An In-Depth Guide To Building A Stronger Digital Presence In 2022
In an increasingly digital world, building a digital presence has become the top priority for businesses that want to thrive and survive. Whether outsourcing or assembling their own in-house digital marketing teams, businesses are hell-bent on developing their online presence and creating a memorable brand.
That said, with almost every company and business rushing to have a strong digital footprint as soon as possible, the online market has now become even more competitive. This can be quite challenging for both start-ups as they try to find their way in a saturated market and even established brands to retain their position and online visibility.
This comprehensive guide can help guide your way and efforts. In this in-depth guide, you’ll learn what exactly a digital presence is, why it’s important, and six proven ways to help establish a stronger digital presence today and in the next years to come.
Digital Presence: The What And Why
Essentially, your digital presence is your online existence. This is made up of your website, search results, social media profiles, online mentions, directory listings, and just about anything that allows someone to find you on the internet.
According to a professional corporate video production company, the bigger your digital footprint, the easier it is for people to find and get to know your business and offerings. With the world becoming more digital, your target audience and customers are constantly browsing online.
In fact, a report shows that over 95% of people look online to learn more about a company. Consumers are using the internet to search, compare, and buy the services and goods they need. Every phase of the buyer’s journey today often takes place online, so how you present your company and brand directly impacts your success.
Having a digital presence can ensure that when people search for relevant solutions, your company will be the one they find. In addition, your digital presence can also play a critical role in how you’re perceived by your audience.
For instance, a start-up with a clunky, small website without any social profiles may look untrustworthy since they lack social proof. Whereas a business with a strong social media presence, a professionally made website, and plenty of positive reviews will look more favourable since they have strong proof to back up its claims.
Establishing A Stronger Digital Presence
A strong and effective digital presence is the result of numerous factors and strategies. If you want to increase your online visibility, you need to work on multiple digital touchpoints. Here are six strategies to help improve your brand’s digital presence:
1. Start With A Solid Market Research
All business initiatives start with thorough research and planning. So, before you get excited about various strategies to build a solid online presence, you first need to know more about your market—your target audience.
Market research allows you to gather data and information about a business’s target market or audience to better understand them. Businesses use this data to improve user experience, design better products, and plan an effective marketing strategy that attracts leads and boosts conversion rates.
Without research, it’s virtually impossible to understand your consumers. You may have a general idea of who your target audience is and what they need, but you need to dig deeper if you wish to win their loyalty. You need to analyse their behaviour, learn what they like or dislike, know their preferred devices, and discover when and how they spend their time in the online world.
You may have done market research in the past, but there’s no guarantee that it’s still relevant. In this fast-paced digital world, how consumers feel about brands changes every day. So, if you want to make your digital presence stay relevant and ensure you won’t be wasting resources and time using the wrong or less-effective strategies, you should always update your market data and target customer profiles.
2. Develop An Effective Website
The first thing you need to establish a strong online presence in 2022 is a top-quality website. Think of your website as the digital version of your brick-and-mortar physical store and your online business card. To make a good impression on your users, you need to have a well-made and effective website.
An effective website should fulfill its intended functions by conveying its message while engaging visitors. Some of the most important factors that contribute to a good website include:
Content
Your website serves as your digital business card. As such, it has to provide all the information that a customer may need to know about your business. If not, users will turn to third-party websites to find the answers to their questions. What they find and learn about your business from these sources may not be true, comprehensive, or verified. Worse, they may end up discovering or choosing a competitor while researching your brand.
Thus, you want to focus a great deal of effort on creating quality content for your website from well-written articles and information to quality images and videos. In particular, quality video creation has become more important today. Whether you choose to produce video on your own or hire a production company, well-made videos can have a significant impact not only on your website but overall digital presence.
Not only does it help users learn more about your business, but it also keeps them on your website for longer.
User-Friendliness
One of the most important aspects of a well-designed website is usability and user-friendliness. Good website usability is all about making it easy for users to find the information they need quickly. In general, there are several elements for better usability. These include mobile compatibility, accessibility, fast loading times, effective navigation, and design simplicity.
SEO-Optimized
Developing a well-design website isn’t only about your users—it also matters to search engine bots. Thus, you want to make sure your website is also optimized for your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. If your website doesn’t deliver, you’ll find it hard to rank and build a strong presence in organic search.
3. Use Content Marketing
Consumers have better access to information today. They can scour the internet to find the right solution to their issues and compare brands, services, and products before making a purchase. As a business, you want to provide them with guidance and answers to their questions. Not only can it help in generating new leads by engaging users and building trust, but it primarily helps in creating more visibility online.
In terms of content marketing, you have various formats of content to use, depending on your marketing channel and goals. These may include blog posts and written articles, templates, infographics, eBooks, quizzes, images, and videos. In particular, video is considered the most effective type, making it the king of content marketing.
Video can explain things better, providing more information than plain text or static imagery. Since videos can help in increasing a customer’s understanding of your products or services, they can greatly impact their buying decision. A report shows that over 70% of people bought a service or product after watching an explainer video. Not only that, but Google also loves videos, positively impacting your SEO efforts.
That said, regardless of what you choose, your content should highlight your brand values, expertise, and uniqueness to create positive brand visibility, attracting potential customers and pushing them down your sales funnel.
4. Be Consistent With Your SEO Efforts
SEO has always been an effective, long-term digital marketing strategy. Did you know that almost 30% of all internet traffic is from search engines? A study also shows that over half of people prefer search engines to research and find brands. This means that if you want to improve your digital presence, you need to aim for the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs). Otherwise, you’re losing a lot of potential clients.
Also, search engines offer businesses the best kind of online visibility—a natural, organic way for people to find and discover your brand. In return, you need to match the requirements of search engines for quality and user experience.
At the foundation of any good SEO strategy is investing in keyword research. Strategically using keywords on your content and website helps increase your ranking. Also, optimizing your website for search engines and adding it to directories and listing such as Google My Business (GMB), Bing Place, or Yellow Places can increase your digital footprint and generate even more traffic to your site.
That said, the ranking regulations of Google and other search engines are constantly changing. To stay relevant in organic searches, you want to keep up with them. This means that SEO requires continuous and consistent work, constantly adapting as the search engine algorithm changes.
5. Be Social
Aside from your business website, your social media accounts also give your business a face in the digital world. And you have several options to choose from—Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even TikTok.
That said, don’t just build profiles on all the social networks that your target audience frequents. Figure out the best platforms for your business and use them to grow brand awareness and visibility.
For instance, if you have a photography business, visual-based platforms like Instagram and Pinterest allow you to showcase your creative photos. For B2B or professional services, creating and optimizing their LinkedIn profile can help the right clients to find you. That said, most businesses will benefit from having a Facebook business page since it’s the largest social platform today.
In addition, you need to use your social platforms to establish connections and relationships with your audience. Here are some tips to become social:
Share Relevant Posts
Social media marketing success is a matter of posting engaging and compelling content regularly. Not only can it help make your business look reliable, but it also shows that you have the right knowledge to share, establishing your authority.
The more consistent you are in posting content that your audience will like and enjoy, the more they’re likely to engage and expect your posts in the future. Not only can it help you stay at the forefront of their minds, but it also contributes to your overall online presence.
Actively Engage Users
Posting from time to time is simply not enough—you also want to be as engaging as possible. Social platform algorithms track both user engagement and topic relevancy. So, for your social content to show in their feeds, you want to keep the conversation going. This means that once you attract your audience’s attention, you need to find ways to keep it for as long as possible.
Take Advantage of User-Generated Content (UGC)
User-generated content is a great way to create a strong digital presence. By encouraging people to talk about your brand, post videos and pictures, join discussions, leave reviews, or tag you in the comments, you create a buzz around your brand.
6. Monitor Your Online Reputation
Your online reputation plays a critical part in your digital presence. What’s the use of having your business name all over the internet if all it’s saying is not in your favour? This can negatively impact your business.
In contrast, having a good reputation not only helps you make a good impression but also boosts your digital presence. The more people think positively of your brand, the more chances of attracting new customers to your brand.
To monitor your online reputation, make sure to check your reviews and testimonials. Negative reviews are not always bad, but they can ruin your online reputation if you don’t manage them properly. Try to resolve issues that bother unsatisfied customers, showing that you care about your customers and are always aiming to provide a satisfactory customer experience.
You also want to stay active in relevant communities and forums where you can show your expertise and build credibility. Just make sure to join discussions only to contribute with your opinions and knowledge and not to advertise your brand. Otherwise, you may achieve the opposite effect.
Takeaway
Building a stronger digital presence isn’t an easy and quick task. Regardless of how you approach it, increasing your online visibility requires skill, time, dedication, effort, and consistency.
However, when done right, digital marketing can open the path to generating more awareness, obtaining more customers, improving revenue, and ultimately, pushing your business toward growth. Whether you’re starting out with your digital presence or looking to build stronger digital branding, the above strategies can help up your digital game and set you up for success.
