Building a solid online presence is not just for businesses. It’s a must for every online community member, whether you’re a business owner, social media influencer, marketer, or freelancer. With a well-curated professional profile, you can make yourself more visible in the job market, win customers for your business, and even attract partnership opportunities.
One’s visibility online refers to how easy it is to find a brand or individual in the virtual world. It’s essential to help establish a positive reputation, enhance brand awareness, and maintain your presence when people search for you using specific keywords. It matters because this is how you can achieve your purpose and hit your goals.
Online Visibility: Why Does It Matter?
The Harris Poll survey revealed that hiring managers agree that social media is an effective tool for screening applicants. Similarly, Oberlo shows that 81% of consumers research online before purchasing.
What do these numbers suggest? They mean that whether you’re online applying for a job, selling a product or service, or looking for clients, how you’re perceived in the digital space matters.
Top 6 Tips to Build a Solid Professional Presence Online
Don’t wait for opportunities and clients to find you. Put yourself out there and increase your online presence with these winning tips.
1. Make Use of SEO to Rank Nationally
SEO will always be a helpful tool to get your resume and professional profile into the hands of people who need your services.
However, since Google ranks local pages first, you must learn to break out of the local search results to widen your reach. Pick a few cities where you want to establish a professional presence and look up your competitors.
Be visible online by knowing and understanding what your competitors can and can’t offer. Position yourself as someone who can fill in the gap between your prospective client’s needs and what the competition can’t provide. Regionalize your offerings and take into account your prospective client’s preferences.
Once you’ve determined these, it’s time to start your keyword research. Spend time figuring out national SEO keywords to help you beat your competitors. Incorporate these keywords in your professional profile, portfolio, and social media pages.
Conclude your SEO and online presence management efforts by building backlinks through guest posting. Contact reputable blog sites and offer to write niche-related content that will backlink to your professional website and social media pages.
2. Utilize Industry-Specific Websites and Blogs
Your goal when building a strong presence online is to make money. However, you must create value for your prospective clients before you can do that. One way of doing this is by providing free educational online content. It will not only add value to your clients, but it’s also a way of establishing a positive online reputation as an individual practitioner.
Post this content on industry-specific websites and generate backlinks to your landing page or professional website. Get started by listing your client’s motivations and pain points. Better yet, learn and understand their buyer persona.
Afterward, figure out what kind of content could best address their concerns. What specific information can help them? The answer to this will be the basis of your content strategy.
You can also create value for your prospective clients by offering advice. Increase your online visibility by appearing on a podcast, responding to an online comment, or writing a guest post. When your prospective clients have questions, be sure to answer them sufficiently.
3. Leverage Syndicated Content
Content syndication refers to repurposing old content and publishing it on different websites. Publications love syndicated content because it offers new information to their readers. As the original author, you benefit from this practice by getting your content in front of a new audience. You can use tools like Outbrain or Taboola to simplify building an online presence through syndicated content. Since this type of content is considered duplicate, you must execute the syndicating process cautiously. Otherwise, Google might penalize you. Here are the best practices you can follow.
Work with high-ranking websites: If you plan to repurpose your old content, ensure that you repost it on a high-ranking and popular website to broaden your reach.
Figure out the best way to syndicate content: When improving online visibility, it’s advisable to syndicate the blog post or article to a third-party site. Other times, it’s better to syndicate the headline with backlinks to your site. It depends on the content type, audience and website. Add links to your landing page and a compelling call-to-action when appropriate and feasible to increase conversions.
Come up with a strategy: Start with high-quality content. After that, you must set a clear business goal, identify syndication partners, curate winning pitches, and finalize your content syndication plan.
4. Develop a Digital PR strategy
This strategy is a comprehensive plan that a PR agency must execute to achieve the strategy’s objectives. In this case, the aim would be to build a strong presence online to reach prospective clients. Here are some ways to create a successful PR strategy.
Know your audience: It’s best to conduct competitor research to know your competitor’s audience. Next, start mapping out their buyer personas.
Curate the right content: Part of a thorough digital PR strategy is content marketing. Now that you know your target audience, it’s time to think of content that will pique their interest and engage them.
Creating a pitch and media list: Know who you want to cover your story and pitch your story to them.
Be a subject matter expert: Continue building credibility by positioning yourself as a niche authority.
5. Actively Engage in Social Media
You can also improve your online presence with the help of nano-influencers.
Nano-influencers are social media influencers with fewer than 10,000 followers who are considered the most effective influencers because they authentically engage with their followers.
These are build lasting follower relationships by commenting and responding to messages more often than other prominent influencers.
Apply the same principles when dealing with your prospective clients. If you answer their queries and respond to their messages online, you position yourself as responsive, accessible and trustworthy.
All these traits can help support the positive reputation you’re building online.
6. Build and Enhance Your Website
The best way to establish your online presence is to have a professional website that showcases your services and skills. Before you build your website, you must develop your personal brand. Choose a color palette and design that resonate with your professional brand.
Study how to play with color and photo elements to build a website that represents you. Apart from that, you can also improve your online visibility by adding your portfolio. If you’re a web designer, your portfolio could be the websites you’ve worked on. If you’re a content creator, add the best content you’ve created to boost your credibility.
Your website must also be fully optimized to be responsive, intuitive and easily navigable. It won’t hurt if you can make it mobile-friendly, too. Taking care of these aspects shows how thorough you are as an individual practitioner. It also conveys that you care about your prospective client’s time, business and trust.
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