The Best and Worst Tactics to Increase Web Presence

18 Mar The Best and Worst Tactics to Increase Web Presence

The idea of building an “online presence” is everywhere these days, and it’s true that the Internet is essential to growing the customer base of most companies and driving sales. But how, exactly, do you build an online presence? The truth is, some of the tactics to increase web presence used by businesses do very little or actually backfire. Here are some specific dos and don’ts to get you started on building an online presence that will benefit your business in the long run:

• Do: Focus on Brand Building
  Before you start working on any sort of online or other marketing efforts, you need to work on your brand. Brand building includes basic stuff like logo design, but is overall a more involved process that starts at the very core of your business — by defining why your business exists and what differentiates you from your competitors — and then radiates outward in all your interactions with customers on all levels.

• Don’t: Blog or Engage Badly
  Content marketing on blogs and social media is endorsed as the best way to engage readers on a personal level, and that’s true; it’ll also help with search engine optimization. Blogs are actually 63% more likely to impact purchasing decisions than newspapers are, and blogs increase the number of indexed pages and links a website has. But when you are lazy about your social media or write bad blogs, that hurts your company. If you do these things, you must commit to doing them well.

• Do: Embrace Mobile Trends
  Did you know that the amount of email opened on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) has increased 80% across the globe in the last six months alone? Add that to Google’s confirmation that mobile usability will be used as a ranking signal starting in April, and you’ve got a clear sign that mobile compatibility is a must-have, not a nice-to-have, feature.

• Don’t: Try to Do Everything
  In trying to build an online presence, many companies make the mistake of stretching their resources thin by trying to jump on every new trend. Depending on what your business does, it may be a complete waste of time for you to be on SnapChat or Instagram with your customers. You need to have experts doing research to see where your efforts will be best spent, whether that’s on LinkedIn or on Facebook or somewhere else.

• Do: Trust the True Experts
  While some online efforts can be handled in-house, it’s both more effective and more affordable to know when to hire the experts. SEO, for example, has been proven as one of the best tactics to increase web presence (since it leads to much better visibility on the web). But not only is it difficult to do well without specialized technical knowledge, it becomes much more affordable when outsourced to a larger company focusing on SEO alone.

Which of the many popular tactics to increase web presence work best and/or worst, in your opinion? Join the discussion in the comments.