8 Steps to Build And Develop an Online Presence for Businesses

What is online presence? How do I build it? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

As the world continues to evolve, it is important that as business owners, we don’t remain static. And seeing as a lot of this evolution has to do with the web, it is essential that we start to take our businesses online and create a strong presence.

However, if you’ve not always been web-savvy, building an online presence can be tiring, confusing and frustrating, even with the numerous options available; from creating different profiles and numerous accounts, to building your website and finally figuring out the best medium through which to engage your target audience.

But if you know how and where to start, building your online presence can be less frustrating. To help, let’s break the steps down so you can start building your presence immediately.

1. Set your goals

So you believe being online is the next best thing for the growth of your brand, but how do you intend to go about this?

Write your plan, make it plain. Itemize your set goals, aims and objectives and carefully strategize on how you intend to achieve your goals. After setting the goals, break it down. Think of it in smaller bits. Maybe your big picture is, “I want my beauty blog to be among the top 5 most viewed blogs of all times by June 2017.” Then Write your plan, make it plain. Itemize your set goals, aims and objectives and carefully strategize on how you intend to achieve your goals. After setting the goals, break it down. Think of it in smaller bits. Maybe your big picture is, “I want my beauty blog to be among the top 5 most viewed blogs of all times by June 2017.” Then break it down into actionable steps that will help you to achieve your goal. I will blog every day. I will do product reviews. I will offer my services to 5 loyal readers every month for free.

By itemizing your steps, it makes your goal seem attainable and gives you a boost of confidence along the way, which in turn makes it more likely for us not to give up on the bigger picture.

Don’t build an online persona for the sake of it, or because that’s what all your competitors are doing right now, build it to a level where it can help your overall business goals.

2. Get SEO

Being solid starts with your website. It should be the central place where your audience can learn more about your brand and what you have to offer and how people can contact you for your services. However, this won’t have any impact if your webpage is drowned amidst a sea of content on the web. And this is where SEO comes in..

3. Be consistent and create value

Once you decide on the one habit that will help you start moving toward your goal, make sure you do it every day. Is it going to be blogging? Or is it going to be YouTube? Do it every day.

Whether it’s your Instagram or your WordPress account, always provide consistent value first. This would help you to attain credibility and then, you slowly become an authority in your field, hereby carving a niche for yourself, which is very important for your online growth and visibility.

4. Focus on a tool

It may be okay for one or two people to be everywhere online and it may have worked for them, but I’ll rather you not. this strategy of being everywhere online could destroy your business rather than build it up. How you may ask? Being inactive on social media could have negative impacts on your brand as your followers see your inactivity as disregard for the platform’s ability to communicate with them.
And because it’s almost difficult for you to give equal amount of attention to all your accounts, hence the importance to focus on a few.

5. Comment on forums

Be an active participant on online forums associated with your niche. You could even guest blog. Over time, after sharing practical advice and contributing intelligently to conversations on these forums with larger audience than yours, you slowly build a wider reputation as a force to be reckoned with in your industry.

6. Give freebies!

Everybody loves a freebie. Simple. A free coupon or service charge among other goodies will improve your online image positively.

7. Keep track

How do you know whether all this hard work is paying off? Keep track. Don’t just seat in front of your screen day in and out and expect that your plan is falling into place just because you’re following the process. Keep track. Check the number of likes your posts garner daily. Is your presence growing daily on Facebook while twitter seems not to? Keep track. This would inform you on whether or not to change strategy or keep you satisfied that you seem to be doing the right thing

8. Be patient

Having asked you to keep track, it is also important to ask you to be patient. It may sound contradictory, but they are two different concepts that both have their places in this journey.

If you’ve been able to do all the aforementioned points, having a strong presence on social media is imminent. However you must be patient enough to see it happen and not set unrealistic expectations.

You can experiment.

Since there is no hard and fast rule to these things, don’t be afraid to play around with your methods in the beginning to see what works best for you and your audience. Over time, you will learn what works for you and what doesn’t.

Contributed by Puder Rtaying, Mental Health Assistant (2005-present)