Building a digital presence has become a top priority for companies in the last few years. We’ve seen a surge of businesses assembling in-house digital marketing teams, or turning to agencies, to develop their online reputation and create a brand.
However, regardless of how you approach it, building a strong online presence is not an easy task and requires time, skill, effort, dedication, and, above all, consistency.
Furthermore, with almost every business rushing to become digital as soon as possible, the market is now even more competitive. This makes it challenging to both newcomers and established digital brands as they try to retain their position and their online visibility.
In this article, we’ll show you 6 ways to build a strong online presence in 2022, and provide some actionable tips on improving your online reputation.
Read on to up your digital game!
Why Is Digital Presence Important in 2022?
Have you ever tried searching for a brand online and ended up with next to nothing? How did this make you feel? It’s a safe bet that this was a red flag and made you suspicious of how credible the company was, and, as a result, your trust in it and the desire to buy its products suffered greatly.
That’s because, nowadays, a company that’s not online is like a ghost – it makes you wonder whether it even exists.
That’s how important digital presence is.
Furthermore, since the beginning of the global pandemic in 2020, people started to spend even more time online and turn to the internet to stay connected not only with their loved ones, but with brands as well.
News, sports, entertainment, business meetings, grocery shopping – everything is online now, and if you are not part of it, your customers may prefer someone who is more accessible.
That’s why working on your digital presence in 2022 is more important than ever.
How to Build and Manage Your Online Presence
The goal of building a digital presence is to increase your online visibility and make it easy for people to find you on the internet. This way, regardless of whether customers are looking for your business in particular, or need the type of service that you provide, they may find you and, eventually, become your clients.
However, the success of your digital presence includes not only your online visibility, but your reputation as well.
So how to build a strong digital presence and stay on the customer’s radar online?
Here are some of the best ways to make it happen in 2022:
1. Invest in Market Research
Before you focus all your attention and efforts on building a solid digital presence, you first need to know and understand your audience. Your potential customers are the ones you want to be seen by and impress. In order to be able to do so, you need to learn what they like and dislike, analyze their behavior, their preferred devices, and find out when and how they spend their time in the digital world.
Even if you’ve done market research in the past, there is no guarantee that it is still relevant. It’s 2022, we live in dynamic times and how people feel about brands changes every day. So to make your online presence relevant and ensure that you will not be wasting time and resources barking up the wrong tree, you should regularly update your data and your customer profiles.
2. Build a Top-Quality Website
To build a strong digital presence in 2022, you need a top-quality well-functioning website. This is your online business card and digital home and to make a good impression, it needs to be well-made.
- Informational. Your website is the digital channel that you have the most control over, and, as such, it has to provide in a concise and user-friendly manner all the information the customer may need. Otherwise, people will turn to third parties to find the answers to their questions, and what they learn about your brand from these sources may not be verified, comprehensive, or true. What’s more, while they are researching you, they may end up choosing a competitor.
- Modern. A quality website gives you credibility and authority. We all know the feeling of distrust that an old-fashioned website inspires, especially if, on top of that, it loads slowly, isn’t mobile-friendly, and is confusing to navigate. All these are red flags that may cost you paying clients.
- Optimized. User experience is not only about the people, but matters to search engine bots as well. If your website doesn’t deliver, you will find it difficult to rank and build a presence in organic search.
In nutshell, your website has to be user-friendly, functional, good-looking, and tailored to your business needs. To that end, you should consider hiring a WordPress agency or other professional development company to build and maintain your website. Of course, you can always contact a freelancer or try to make the website yourself, but this arrangement, more often than not, results in quality and usability issues that may hurt your business, reputation, and your overall digital presence.
3. Play the Long Game with SEO
Nowadays, people interact with online content in two major ways – they either use a browser or an app. When they frequent a website, they bookmark it or memorize the domain for direct access.
However, when they can’t recall the domain or are looking for something new, they google it.
According to research, almost 30% of all worldwide internet traffic is from search engines, which makes it the second most popular traffic source after directly keying the full domain. At the same time, a different study shows that more than a half of people name Search as their preferred way to research brands.
For companies, this means that the top of the search engine result pages (SERPs) is the place to be if you want to be noticed by potential clients.
Search engines provide businesses with the best kind of online visibility – a natural way for people to discover your brand. What they want in return is to match their user experience, quality, and technical standards.
The good news is that optimizing your websites for search engines will not only make your content more appealing to search engines, and your website more user-friendly, but will also improve the overall digital experience you provide.
The catch is that Google’s regulations are constantly changing and to stay relevant in organic searches, you need to keep up with them.
All in all, this means that, nowadays, SEO is not a one-off job, but a strategy that requires consistent work and improvements by marketers, SEO experts, and developers. However, it shouldn’t be underestimated and sidelined as it plays a pivotal role in your digital success.
4. Focus on Social Media Branding
We all know that social media is imperative when it comes to digital presence. However, it’s not important only to build profiles on all the social networks that your customers frequent, but use them to reinforce your connection with your audience.
The best ways to leverage social media in your digital strategy and build a strong brand are:
Social Listening
Social listening is a convenient way to track brand mentions, “spy” on your competitors, and stay in the loop of topics that concern you. Furthermore, it can help you in building your presence and brand identity on social media, as it makes it easier to join conversations with customers on third-party pages, and shine with witty comments.
On a more practical note, it can also help you to monitor for and avoid negative backlash on your campaigns, manage word-of-mouth, and refute unflattering information.
Active Engagement
Posting from time to time and hoping for the best is simply not enough.
Social media algorithms track both topic relevancy and user engagement, so for your content to show in their feeds, you need to keep the conversation going. This means that you have to know what may attract the customer’s attention, and once you have it, you need to find ways to keep it for as long as possible.
Consistency
Social media branding is all about consistency – it makes you recognizable and helps you to “train” your followers on what to expect.
Also, the more consistent you are in providing content that they like and enjoy, the more likely they are to engage, and, as a result, see more of your posts in the future. This not only keeps you at the forefronts of their minds, but contributes to your overall digital presence.
Don’t Underestimate Tiktok
Regardless of whether you are in B2B or B2C, Tiktok is becoming more relevant for businesses.
Consider researching the platform and figuring out how to position your brand there according to your business needs, online personality, and overall digital presence.
This will give you access to an incrementally growing audience of people of all ages, and provide you with new tools to impress and win them over as clients.
User-Generated Content
Encouraging user-generated content (UGC) is a great way to build a solid online presence.
By encouraging your audience to talk about your brand, post pictures and videos, tag you in comments, leave reviews, and join discussions, you create a buzz around your company.
Furthermore, when people research you online and find out that others care enough about your brand to go out of their way to say something nice, this shows that you know how to treat your customers, and provide a good experience. This is the best kind of recommendation you can wish for.
Keep an Eye on the Metaverse
The Metaverse is still fresh and developing and it’s difficult to know whether it will stick as a trend and how it will turn out to benefit businesses. However, it is an opportunity to connect with your audience and followers on a new level, so it is worth exploring.
Businesses that create their own meta experiences can pioneer new forms of marketing and advertising, and even develop entirely new virtual products and services. Furthermore, it’s a way to take social commerce to the next level, and even create virtual livestream shopping venues.
The opportunities are limitless, and worth exploring, just make sure that the risks you take are calculated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMqL7MTRkq0
5. Work on Your Online Reputation
As mentioned, your reputation plays a key part in your digital presence. You may be all over the internet, but if what people are saying is not in your favor, this will negatively affect your business.
To ensure you make a good impression on the web, you need to manage your online reputation.
Here are some tips on how to do this successfully in 2022:
Monitor Review Platforms
Negative reviews can ruin your online reputation and drive customers to turn to competitors.
Even when you work hard on delivering top-quality products and services, there will always be unhappy customers. While you can’t control what people say about you on third-party review websites, you can and should try to resolve the issues that bother them.
This way you show that you care about your clients and are ready to go the extra mile to provide a satisfying customer experience.
Take Hold of Branded Keywords and Searches
When a person keys in your brand’s name in a search engine, your website, and social media profiles need to be the first thing they see.
However, this becomes more and more difficult with so many companies with similar names trying to stand out online.
Failing to take hold of your branded keywords can be a serious issue in your digital presence and online reputation, and should be fixed as soon as possible.
Be Active in Relevant Forums and Communities
Industry communities are a great place to show your expertise and to build credibility. However, make sure to join discussions only to contribute with your knowledge and opinions, not to advertise. Otherwise, you may achieve the opposite effect.
Get Listed in Directories
Nowadays, the value of directories is undermined because they are deemed to be next to worthless SEO-wise. However, getting your company listed in relevant directories can give you credibility and make you discoverable to people searching for businesses like yours. This makes you seem more legitimate and trustworthy, and that’s enough for some customers to consider you.
Update and Maintain Your Google My Business Listing
The Google My Business listings carousel is usually the first thing people see in local searches. Showing up there is a great way to find new customers and boost your digital presence.
In case you don’t own your listing, you should take steps to recover it, so that you can use it to provide accurate and up-to-date information.
Furthermore, this will allow you to answer reviews and sort out any misunderstandings that affect your rating.
Create Thought-Leadership Content
By creating a blog and being active on social media platforms and forums, you can show your knowledge, expertise, and business insight and stand out as a thought leader. This gains you the respect of the people in your industry and builds up your authority and credibility.
You can leverage these assets to create your online brand, and appeal to both customers and search engines.
Create Thought-Leadership Content
By creating a blog and being active on social media platforms and forums, you can show your knowledge, expertise, and business insight and stand out as a thought leader. This gains you the respect of the people in your industry and builds up your authority and credibility.
You can leverage these assets to create your online brand, and appeal to both customers and search engines.
6. Don’t Underestimate Digital Advertising
While all the inbound tactics of building a digital presence have undisputable benefits and deliver results, you shouldn’t underestimate the power of advertising.
Placing and optimizing PPC, display, retargeting, and social media ads is a great way to create the feeling that your brand is everywhere the customer looks, and consolidate your online presence.
Use the data from market research and customer insights from your inbound channels to refine your ads and make them count.
Bottom Line
Building a digital presence in 2022 is all about focusing on the right channels and being consistent in your efforts.
However, how successful you are in making this presence a good one, largely depends on how well you know your audience, and whether you can provide a superb customer experience.
The thing about the digital world is that word spreads fast there and if you are not working hard enough to satisfy your customers, or don’t care about your reputation, all your other efforts may be in vain.