Tapping into online markets is one of the best ways to help grow your business. Getting online visibility is a crucial step toward gaining access to those markets. But this step can be difficult no matter whether your business has been around the block or is brand new. There are a few basic ways to increase your online visibility, and they revolve around how people find information on the internet.
“Content is king” is a famous phrase coined by Bill Gates back in 1996 when the internet was still relatively fresh. Despite being over 25 years old now, this phrase rings truer than ever in today’s digital landscape. To really advance your business and drive conversions, you’ll need to generate content that addresses your audience’s pain points and answers their questions. With that objective in mind, here are a few ways you can use content to get your business noticed online.
Understand Search Engine Optimization
Online content is a discreet chunk of experience designed to be consumed by an internet user. It usually involves some sort of written, audio, or visual material — think articles, podcasts, or videos. By tailoring your content to your target audience’s interests, you can generate more visibility for your business.
To understand how people consume content, you have to understand how they find it in the first place. Search engine optimization is the practice of creating content so that it can be found through internet searches. After all, your audience can’t be persuaded by your content if they never see it.
Say you’re an attorney who specializes in litigation, and you’re looking to attract clients who are considering filing a lawsuit. Your law firm digital marketing and SEO strategy would prioritize creating content that includes keywords relevant to your target audience’s searches. They might type certain keywords or phrases into their search engine like “small claims court,” “civil suit lawyers,” or “civil litigation attorney.” If your content includes these keywords and phrases, it can appear in that person’s search results and lead them to you.
Build a Website
Of course, if you’re going to be creating content, it will need somewhere to live. If you don’t already have a website, your first order of business is to develop one. Nowadays, there are plenty of great website builders that you can use to make a professional-looking site.
Once your website is up and running, you can begin creating content for it. Consider the audience demographic you want to attract and what sort of content they’d be interested in.
The architectural features you include in your website will also shape the type of content you create.
Devoting space on your site to blog posts, for example, will give you a place to provide a consistent stream of content. This kind of written content will appeal to long-form readers more than people who prefer information in snippets. Another great way to engage your audience is to include a forum on your website. Forums allow audience members to make posts and engage in conversation, which in turn generates more content for you. Any avenue that will allow you to generate genuine, quality content for less work is a great one to explore.
Share Content on Social Media
Now that you’ve created a website and posted some of your SEO-optimized content on it, it’s time to distribute that content more widely. Sharing your content on social media is an excellent way to attract more attention to your business. It exposes your content to people who might be interested in it but aren’t necessarily searching for it.
Your immediate social and entrepreneurial circle is a good place to start. But to take it one step further, find new intersections to share in, such as other forums dedicated to your industry niche. You can also use social media to reshare content that you didn’t create yourself.
Say your business manufactures high-quality ice resurfacers, a type of machine that cleans up the ice on hockey rinks. You can follow your favorite professional and college hockey teams on social media and reshare their posts and news in your own feeds. As you rejoice and lament over the latest news with other fans, you’ll connect with people in the process. One of those people might be the owner of a rink who’s looking to replace their old Zamboni.
Analyze Your Efforts With Analytics
Generating online visibility for your business is similar to market testing a new product, and in fact, the two can go hand in hand. Market testing is vitally important for gauging audience receptiveness to a new product. Likewise, you want to capture information to assess whether the content you’re creating is resonating with your audience. Without that information, you won’t have a clear idea of what’s working or not, and your business can end up spinning its wheels.
Analytics are the way you gather that information, and which analytic tools you use depends on what kind of information you want. If your content is focused on video production, you’ll want information on how long each video retains viewers. In addition to revealing which video content is gaining traction, this information will help you strategically place ads in the best location. Analytics for blog-focused posts will show you whether the keywords you’re using are up-to-date. With analytics, you’ll be able to make well-informed, targeted decisions on the best ways to get your business noticed online.
Basics Bring Buyers
When it comes to attracting your target audience, remember Bill Gates’s famous phrase: “Content is king.” Create a great-looking website that is easy and intuitive for people to navigate. Then consistently create and post unique, informative, and SEO content on your website. Share your content and that of others, all the while using the appropriate analytics to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts. Mastering these basic principles of SEO-oriented content creation will increase the attention your business receives online.
