There are many different areas that you need to consider and structures and processes that you need to plan in order to successfully run a business. One of the tasks that is sometimes overlooked, but is in fact very important, is building an online business profile for your company.
Having an online presence is vital in many industries, such as promotion, advertising, and anything related to the internet. After all, if you are an online business, it should be clear to customers and potential customers that you actually use the internet often!
An online profile can bring attention to your business and enable you to carry out more accurate marketing campaigns more efficiently and cheaply. Here are 5 tips to help you to make the most of the internet for your business.
1. Find Your Audience
Before creating profiles and designing digital marketing strategies, you will need to identify exactly who your audience is. If you have not yet started your business (or only have recently) and don’t have customer data to work with, you may have to make some predictions to identify your target demographic.
Suppose you are building an online presence for your business for the first time but have been trading for some time already. In that case, you can use sales data to work out your most reliable demographic in terms of gender, location, age, and potentially other factors. Bear in mind that you do not have to stick to the same demographic—in fact, if you are able to identify demographics you haven’t reached as effectively and appeal to them without losing your existing customers, this is ideal. Using social media and analytics tools is a particularly effective way of doing this.
2. Use a Consistent Brand Persona Across Channels
You know your target market, but what is your brand persona? A brand persona is a hypothetical persona that your brand would have if it were a person, and it entails factors like the tone of voice and writing styles in all communications. Your brand persona should be designed to appeal specifically to your target market.
Your brand persona should also be consistent across all channels of communication that your business uses. This means that every platform you use to represent your company—from social media sites and apps to email, direct messaging with customers, and your company website—should keep brand persona in mind. It should seem as if the same person is posting every message or piece of content, even if there is actually a team of many! It goes without saying that your brand persona should also appeal to the public and represent your company’s values.
Related: How to Create a Unique Brand Identity for Your Company
3. Play to the Strengths of Each Platform
While it is important to make sure that your branding and content is consistent across all channels, this doesn’t mean that you have to use the exact same content on each platform. While it is often a good idea to copy and paste content such as important announcements across multiple channels, especially when trying to get a clear message out, you can also vary content between platforms.
Each platform has its own strengths, weaknesses, and ideal purposes. For example, if you want to lean towards humor and direct interaction with customers or other brands, Twitter is great for this. For short video clips and viral trends, Tik Tok is your best bet. When it comes to sharing important company updates and stories, your own blog may be more suited.
It is widely believed that the more channels a business uses for marketing, the better. This is because the chances of internet users seeing your content are higher when you use more platforms. However, it is worth remembering that the more platforms you use, the more work is required in monitoring them all! You may need to strike the balance that suits your working operations and company structure.
Related: 10 TikTok Features and Hacks You Should know
4. Direct Users to Your Website
However many social media platforms and communication channels you use, you need to make sure that potential customers can easily pay for your products/services. Even if your content goes viral on social media, this may not translate to an increase in customers if users are unable to easily access your website.
Make sure that links to your website are visibly included on all social media channels and vice versa. If it helps, draw out a map to plan each link between platforms. You also need to make sure your website itself is well designed and easy to navigate—the page where visitors can purchase products/services should be easily accessible and signposted from every other page on the site. If web design isn’t your strong point, why not outsource WordPress to a dedicated web design company?
Related: 25 Helpful Tips to Get More Website Traffic
5. Share Engaging Content
The most important thing to remember when building an online business profile is to share good quality content. This does not mean you need to have entertaining videos with high production values every day (although if you can, great!) —just that your posts should be relatable and interesting to your target audience. The specifics of this will vary depending on your brand persona.
While some content can be reactive to online trends (e.g., using a trending hashtag), developing a content calendar and scheduling social media posts in advance is usually recommended. This calendar should factor in every platform, although not every piece of content needs to be shared identically across every platform.
As important as your online profile is, remember that it is just one component of your outreach strategy. Don’t neglect other forms of marketing or business operations.
If you want to ensure that your business has success online, building up its online presence is essential. However, there is no point in trying to navigate your way around this in the dark. Take note of the above five important tips to ensure that you can enjoy all the perks of a bigger and better online business profile and none of the negative effects of going about this the wrong way.
Related: How to Create High-Impact Content in the Age of Distraction
