Pro Tips: Creating a Big Online Presence for Your Small Business

Cast a glance a few decades into the past, and you won’t see the same stacked storefronts, or dozens of coffee shops all lined up, competing not just with one another, but with the pastry shop across the street that decided to sell coffee to-go as well, and the healthy smoothie vendor that suddenly added artisan coffee to the menu. The level of competitiveness has grown beyond sanity for every single small business out there, all the more so when it comes to building their digital presence, both locally and globally.

The fact that you might run a small business still doesn’t protect you from the incredible effort needed to build a digital presence for it, on the contrary. In order to amplify your brand’s size and relevance in the oversaturated market, you need to go above and beyond to make sure your brand is visible in the digital realm. Here are a few tips to help you craft a grand presence for your small brand online.

Use social media to your advantage

One part of running a successful small business involves impressing your customers, and preferably engaging with them on a regular basis to help them remember you and come back for more. Your best bet? Social networks!

Your online presence isn’t limited to your website. In fact, sticking to your website only will make you practically invisible in the eyes of your consumers. A significant part of your content marketing strategy should be devoted to posting regular social media content to inspire shares, likes, comments, and other forms of interaction. Plus, use your social media profiles as another customer service outlet – it will help boost your relevance and your customers will love you all the more for it.

Create locally-relevant content

Optimizing your website takes more than building stellar landing pages with lovely images, and crafting a fast-loading, mobile-friendly experience for all of your visitors. In fact, an even greater portion of optimization requires constant, ongoing creative work to deliver optimized content, with relevant keywords, authoritative links (internal and external), in various formats, and a link portfolio that’s as clean as a whistle and constantly growing.

To meet these ever-growing needs, many small businesses turn to professional white label SEO services, since they don’t have the internal resources to handle such a workload. This comes with an added benefit since you’ll have access to highly-skilled, educated SEO professionals and creative writers paired with analytics tools that help hone your digital presence with locally-relevant, optimized content. In time, your audience will turn to you for education, information, and entertainment, since you’ll build a reputation of trustworthiness and become a leader in your niche.

Make sure you’re listed everywhere

Now that you have your website under perfect control and fully optimized for search engines as well as your customers, you should remember to keep track of all those public digital platforms where your business is listed. Whether you exist on Yelp, Google My Business, TripAdvisor, or any other website for that matter, revise all of the information about your business there.

Consistent NAP data can make a difference for all those customers coming from a different part of the city or the world, even, when you’re notifying them of your work hours, contact information, or your address. Plus, it boosts your ranking, too, since consistency signals that your brand is trustworthy and verifiable.

Reviews as your go-to WOM

In case your business existed when personal recommendations ruled the world, you already understand how vital word of mouth can be. However, now that you want to attract a wider audience, such as tourists in addition to locals, and perhaps even ship your products internationally, you want to leverage that reputation in a digital sense: through reviews and testimonials. To understand human behavior in this realm, keep in mind that 93% of customers reported that reviews affected their choice to buy (or refrain from buying) a product or service.

Simply put, you cannot afford not to use reviews as your digital word of mouth for boosting your online presence. Testimonials help people get a sense of who you are, and they build your image for all potential customers that are considering you and a slew of other businesses you’re competing with.

It might be true that no amount of SEO or clever design can salvage a poorly-run business, big or small, but if you already have a strong brand in place and a strong customer base, it’s time to put your digital presence to the test and revamp it as much as necessary. In the months to come, you’ll be able to grow your brand without losing that charm or vibrancy of running a small business, while benefiting from your newly-established, major digital presence!

*** This Guest Post was from Victoria Lawes ***

Victoria is a Digital Marketing Strategist. She works with driven, creative, and passionate entrepreneurs and small business owners that want to bring their visions to life.

Enthusiastic writer who follows latest marketing and technology trends to get a glimpse of the future.

Contributor at bizzmarkblog.com