Every business needs digital presence. Most people find businesses based upon online search, reviews on social media sites, and referrals. Small businesses and non-profits need to build digital presence to remain relevant in a hyper competitive and crowded environment.
The internet is a crowded space. Simply launching a website or creating an Instagram post is not going to get you noticed and more importantly, get business. The importance of building a digital marketing strategy, operationalizing the strategy, and following through is essential to succeed.
Recently, I spoke with two small business entrepreneurs on marketing spend and extracting the largest bang for the buck. Clearly digital presence was top of mind. At the same time, noticeably entrepreneurial businesses tend to build presence on the internet in an organic manner. Bit by bit, with hope and prayer, a post will go viral; akin to buying a lottery ticket and praying!
A well thought out digital presence strategy can go a long way in building a sustainable digital presence at a minimal cost. The digital strategy is not a long thesis but a simple list of all aims along with how to achieve the aims with responsibilities set out.
In this post, I am going to cover overarching topics for building a digital presence with follow on posts covering each topic in more detail.
1. Understand digital marketing – briefly, digital marketing means reaching out to your audience through apps or via websites. There are multiple platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snap Chat, Tik Tok, You Tube, WhatsApp, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. The reality is social media channels will keep opening and will become more popular than others over time.
The big benefit is the interactive nature of digital marketing; you need to draw your audience to your brand.
I suggest watch some YouTube Videos on digital marketing for example “Digital Marketing In 5 Minutes by Simplilearn.”
For the more adventurous, there are many free and paid online courses in digital marketing like “Google’s Digital Marketing & E-commerce Professional Certificate.”
The idea is not to become a web or app developer but learn the language of digital marketing to engage with developers and understand what is possible.
2. Build a web site and keep it updated – a website is essential in today’s world; a permanent storefront to display your wares! Folks set up websites but then do not update them. Not updating is a huge issue as it can put your target audience off. Building discipline is necessary – update the website regularly by setting a period, say once a week or every fortnight.
Websites are easy to build nowadays, and you can make them without help at an exceptionally low cost. A simple YouTube video on building a website like “How to Make a WordPress Website – For Beginners” by Tyler Moore can help understand the process.
Also, you can find website developers online like Weamse.com who can help you set up the website, keep it secure and add features as your online presence expands.
3. Social media and discipline! – social media apps and websites are powerful tools to engage with your customers. It is easy to set up accounts be it Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram or on other social media, but be careful as you do need to update. It is worth spending time to evaluate where you should spend your time and effort. So, if you are an accountant or lawyer, maybe LinkedIn is a good site but if you are a food business, Instagram is probably appropriate.
I found a simulation exercise by Stukent.com called Mimic Social to be extremely helpful. The simulation helps with understanding the dynamics of digital marketing through social media.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – this is the holy grail for digital marketing. Ultimately, people need to find you to buy your services. You need to show up high in a search on Google, Safari, or other search engines.
I will cover SEO in detail in other posts, but I do suggest going through YouTube videos and articles to get insight into SEO optimization. An online video, “What is SEO” by Simplilearn, for example provides a lot of information to get you to understand the importance of SEO.
5. Content Creation – I started by saying the Internet is crowded. Unless you post compelling content how much ever you may try, you will not find engagement. Question is what is compelling content? This is where understanding your audience is incredibly important. The more depth of information on your audience, the more likely you will build content to service their needs. So, if you are a carpenter looking for customers, putting out simple pictures of work already done is probably a lot more powerful than writing a thesis. Similarly, a chef needs to show his recipes and talk about his cooking while interacting with folks through posts.
Content development is not about putting glossy videos but really knowing your audience and providing them a way to engage with you based upon need and interest.
I like the video, “How to Create Engaging Content for Social Media” by Marley Jaxx that explains content creation quite well.
OPENING IMAGE by MKHMarketing, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mkhmarketing/8539048913