How to Manage Your Online Presence in 5 Easy Steps
In the current digital world, your online presence is as important as your offline presence. From creating a website to maintaining it, so many things are involved. But where does one begin? How does one manage social media, blogs, email, and other online tasks? Well, if you’re asking yourself these questions and how to manage your online presence, then this blog post is for you!
This post will highlight five steps to efficiently & effectively manage your online presence. I’ll provide some services I recommend and how they can be beneficial, without being burdensome.
How To Manage Your Online Presence
Step 1: Create a Google Business Profile
Creating a Google Business Profile is an important part of managing your online presence. Your Google Business Profile is like a business directory listing with lots of useful features. It is free to use and run by Google, so improving your Profile also helps Google know more about your business and share this info with people who may look for a business such as yours.
By having a Google Business Profile, customers have the option to call you, send instant messages, visit your website, leave reviews, make an appointment or reservation, and request directions. You can also post updates, offers, or information regarding events and your products or services.
If you’d like, read my blog post “4 Benefits of Having a Google Business Profile” to learn more or view my Google Business Profile Management Service page to learn how I can help you.
Step 2: Set Up Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great way to reach out to your customers and keep them updated on your business’s latest news and products. It’s also a great way to build relationships with your customers and keep them coming back. There are a few things you’ll need to set up in order to start email marketing: an email address for your company, a domain name, and a hosting account.
If your business doesn’t have its own email address yet, consider looking into Google Workspace, which offers everything you love about Google, but for businesses, starting at just $6/month/user. If you don’t have a domain name yet, I’ve been a loyal customer of Namecheap for decades now and love their customer service.
Ok, once you have your own email and domain set up, you can start email marketing.
I will not lie. Choosing the right email marketing service for your business can be daunting. There are a lot of factors to take into consideration, such as if they provide a free tier, what do their paid tiers look like, what secondary services do they offer, and who do they integrate with are some questions you’ll want to think about.
For example, while MailChimp offers a free tier, once you gain subscribers you’ll quickly find that you’re paying a lot of money. My personal recommendation, even though they may not have the best email editor in the world, is ActiveCampaign. You can start off with their Lite Plan, but you won’t really see what ActiveCampaign can do until you jump up to their Plus Plan.
ActiveCampaign does several things very well: they can help you segment your list(s), they offer marketing automation, and they integrate with a ton of third parties apps & services.
To build your mailing list, you’ll need to reach your customers and provide an effective call-to-action asking them if they’d like to subscribe to your newsletter. You may even want to reward them by offering discounts on your products and/or services.
While you can use ActiveCampaign’s “landing pages” and forms, if you’re already using WordPress, I recommend using Gravity Forms to connect your forms to your lists. If you’re interested in reading more about what Gravity Forms is, read my blog post: “What Is Gravity Forms, Their Advantages, & How to Use It“
Step 3: Use Marketing Automation
Whether you’re a brand new startup with no customers or you’re a growing business or you’re an established business looking to manage your online presence, having a marketing automation strategy is absolutely critical.
Basically, marketing automation is the use of software and technology to automate repetitive, manual marketing activities. Marketing automation is commonly used to automate social media posts, emails, and advertising.
The beauty of marketing automation is that you can create automations to execute your marketing strategy the way you like, and they will run in the background, automatically, so you can focus on other things.
On the customer side, by leveraging automation technologies, you can personalize an experience for people based on their behaviors, preferences, and purchase activity. With personalized marketing messages, your customers will feel like you know them, increasing their trust in your brand. Moreover, you’ll build a loyal following of people who like and refer to your business.
Marketing automation also helps your business on the backend as well. It can help you develop a sales pipeline, move customers between stages automatically based on activity, and so much more.
Some tools that I use or have used in the past are:
- ActiveCampaign
- Zoho One
- HubSpot
- Make.com
- IFTTT
- Zapier
- n8n.io
- Publer
- Hopscotch Social Media Management
- Buffer
- Zoho Social
- Cal.com
WordPress Plugins:
I also mentioned some services mentioned above in my blog post, “4 Awesome Marketing Automation Hidden Gems for Your Small Businesses.”
Step 4: Monitor Your Online Reputation
There are generally two types of reputation management strategies: On-site and off-site. On-site reputation management refers to those strategies that you can use to influence the online search results, such as the business profiles on Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This type of reputation management requires you to focus on improving the quality of your business profile and replying to all reviews in a positive & professional manner.
Off-site reputation management refers to those strategies that you can use to influence social media. This type of reputation management requires you to build your online reputation through various social media networks, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
If you’re just starting out, try dabbling in a variety of social networks and see which one works best for you. For example, focus heavily on Pinterest if you’re in retail and selling consumer goods. For B2B businesses, it’s tricky to find your social media niche, so it’s important to use a tool such as Publer to help you keep track of when your business is mentioned, how often your posts are clicked on and shared, etc.
Personally, thus far, Twitter is the biggest social media network to deliver traffic to my website.
Step 5: Use Social Media Wisely
Social media has become an essential part of modern life. Whether you are a business owner, student, or just an everyday person, it is important to manage your online presence wisely. Here are two simple tips to help you do just that:
- Use social media wisely. When using social media, be sure to think about the message you are trying to send. Make sure your posts apply to your audience and that you are using appropriate language.
- Be aware of your online image. Your online image is important, and you should make sure it reflects the best possible.
Following these two tips will save you a ton of headaches later down the road.
One thing I always make sure of is when I’m posting on my personal timeline on Facebook… I double-check if I want to share the post with the world or just with my friends.
Online Presence Management Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this post about how to manage your online presence. Managing your online presence is something that we will all need to learn at some point. Luckily, it is not as difficult as it seems!
If you are looking for more information on how to manage your online presence, I encourage you to check out other posts on my blog, in particular, “The Importance of Digital Presence Management.”
If you have any questions or suggestions, please comment below!
Thanks for reading & please remember to share this post!
AJ