. And they each have their own set of metrics you can use to track performance. So as you expand your presence into additional channels, you’ll learn which ones deliver new customers efficiently and which are best left alone.
18 ways to grow your online presence
Expanding your digital presence effectively is about trying different channels, monitoring which work, and doubling down on the winners.
There’s not one perfect process that works for every business. Your products, messaging, and audience dictate which online spaces are best for your brand to expand. Use this list to find the best ways to increase your online presence.
Establish your goals
First, consider your overall marketing goals and objectives. What do you want your business’s online presence to accomplish?
- Do you want to build more legitimacy for your business?
- Do you want to increase awareness of your business?
- Do you want to find new customers?
- What return on investment do you want?
Keeping your overall goals in mind will help you stay motivated as you build an online presence. It’ll also give you a benchmark to return to as you review your progress.
Confirm your target audience
Before you can decide where to be present online, you’ll need to make sure you know who you’re trying to reach. Otherwise, you’ll not be able to figure out where they go to learn about new products.
Let’s say you sell easy-to-assemble furniture. You’ve determined that one key target audience is college-bound teenagers who want to outfit their dorms. With that knowledge, you could expand your online presence to TikTok, where many younger shoppers go to find products.
You may not think of TikTok as a channel for selling furniture, but for a certain target audience, it is.
Create a compelling website…
You need an online hub where people can find you. Your website is your digital storefront. It’s the only piece of real estate you truly own on the web. So if you don’t already have one in place, create a website today and make sure it’s designed to generate leads.
Chat functionality is a great way to improve your digital presence and generate leads from your website.
Keep the following tips in mind for your website:
- Make your website mobile-friendly
- Choose a clean and easy-to-navigate website design
- Add powerful call-to-action phrases
- Add live chat for ongoing customer service
- Use royalty-free images or images you own
- Include contact information
…and optimize it for search engines
SEO (search engine optimization) is one of the best ways to skyrocket your online presence. With SEO, your business can be found in more online searches, and people will discover why your brand is worth following.
Use SEO best practices to manage your online presence:
- Fix and redirect any old and broken website pages
- Identify the right SEO keywords to incorporate into your web content
- Optimize your images
- Create internal links between pages of your website
- Get external websites to link to your web pages
💡 Learn how to rank at the top of search results with the free guide: 20 Ways to Make Your Website More Visible on Google.
Post consistently on social media
Your potential customers will peek at your social media accounts as they consider your services or discover your brand through social media posts. Even if they don’t do it intentionally, they may see your posts if they pop up organically in their feeds (like on the TikTok For You Page).
You’ll want to set a few simple social media goals to keep your online presence building on track. Consider where members of your target market spend their time, and show up where they are. If you have a small social media team and are just getting started, choose one site to post regularly on. Posting regularly is how you consistently show up in your audience’s feed. That way, you’re maintaining brand consistency and creating an online presence that sticks.
If you need help coming up with consistent social media post ideas, try our marketing calendar, which includes free monthly social media calendars.
Consider creating a newsletter
A newsletter is another way to create a one-on-one relationship with your customers. It can also help build your online presence by driving people to your online properties, such as your blog, website, social sites, or review sites.
Consider creating a newsletter that offers exclusive discounts, peeks behind the scenes, and educational content. A newsletter will generate new leads for your business and keep you in mind as your customers see your name pop up in their inboxes.
📬 Speaking of newsletters… Sign up for ours!
Publish blog content
Publishing blog content boosts your online presence in several ways. First, it’ll let you target local keywords and help your pages rank on Google so potential customers can find you through search engine results.
A business blog (and content marketing, in general) also gives you more chances to get backlinks and referral traffic from other websites. It also provides content you can repurpose for social media posts.
Remember to use best practices as you publish content:
- Break up sections with H2s and H3s.
- Target long-tail keywords and frequently asked questions in H2s to try to show up in Google’s “people also ask” section.
- Promote your blog posts on your social media sites and in your newsletter.
- Repurpose blog content by turning it into YouTube videos, social media images, infographics, and other features.
- Target at least one keyword or a couple of similar keywords within each blog post.
- Leverage AI in content marketing when you need extra inspiration.
Get and reply to online reviews
It’s no secret online reviews influence how people choose to buy products and services. In fact, 84% of consumers feel that online business reviews are as trustworthy as personal recommendations, and online reviews influence 93% of people.
Reviews show up everywhere, it seems. They’re in search engine results, business directories, and social media pages. Anyone looking for your type of product or service is likely to run into them.
That’s why it’s so essential to proactively ask customers for reviews through confirmation emails, business cards, thank you cards, your website, and social media.
Once someone leaves you a review, try to respond to it. That includes thanking a customer for their positive review and delicately replying to negative reviews (they happen to every business eventually).
Claim and complete your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile highlights your most important features, hours, location, and reviews and helps you show up in search and map results. It it shows up as the Map Pack or on the right-hand side of search results.
These listings are often created automatically, but businesses can manage them to ensure the information is accurate and to have a little more control over what’s shown to searchers.
For example, Day’s Coffee and Expresso’s Google Business Profile includes its website, reviews, category, hours, phone number, location, and the types of services it offers.
Create a Google Business Profile account and fill in important aspects of your profile, like location, website, hours, products and services, and other sections. If you already have a Google Business Profile for your business, make sure to claim it and update it regularly.
Manage your online business listings
Whether you know it or not, your business is likely listed on several business directories across the web. These business directory listings can either help or hurt your online presence (not to mention your SEO).
In addition to owning your Google Business Profile, you could create and own your Facebook business page, get listed on Bing Places or the Yellow Pages, claim your business on Yelp, and more.
Updating and regularly checking your listings for accuracy can help you improve consistency for your business, direct more searchers to your business through phone, your website, or your business address, and give you more opportunities to appear in local search results.
For example, sometimes these directories create “best of” lists featuring the best local places to eat, the best contractors to repair homes, and the best in hundreds of categories.
Be active in online forums
Online forums are fantastic places to expand your online presence because they’re filled with enthusiasts actively chatting about topics relevant to your business.
Reddit is a good place to start. The platform has thousands of topic-focused message boards called subreddits. Beauticians can join r/MakeupAddicts or r/NaturalBeauty to share tips with that audience.
You can also use Google. Search “online [topic] communities] and see what pops up.
Once you’re in, avoid the hard sell, or you could be kicked out by the forum’s moderators. Be helpful and conversational. Only share links to your website when it’s completely organic to the discussion.
Can’t find an online forum for your niche service? No problem. Create your own brand community. As long as there are people who need your product, there are people who want to talk about it.
Work with influencers
If you’re ready to connect with new audience members, you may want to consider influencer marketing. Partnering with influencers in your niche is a wonderful way to get the word out about your brand to other people and improve your online presence.
If you sell construction tools, you may want to work with a popular TikTok contractor. If you sell books, you could provide bookstagrammers on Instagram with free copies of books to review. If you sell makeup, consider working with beauty influencers. Be creative!
Swiffer partnered with dancers Cost and Mayor to promote their cleaning products and to encourage equal chore sharing. Nontraditional partnerships can open up new possibilities for your business.
Partner with other brands
Here’s a cool little trick to quickly multiply your online presence without a ton of work—partner with complementary businesses on blog posts, promotions, and social media. You’ll get instant access to their entire existing audience.
Get creative with your co-collaborators. As a yoga studio, you could connect with a health food restaurant, acupuncturist, or non-profit that promotes healthy living.
Try paid ads
Paid advertising is another opportunity to build your online presence. Advertising in search results on Google and Bing lands you at the top of search engine results pages. Search ads can fill in the gaps in your online presence that your SEO may be unable to fill.
Aside from search ads, social media ads are also an effective way to inspire purchasing decisions, connect with new audience members, and spend your marketing budget. Advanced targeting options with social media ads help your business reach audiences that your organic posts can’t—increasing your online presence across social feeds more strategically.
Produce guest content
Another way to build your online presence is to look for other businesses and media outlets that accept guest posts. Publishing high-quality guest posts on other media outlets and related websites will get your business seen by their audience.
Additionally, you’ll get backlinks that’ll boost your SEO. You could even accept guest posts from other individuals, as other businesses and individuals will want their businesses to be seen by your audience.
In variations on this theme, you could do a social media takeover where you post on another brand’s social feed or produce a video that another business publishes on its YouTube channel.
Host a free webinar
Online webinars do a lot for your online presence. First, they create buzz for your business as you promote the upcoming event in your social feeds and newsletter.
Second, they establish your business as a trusted source of information for people looking for answers. So when someone searches for “how to buy your first home,” your webinar can show up in the search results. You can also publish them to YouTube after the live webinar to keep getting attention.
One-time webinars extend your long-term online presence when you place them on YouTube.
Third, they generate leads because you can collect first-party data like email addresses from attendees
Make everything more accessible
One in four adults in the United States has a disability. Your blog posts, social media posts, and emails should be made accessible so everyone can access them. Additionally, consider ways to make the content you share more inclusive of your entire audience.
Taking both actions will open up your business to new customers and show you care about their experience.
Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Create accessible social media descriptions
- Use inclusive language
- Caption your video content
- Avoid custom fonts
- Use emojis in moderation
And don’t forget about your website. An ADA-accessible website will draw in potential customers and keep them there as long as they can easily search, learn, and purchase.
Review your progress and adapt
Last but not least, you need to audit your content, check in on your progress, and make changes. Review your original goals and see which strategies are helping you hit them. Be willing to cut the ones that aren’t and then try new tactics in their place.
You’ll have more time to test new ideas if you automate parts of your process. You could schedule social media content and newsletter editions in advance and set up email sign-up forms to automatically collect email addresses. You could build a landing page that’s made to appeal to your audience and test how different calls to action perform.
3 extraordinary online presence examples
Back in the day, brands used to increase their presence with billboards, park bench signs, and newspaper ads.
The following three businesses have adopted the philosophy of omnipresence online. They creatively address multiple platforms to engage and convert new and existing customers. Follow their lead, and you’ll have an unmissable online presence, too.
1. Boohoo
Boohoo is a clothing brand that knows how to make an impact online.
It starts with the brand’s website, which is constantly updated to provide seasonal promotions that match the mood of its target customers.
Not only does that help convert customers who visit, but it also boosts the brand’s search engine by showing seasonal terms like “cute summer outfits.”
What stands out, though, is Boohoo’s social media presence. TikTok and Instagram feeds are filled with uplifting, fun content, including everything from influencer takeovers to funny little vignettes to new product releases.
Boohoo has been at this for a while. The brand’s success during stay-at-home orders in 2020 is a case study of adapting an online presence to meet consumer’s needs.
Take a minute to thumb through Boohoo’s social media pages and see how they use branded hashtags, engaging thumbnails, and quirky captions to maximize the impact of their digital presence.
2. Long McArthur Ford
A car dealership in Salinas, Kansas, isn’t the first place you’d look for someone who’s grown a huge online presence that generates a ton of new business. But that’s exactly where you’ll find Tim Bartz, the Internet Sales Manager at Long McArthur Ford.
Known as The Ford Video Guy, Tim has built an impressive following on YouTube and through his podcast.
That’s just the beginning, though. Where his videos and podcasts reach a large audience, it’s the time Tim spends in forums and discussion boards that helps him build more personal relationships with customers.
Notice how Tim isn’t “selling” on these platforms. He’s educating people on how to order, customize, and enjoy their Ford Broncos, F150s, and Mustangs. That’s how he’s built so much trust that people from all over the country fly to the middle of Kansas to pick up their new rides.
The big takeaway here is that you want to find the online spaces that match your message and customer. Boohoo’s quirky content is perfect for TikTok and the products they sell. Tim’s more straightforward messaging makes sense on auto-enthusiast message boards. That’s why we listed goal setting and audience identification at the top of our tips list.
3. Hands 4 Hire
You don’t need to have the budget of an international brand or even a large car dealership to create a significant online presence. A little digital elbow grease can get you in front of your local audience.
Case in point, Hands4Hire, a local handyperson service in North Carolina. The business publishes a monthly newsletter full of home maintenance tips, cost estimations, and seasonal promotions.
The other thing Hands4Hire does really well is promote its excellent reputation. You’ll see mentions of its stellar reviews on the business’s website, on social media, and in the newsletter. Trust is really important when you’re asking people to let you work in their homes.
The Hands4Hire example teaches us two important lessons. First, building an online presence is accessible to any business. Big or small, no matter the niche, you can and should be present in more digital spaces.
Second, this handyperson business reminds us to repeat the most important parts of our message on every platform possible. Whether you’re the lowest-cost option, offer the highest level of service, are a multiple-award winner, or sell things, no one else can make sure your message is shared loudly and proudly across your online messaging.
Increase your online presence today
We’ve seen a variety of ways to get exposure for your business online. While some take time to build, many can be done in minutes. Why not share a quick Facebook post about your most recent successful job? Or take a quick video of your office or a screenshot of a positive review and email it to your current customers?
Let’s keep the momentum rolling with these ideas for increasing your online presence:
- Establish your goals
- Confirm your target audience
- Create a compelling website
- Optimize it for search engines
- Post consistently on social media
- Consider creating a newsletter
- Publish blog content
- Get and reply to online reviews
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile
- Manage your online business listings
- Be active in online forums
- Work with influencers
- Partner with other brands
- Try paid ads
- Produce guest content
- Host a free webinar
- Make everything more accessible
- Review your progress and adapt
