8 Tips for Businesses to Grow their Online Presence

Image source: Search Engine Journal

With over 4 billion people using social media, platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are excellent networks to connect business owners with potential customers and build lasting relationships with their existing audience.

However, simply having a social media profile is not enough. Businesses must enhance their social media marketing, actively interact with followers, and step up their engagement. Improving your social media presence will help you establish your brand’s identity and is crucial for the company’s growth.

"The ability to know your audience so deeply to where you understand what captivates their attention and pair that with content that provides value in that moment is a recipe for success." said Ariel Boswell, a social media analyst at HubSpot.

A strong social media presence will help make your business visible to more people and can help your business stand out from competitors. An increase in brand recognition will ultimately help you build credibility and improve your brands reputation. It is important to keep your audience engaged by remaining consistent and providing valuable/entertaining content for your audience. Enhancing your social media presence can also be a cost-effective strategy to market your business. Unlike traditional advertising methods, creating and sharing content online is often a cheaper alternative.

Overall, improving your social media presence can help your business connect with customers, increase brand awareness, and drive sales. Here I will introduce you to 8 tips that any business can utilize to start growing their online presence.

1.     Identify Your Social Media Goals.

It is important to identify what you want to achieve with your social media presence. Do you want to generate more website traffic? Boost brand/product awareness? Or improve customer engagement? Setting goals will help ensure that your business is achieving these objectives.

One common method is to set specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. For example,

Specific: Your business wants to increase Instagram followers by 25%.

Measurable: By creating more high-quality and engaging content your goal is to achieve 20 shares per week.

Attainable: Previous efforts at engaging content have seen a measurable increase in comments.

Relevant: Increase user engagement leads to more website traffic and significantly drives sales.

Time-bound: 3 months.

 Setting SMART goals provide clear direction and helps you prioritize what you want to achieve. Not only does this help you stay focused but also motivates you to stay committed. Identifying your businesses goals and objectives is an effective strategy that ensures that your business is effectively using social media to achieve the desired results.

2.     Choose Your Network.

It is important to start building momentum on one or two platforms then once you have achieved a significant and reliable audience, you should branch out onto other platforms. Choosing the correct social media platform depends on who your target audience is, your business goals, and ad targeting options. It is important to define who your target audience is to help you identify where they are most active and will help you create content that is relevant to them and increase engagement. Each Platform has its own strengths and down-sides, evaluate each platform by its content format, potential reach, and where your competitors are.

Remember that it is not necessary to be on every social media platform. It is better to achieve success on one or two platforms than to spread yourself too thin across multiple networks.

3.     Focus on Producing High Quality Content and Attention-Grabbing Visuals.

Creating and sharing high-quality visuals such as images and videos can help your content stand out and attract more engagement. Usually, you only have a few seconds to make an impression on a potential customer and you don't want them turned away because of bad content. High-quality content can help your business build trust and loyalty and increase your reach over time. Focus on images that will connect with users. Share high-quality, videos and images of people using your products. Encourage customers to send in photos of them interacting with your product, which builds social proof and consumer trust.

4.     Optimize your Social Media Accounts by Using Keywords.

Using keywords is an important part of improving your search engine optimization (SEO). Optimizing keywords in your profile and posts will help your content be discovered by people who are searching for topics related to your business. Effectively using keywords requires you to insert them naturally and strategically, rather than stuffing them into your content and diminishing your credibility. Incorporating key words in your name and bio is an excellent strategy to improve your chances of showing in relevant searches. You can also optimize your reach by utilizing hashtags in your posts. Hashtags help users discover all relevant content so, it’s crucial to add relevant hashtags to your content to attract the right audience.

Some social media platforms like Instagram have a feature that allows you to write alternative text to vividly describe your photo. This originally made content accessible to those with visual impairments but is also important for your SEO as it helps networks like Instagram to better understand what’s in your post and whether it’s relevant to a specific search.

Image source: Life Marketing

For a more in depth understanding of how to utilize Instagram SEO, visit Keyhole’s full story on Instagram SEO.  

5.     Post Frequently and at Optimal Times.

To make the most use of social media platforms, it is necessary that you are regularly active and posting content at regular intervals. It is also helpful to plan out your content ahead of time by making a posting calendar. This will help you stay consistent with your posts, pre-plan any content in advance and will help you avoid posting repetitive content. A posting calendar can be a spreadsheet or digital calendar, providing a rundown of your upcoming posts organized by date and time.

6.     Keep an Eye Out for What is Trending.

One of the best ways to grow your social media presence for your business is to join in on a popular trend which can get your profile to reach more users and could even help your posts go viral. However, tread lightly with anything controversial that could potentially damage your reputation and lose loyalty.

7.     Engage with Your Audience on Social Media.

Engaging with your followers is a critical part of boosting your businesses visibility and outreach. When you are actively engaging with your followers it not only encourages them to interact back with your content but also fosters a sense of loyalty towards your brand. Your social media is a platform for interacting and serving current and future customers. Here are a few ways to connect with your audience:

• Like and reply to comments on your posts and direct messages.

• Pose and answer questions on stories and posts.

• Show appreciation by sharing user-generated content.

• Preview new product launches. 

• Hold contests and giveaways to add fun interaction and active engagement. 

• Follow back interesting influencers and members of your target audience.

Engaging with your followers not only shows that you care about their experience but also provides valuable insight into your audiences needs and preferences.

8.     Audit your Social Media Account and Evaluate Your Performance.

Evaluate the growth of your social media presence by tracking your profile’s analytics. This can help you identify what is working and what needs to be improved. Networking platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn allow you to observe how many people have visited your page, but Facebook and Instagram contain business page functions that even allow you to see your viewers demographics and learn how many people are discovering your page from posts.

Here are some key metrics to keep track of:

·       Follower growth over time.

·       The percentage of people who engage with your content (likes, comments, shares) compared to the total number of people who only view it.

·       The number of people who saw your content (reach) and how many times your content was displayed (impressions).

·       Track the number of clicks on your posts and links.

·       The number of sales and leads generated through your marketing strategy.

·       Overall brand sentiment.

Use social media analytics tools to track the performance of your content and identify which marketing methods are most successful in driving traffic. By regularly reviewing your performance, you can make data-driven decisions to improve your social media presence and achieve your goals.

 If your business is looking to increase brand awareness, reach a larger audience, increase customer engagement, and drive more traffic to your website then improving your social media presence is an effective strategy.

For further information on how to grow a successful social media presence, you can check out these blogs from Hubspot and Wix Blog.

Keywords: Social media, marketing strategy, businesses, consumers, brand reputation.