Any business requires a strong presence to grow. Apart from a great-looking storefront and effective advertising, you should also have a great online presence. With more customers searching for products and services online, it is crucial for your business to have active social media accounts, a great website, and correct pages in established business directories. A solid online presence boosts your online sales, helps customers locate your business, and strengthens your brand.
What Does Online Presence Mean?
An online presence describes the impact available online in terms of content or activity that a person or business has under their name. This could be through a business website, social media profiles, and pages in business directories, such as Google My Business and Yelp. Online presence also includes photos and videos of your business, blog posts, and mentions available on the web.
Why Do You Need an Online Presence?
Businesses should establish a solid online presence at the basic level to leverage the increasing number of customers looking for products and services online. A Brightlocal Consumer Review Survey noted that 33% of study participants agreed to use the internet daily to find local businesses. 16% of the respondents also attested to searching for a business on the internet multiple times every week.
Therefore, creating a great online presence not only makes it easy for potential customers to discover your business but also allows previous customers to confirm that your business still exists. Online interactions with customers also give them a sneak peek of customer service and the quality of services provided.
Online directories, such as Yelp and Google My Business, also allow customers to review your business, which significantly impacts your marketing and other aspects of your business. Other benefits of having a solid online presence include;
- It helps customers to locate your business.
- Reviews are beneficial in attracting new customers
- Content marketing is an effective branding and marketing strategy
- It encourages repeat buyers and builds brand loyalty
- Ensures that your business shows up in search results
- Improves accessibility of your business
- It makes your business look credible
- It helps understand your audience better
How to Set Up Online Presence for Your Starting Business
Use the following tips to set up your online presence;
Create a Good Website
Whether you operate a brick-and-mortar enterprise or a strictly online business, you should build a quality website to attract and retain customers. Fortunately, building a website is currently easy due to the availability of multiple website-building tools. Your website should accurately reflect your business and answer some of the common questions that people have about your business.
That said, you can use Squarespace or Wix to set up a simple business website. These tools feature easy drag-and-drop web design tools and other advanced features that make website building simple. For eCommerce stores, Shopify is a great option, as it packs all the necessary tools.
While there are many factors to consider when building your business website, focus on the following;
- Create a mobile-friendly website
- Your web pages should be fast-loading—a maximum of three seconds.
- Update your blog section regularly
- Provide accurate and prominent contact information.
Be Active on Social Media
Social media platforms are a great place for businesses to engage with prospects and strengthen their brand identity. However, to maintain your social media accounts, post regularly and interact with your followers frequently. Managing multiple social profiles might be challenging, and some platforms may not suit your business model. Therefore, choose and prioritize one or two platforms where your audience is.
List Your Business on Business Directories
Another way of strengthening your online presence is ensuring that your business is listed in established business directories. Popular business directories include Google My Business, Yelp, Better Business Bureau, and Yellowpages. These listings can help in the following ways;
- Improves your local SEO, making it easy for local customers to find your business
- Display your operational hours
- Display images and videos of your business
- Enables customers to provide reviews
To achieve this, ensure that you claim and verify your business on all directories. Also, update your address, contact info, website links, and business hours regularly.
Ask Customers for Review
The importance of customer reviews in enabling the success of your business cannot be ignored. Various studies have concluded that modern shoppers read up to ten reviews before trusting a business. Therefore, don’t be ashamed of asking for customer reviews and testimonials on your social media platforms and business directories.
Note that while you can incentivize your real customers to write reviews, don’t attempt writing fake reviews. Fake reviews can easily be identified, and customers can easily lose trust in your brand.
Conclusion
Currently, online presence is an important part of a business that can’t be overlooked. While this may seem easy, building a solid online presence is a lengthy and time-consuming process. However, the payoff is worth every effort.
