6 Strategies for Building a Strong Online Presence

Establishing an online presence is no longer a choice in today’s business landscape. More often than not, a consumer opts to search for their desired good or service online allowing for the internet to sway their purchasing decision. For a first impression, your brand is only as good as your virtual presence, and the benefits of employing strategies to enhance this are plentiful; including increased visibility, improved credibility, and becoming a relevant brand when a particular niche is searched. To achieve these feats, here are six powerful strategies you can implement today and the best courses of action to integrate them into your brand: developing a user-centric website, harnessing the power of SEO, engaging in meaningful social media interaction, creating high-quality content, leveraging email marketing, and encouraging user-generated reviews. 

Develop a User-Centric Website

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Let’s be honest, first impressions matter the most. Imagine you are in a mall and you’re walking past various shops until you finally walk into one. What made you choose that particular shop? It could be the items you saw in the window, possibly an enticing advertisement on a sign next to the front door, or possibly the branding/colour was just too visually appealing not to walk in. This all applies to the digital landscape as well - and your website acts as your digital storefront. By implementing high-quality visuals, an appealing theme that also represents your brand, and straight forward call to actions, you can seamlessly guide your site visitor or prospect directly to your offerings. This is further enhanced through implementing “user-centric elements” which consist of clear and concise navigation, an intuitive user flow, and consistent branding throughout your site. The last important item to consider is the speed of entry. Back to the mall example; if you see a line of people, that delays your entry into the shop. Your time is valuable and waiting can be frustrating, so you’re more likely to turn away. This once again applies to your digital storefront. Studies show that approximately 40% of people are more likely to turn away from a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load, so it’s crucial to improve both your desktop and mobile responsiveness with the result of quicker load times.

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Harness the Power of SEO. 

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We like to think of traffic as a two-pronged approach: a responsive and visually appealing website allows site visitors to have a higher chance of converting into customers, but how do you get them onto your site in the first place? That is through the power of SEO, with the concept of optimizing your site and increasing your online reputation to rank your content higher on Google or other SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Now, it’s important to note that SEO is a long-term endeavour, as it takes time to build credibility and authoritativeness through consistency and generating high-quality content. However, here are general guidelines to get you started. First of all, what are you trying to rank for? Maybe it’s landscaping in Burnaby or web design in metro Vancouver; either way, you’ll need to perform keyword research and find the balance of keyword volume while tailoring to your niche. From there, you strategically place content on your website targeted towards that particular niche. 

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Following this, it’s important to look into on-page and off-page optimization. On-page optimization includes but is not limited to adding meta tags, relevant headings, and image alt text to just name some. The purpose of this is to allow Google search engine bots to better discover and take note of your content (known as “crawling”). From there, the search engine bots decide how relevant your content is through your designated keywords (known as “indexing”). Finally, these search engine bots intuitively rank your content in search results based on your site’s SEO authority (known as “ranking”). This segways nicely into off-page SEO, and how you can build authority to your site and rank higher on Google. There are a variety of ways to do so but by far the strongest is through building backlinks from reputable sources. This can be done through means such as guest posting, in which you reach out to journalists to write content based on your expertise, and they will then cite your site as their source. Another method is following through with press request alerts, which are effectively requests that journalists send out asking for sources of information such as quotes or certain topics from an industry expert. That being said, SEO is a long and complicated topic so it’s impossible to summarize effectively in a couple of paragraphs. However, we simplify it in our read here: https://www.wavepointmedia.com/wavepoints/must-know-seo-trends-for-2024

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Creating High Quality, Valuable Content

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Another way to enhance your digital presence in tangent with SEO is by consistently creating blog posts, articles, videos, or podcasts. Essentially showcasing both to your customer base and Google that you are an expert in your niche and have definitive proof through this content. As an industry expert, it’s important to tailor your content to target the interests and pain points of your audience. If you are in physiotherapy, then you can take that last part literally by building content around discomforts and how you aim to help. More interest equals more views which leads to a higher chance of conversion. Another way to build content is through your sheer industry experience, leveraging case studies, and projects, being a thought leader, or throwing in relevant facts to build credibility and trust for anyone who views your content. Lastly, it is important to encourage audience interaction. It’s free to do and typically someone who finds your content engaging or useful will have no problem sharing it with those around them or writing comments to increase engagement on your desired platform.

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Engage in Meaningful Social Media Interactions

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Social media has taken the world of consumers by storm, and businesses have gradually moved their branding over to reap the benefits. Depending on your niche, you have a variety of platforms you can choose to represent your brand to garner engagement and spread awareness to your product or service. Though it may not be worth your time, money, or energy to do an even split across the board and instead opt for the social media platforms that will best benefit your business. For example, if you are a B2B company who is in building materials or market software, you may have a better chance of advertising your products or services on LinkedIn. However, if you have a trendy product that appeals to younger audiences, you may want to invest in creating content for the highly lucrative but fast moving platform known as TikTok. Either way, creating content on social media platforms is about consistency and quality. Personally, I’ve scaled a personal brand on TikTok to eighty thousand followers within just a couple of months, and although this may not work for every niche, there are elements you can follow with your brand to replicate these results.

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My recipe for success consists of three items; consistency, format, and engagement. The first item speaks for itself, you will not gain traction if you only post once a week or even once every few days - although there is no golden rule, typically once a day for a high quality and engaging post has a better chance of garnering an audience or follower base. The second item is format, meaning both the quality of your post and the theme. Chances are, when you create a post and gain traction, your followers will not know you by your username. In today’s world, social media consumers are completely overwhelmed with content and that is largely due to the massive influence of TikTok with the ability to seamlessly swipe between each video. From that, viewers will not remember you personally, but if they enjoy your content, they will remember you as the person that did “this”. Therefore, creating content in the format of a series or with a particular theme is how viewers will remember you and even look forward to your next post! Lastly, engagement. You’ve created some posts and now you have a comment, be sure to reply to that comment as you would in any normal conversation. With this in mind, your next post could even “stitch” that comment to create even further engagement. Typically, many social media consumers love to interact and be involved with the creators content, so replying or in other ways interacting with comments goes an incredibly long way.

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Leveraging Email Marketing and Newsletters

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Your next strategy for building an online presence is through email marketing and newsletters. This means building and maintaining a targeted subscriber list. This begins with creating high-quality content as previously mentioned, and garnering an audience that enjoys engaging with your posts. From there, you can create a CTA (Call to Action) that will allow visitors to opt into your newsletter and directly receive your posts once they are published by simply entering their email address. The next step is to just publish your blog posts or articles as you normally would for it to be sent directly to their inbox, but you can go one step further. To increase engagement, you can create personalized email campaigns with relevant offers and updates, prompting them to purchase your product or service. Nurturing these leads and providing high quality sends and maintaining a non-intrusive frequency of those sends will gradually increase brand loyalty and conversions. Lastly, be sure to integrate your email campaigns within your overall content and social media strategy. 

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Encourage User-Generated Content and Reviews

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Have you looked something up and even before you take a good look at the product or service itself, you check the reviews? That’s how pivotal receiving testimonials from satisfied customers are, and why you should go out of your way to ask for genuine reviews on your Google Business profile. In our experience, the best way of doing so is by sending an email to 1) thank them for their business, 2) let them know that they can reach out for support (if applicable) and 3) ask them to leave a review and let you know how you did on the service or how they like the product. That last part can be paired especially well with a direct link to your Google Business profile review page so they do not have to go searching for it. Remember, the less actions you give to your customer, the more likely they are to complete the task. From there, customers may choose to also leave photos or videos of their purchase, allowing for even more credibility to be built for your brand. Another method to gain reviews is by creating incentives for customer participation through either contests or discounts on future purchases. This is quite possibly the most crucial step to increasing your online presence by reinforcing the credibility and trust of your business through authentic social proof.

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Bringing It All Together: Your Path to a Strong Digital Presence

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Building a strong online presence isn’t just about checking off a digital to-do list, it’s about creating a cohesive, value-driven experience that resonates with your audience and supports your business goals. By investing time and energy into a user-centric website, steadily improving your SEO, and providing meaningful engagement through social media, you create an accessible and trustworthy starting point for potential customers. Layer on consistent, high-quality content, well-planned email marketing campaigns, and a robust system for gathering genuine user reviews, and you’re well on your way to establishing a digital footprint that stands apart from the noise.

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Remember, these strategies feed into one another - valuable content fuels social engagement, honest reviews enhance credibility, and SEO ensures that the right people discover your brand at the right time. As you move forward, don’t be afraid to experiment and refine your approach. The online marketplace is dynamic, and staying agile in your tactics will help you keep pace with industry trends, platform updates, and evolving customer expectations.

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Ultimately, the true measure of your online presence isn’t just in clicks or followers, but in the quality of your relationships with your audience, your reputation in the marketplace, and the long-term growth of your brand. By focusing on authenticity, value, and continuous improvement, you’ll be well-positioned to thrive in the ever-changing digital landscape.