Online presence is the sum of all your personal and business identities ― website, online communities, social media ― and allows people to find, like, trust, get to know, and interact with you.  Following are seven ways to help build your online presence.

  1. Strategize: What are your goals? Write down your long- and short-term business goals so you can refer to them when checking if your online efforts are helping you.
  2. Build a Solid Platform. Start with your website … make sure you have easy-to-use navigation, opt-in giveaway (helps build your email list), contact page, about page, and valuable content.  The Google Keyword tool can help find the keywords for which you want your website to rank, helping your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
  3. Continue to Optimize and Improve. Set up your site before it’s perfect; optimizing and improving your site post-launch is better than not launching at all.
  4. Provide Consistent Value. Whether via your website, an online community, or social media channels, provide consistent and valuable content to help gain credibility and authority in your industry, with a mix of 80/20: share other peoples’ content 80% of the time and your own content 20% of the time.
  5. Be Social. Test, then choose, two or three social media channels that work best for your business, and regularly post/engage on them to increase your following.
  6. Start Building Relationships. Become an active member in groups/online communities with similar businesses and interests.
  7. Track Your Progress. Assess the number of likes on Facebook, Twitter followers, etc., and use Google Analytics to track your website traffic.

The way you interact and connect with people online can help expand your reach/brand awareness while simultaneously growing the number of fans, followers, leads and customers for your business.

Source:  Kate Erickson – EntrepreneurOnFire