Digital presence is important. There are people out there searching for the product or service that your business provides, and if those people can’t find you online, then your competitors will get their business instead.
As a business owner, you’ve most likely heard terms like SEO, SEM, or PPC, then there’s email marketing, content marketing, social media, funnels, lead nurturing, automation, programmatic, analytics….
…and it’s all a bit hard to know where to start with building a digital presence.
So in the interest of saving you a little bit of time and energy, here are three simple digital marketing tips that you can implement today to start boosting your digital presence.
You’re going to want to read through to number 3… it’s one you probably haven’t heard before
Tip number 1 – Get in deep with Google
SEO (search engine optimisation) is one of the most technical aspects of digital marketing, incorporating many different technical, on page and off page tactics to help get your website appearing in search engine results pages.
One of the fundamental elements of SEO, is making sure that the search engines know your business exists, and letting them know that you have a brand that’s worth showing to their search audience.
Seeing as Google is the world’s biggest search engine, and pretty much the go to for most people’s online searches, then it’s worth getting in deep with their own products to make sure they know you’re serious.
Two of the easiest Google platforms to set up are Google My Business, and Google+ (G+).
Google My Business
Google My Business is basically how you tell Google your business exists, and has some kind of physical location. This can help with what’s called ‘Local SEO’, which is how you get your business to show up in search results when people are looking for local businesses in their area. This should be of particular interest to you if you have a local services business, as it also gets your business on to Google Maps, meaning people can find you while searching for ‘Plumbers near me’ or ‘Dog groomers near me’ for example.
Setting up Google My Business for your company helps Google understand that your business is a real thing, and as long as you include a link to your website, it will also understand that your website belongs to a real life, legitimate business, which helps to increase the trust Google has in your site (trust is one of the important indicators that Google uses to rank websites).
Hopefully, many of you will already have Google My Business set up, and if you don’t – go and do it now, it shouldn’t take long. You will have to have your business verified, which usually means Google will send a postcard to the address you’ve given for your business, and you submit a code.
Once you’ve set it up (and for those that already had it set up), make sure you populate it with as much information about your business as possible. Remember that this is one of the ways you can make your business visible to Google, so the more information you can put in, the more Google will favour you over your competitors.
Some important things to make sure you fill out:
- A good description of your business, one that tells people what problem you help solve for them – and what your unique selling proposition is
- Your location and the areas you serve – be accurate with these so people can find you in Google Maps
- Your trading hours – again be accurate with these so people don’t come knocking on your door only to find you’re closed
- Include any special hours like Christmas, or public holidays where your hours may differ to a usual week
- Your website address (no brainer)
- Services you provide – this helps not only your customers but also Google to understand what you offer, which means you will show up in more searches if Google thinks your services are relevant
Once you’ve set up and populated your GMB profile, make sure you start asking your customers to leave reviews on there for you. This is another indicator to Google that your business is trusted and authentic, as well as social proof to potential customers that other people love your business too.
Google +
Google + is Google’s own social network platform… it’s not the most used social network in the world, with about 500 million active monthly users, compared to Facebook’s 2 billion… but it does have a major advantage for boosting your digital presence – it’s owned by Google!
Like Google My Business, G+ is another way you can get your business seen by Google, and get just a little bit of R-E-S-P-E-C-T from the search engine giant.
You can go as big or as non-committal as you like with G+, to be honest it’s not going to make your business number 1 in the search engine rankings overnight, but it also doesn’t take long to set up, and certainly doesn’t hurt to have another Google owned product with your businesses details all over it.
It can be a little bit confusing to set your profile up fully, but here’s a quick start guide:
- Sign in to Google + with your businesses Google account (if you have one, otherwise you can use your personal)
- Navigate to ‘Profile’ and start populating it with a profile and background image
- Now click on the ‘About’ link next to the ‘Edit profile’ button and you’ll be able to populate information about your business. Do this by hitting the ‘+’ circle at the bottom right of the page (as seen below).
Add your business details to the About Me page
- Once again, populate as much info about your business as you can, and make it public
- Now navigate to ‘People’ and see if there are any suggestions for people to connect with. You can follow people, and then add them to ‘circles’ which help you interact with people in different ways
- Finally, navigate to ‘Discover’ and start following some collections that are relevant to your business, or even just ones you like. Then use the search bar to find any communities that are relevant to your business, and join them
Awesome. Now you’ve set that up, make sure you include G+ in your content posting schedule, and show Google how useful and relevant you are to your customers.
Tip number 2 – Get more social
Everyone knows that social media is an important component of any digital marketing strategy….
But do you really know why?
There are the obvious reasons
- It’s free
- Everyone’s got a social media account of some kind
- The reach of social networks means brand exposure can be exponential
- You can engage directly with your customers and potential customers and they can reach you through a channel they’re comfortable with
- You can build your business into a thought leader in your industry and the first choice for customers in the market
All of the above are certainly instrumental in raising your digital profile and increasing your presence on the web.
However, there is another reason that you probably haven’t thought much about, and that is helping your website rank in search engine results.
One of the main elements of SEO is the number and quality of links that point to your website. These are what’s called ‘backlinks’, and the more backlinks you have from high quality sources, the higher your search engine ranking is likely to be.
Google also tracks all social media activity related to your brand, which means if engagement and sentiment around your brand on social media are positive, that’s going to help your search rankings.
“Ok, ok, so what does that all mean? I’ve already got a Facebook page…”
Good question, what it means is that you should be on ALL the social media!
If you haven’t already, go right now and sign your business up to at least Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
I know, I know, you’re probably screaming “I don’t have time to manage my emails let alone 500 different social media accounts!”, but don’t worry, it’s not as hard as you think.
Firstly, set those accounts up, and make sure that you populate as much business info as you can in your profiles, including your website wherever you can, a description of what you do (use the same one you put in your G+ profile), your services, your location etc etc.
The more accurate and consistent you can get this information across all of your profiles, the more the search engines can see that your brand is not a fly-by-night cowboy type arrangement.
Next, sign yourself up for Hootsuite. This is a free tool that helps you post your content to multiple social media accounts at the same time. It also helps you track responses and see your engagement analytics, and importantly, it helps you schedule posts.
That means, you can spend an hour once a week to set-up and schedule what you’re going to post for the week (or if you’re really organised, schedule the whole month), and then you can leave it to do its thing. This is all assuming that you are already posting some kind of content through social media right now… if you’re not, then we probably need to talk.
So the main point of this tip is to get on as many social media platforms as you can. Not all of them will be entirely relevant to your business, but the more platforms you can be across (with useful relevant content), the more reach you are going to get across the interwebs, and the more likely your search ranking is to go up.
Some of the social media platforms you should be considering are:
- Google + (hopefully this one is already ticked off!)
- Youtube (if you’ve got video)
- Tumblr (micro blogging)
- Flickr (photo sharing)
- Reddit (forums)
- Medium (blogging platform)
There are many others, but if you can get some way towards ticking that list off, then you should be starting to see your digital presence rocket.
And finally…
Tip number 3 – Answer some questions
You could be forgiven for not having heard of Quora, or at least not paying it much attention. It is a question and answer site built by some ex Facebook employees, which launched to the public in 2010, although users and interest on the platform have grown most rapidly in the past few years – in 2016 to 2017, users almost doubled from 100 million to 190 million unique visitors per month.
So why am I telling you about a random Q&A site? Well, as with tip number 2 above, there are a couple of reasons.
- Build your business’s brand as a thought leader and expert in its field
- Get high quality backlinks to your website and help with SEO
This one is really simple, and you can definitely start doing it today.
Sign yourself up to Quora, you’re going to have to use your personal details, but you can include your business name and a description etc.
It should ask you what kind of things you know about, and once you’re all set up, you can start browsing for questions to answer. People ask ALL kinds of things on there… try not to go down the rabbit hole of reading through people’s random questions about the meaning of life, but instead search out questions related to your business that you can legitimately answer. If you are a Lawyer specialising in start-up business advice for example, then there are plenty of questions you can probably help people with. Honestly, there are questions related to just about everything under the sun on there, so you will find something you can answer.
What IS the meaning of life?… Deep
Now for the magic – include a link to your website or a blog you’ve written relating to the question you’ve answered, and watch traffic start coming through. You have just created a high authority backlink to your website, and every time you do that, it will help your search engine ranking just that little bit more.
I would also recommend having a look around, engaging with other answers on relevant questions by ‘upvoting’ them, and commenting. You can also share your answers on different social media platforms, and you might even want to ask your own questions at some point… (what IS the meaning of life?)… Whatever you can do to build up your profile as an expert in your field.
Right, that’s all for today.
Here’s the TL;DR version:
3 tips to boost your digital presence today:
- Set up your business on Google My Business and Google+
- Get on as many social media platforms as possible and share good content
- Answer some relevant questions on Quora
There are many, many other tips and tricks for building your digital presence, but hopefully those have given you some inspiration!
If you want to find out more about any of the tips I’ve mentioned, or want help with building your own digital presence, get in touch with me today.