HOW TO GROW YOUR BRAND PRESENCE ONLINE

April 26, 2024 Ginger Sherman

We are all trying to be heard in the vast landscape of the internet. And we have limited attention, time, and energy to give to everyone who is trying to be heard.

We follow hundreds (or thousands) of people on social media but only a select few show up in our feed because apps and search engines know we cannot possibly take in every single thing we follow. So they give us a few they think we will care about, interact with, and receive relevant information from.

And this is the reason why you have to be intentional and strategic about establishing a strong online brand presence.

Which is great news, because you don’t have to try to cater to everyone, just a select group. Whether you are a solopreneur, owner of a small business, or a seasoned professional, the following tips will help you grow your online presence and success! Note: The guidelines and suggestions in this article will be especially helpful for those who are just beginning their brands.

DEFINITION

BRAND PRESENCE

Brand presence is the space your brand occupies in the market you want to tap into. It is deeply connected to brand awareness and brand recognition which is the extent to which your target audience recognizes and remembers your brand.

Before we dive in, it’s vital we cover some guidelines to help you steer clear of burnout and ensure sustainable growth!

Guideline #1:

Be Realistic About Your Capacity

Take stock of your schedule, mental & creative energy, and budget. You will need to determine what capacity you have to dedicate to growing your brand. And keep in mind, you don’t have to do everything! Just start small.

Pro Tip: Consider delegating tasks to others.

Guideline #2:

Be Consistent

People often say “Consistency is Key” and they are right! It is vital to stay consistent to your brand identity, style, and tone of voice. It is also very important to show up at a consistent frequency on your platforms of choice because the platforms reward consistency by showing your content more. Pair this guideline with Guideline #1 to create sustainable habits that will allow your brand to continue to grow.

Pro Tip: Make sure all of your social media posts contain your brand colors and fonts and high-quality imagery that is consistent with your brand. It always pains us to see people post the most random things that don’t align with their brand’s identity or style. 😖

Guideline #3:

Clarify Your Audience

This is HUGE for any brand. Clarifying your target audience and ideal client is one of the first crucial steps in establishing a brand. Identify your target audience’s needs, pain points, desires, values, behaviors, lifestyle, personality, demographic, and budget.

DEFINITION

TARGET AUDIENCE

Your target audience, or target market, is the select group of people you want to market your offerings to. They are made up of your ideal clients. Your ideal client is a very specific person or persona that is the perfect fit to buy what you have to offer.

Example of a target market: Working moms in Kansas City who need daytime childcare.

Example of an ideal client: A 35 year old working mom in the Kansas City metro area who has a mid-to-high level of income with no spare time who feels tired and overwhelmed and needs to find daytime childcare for their toddler.

Now that we’ve established the guidelines, let’s dive into our suggestions on how to grow the online presence of your brand!

👩‍💻 Invest in a professionally designed website.

Your website is your virtual spokesperson. It is the face of your brand. Your website showcases your brand identity, expertise, and offerings (a.k.a. services and products). A good website shows your ideal client that you are trustworthy and worthy of their time and money.

Because your website is of the upmost importance you need a capable, knowledgeable, and trustworthy web designer to create your website. Make sure your designer has an impressive portfolio, positive testimonials, and expertise so they can create a custom website that is specifically tailored to your brand. If you can, try to find a designer who will also set up your site’s SEO for you (see the next point for more info).

Now before you get scared about the word “invest” I want you to know there are options! If you don’t have the budget for a custom designed site you can find a professionally designed website template for a fraction of the price. You will just have to invest some time and energy into making it your own. We love the templates from Doula Design Co., 23&9 Creative, and Studio Humankind.

Note: We would love to work with you to design your website and set up your SEO! Just email us here to begin. Also, we will be selling Squarespace website templates soon! To be the first to hear about our template store launch, sign up for our newsletter here. 😄

🔍 Optimize your website’s SEO.

Now that you have your professionally designed website you HAVE TO make sure it is optimized for SEO. But first, what is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It helps your website be visible to and ranked well for search engines such as Google.

DEFINITION

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It helps your website be visible to and ranked well for search engines such as Google.

To grow your brand you need people to be able to find it! When your site has great SEO, search engines will list your website higher when someone searches for something related to your business. This in turn will increase your website traffic, thus increasing your revenue.

If you hired a pro designer, hopefully they already set up your website’s SEO for you but if not we’ve got your back! Download our FREE SEO Best Practices Guide for an easy-to-understand walkthrough and checklist of how to set up your site’s SEO.

Pro Tip: Want a bit more info on SEO? Check out this blog post on Squarespace SEO for beginners.

📱Start with 2-3 platforms.

Now it’s time to select the platforms you want to be present in. Platforms include Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, your website’s blog, email marketing & newsletters, and more.

When you’re starting out, try to choose just two to three platforms to focus on. You don’t want to overburden yourself. Keep the three guidelines in mind when selecting your platforms - (1) be realistic about what is doable for you, (2) choose platforms you know you can show up in consistently and (3) choose platforms where your target audience spends their time.

⌚Schedule time to work on your brand presence.

Let’s make sure you actually follow through with all your awesome plans to build your brand presence! Add a regular time to your calendar for you to work on growing your brand presence. For example, block off two hours every Thursday morning. Make sure to add this as a repeating event in your calendar so you can stay consistent.

Working on your brand presence could include brainstorming; outlining next month’s content ideas and schedule; writing social media captions, blog posts or emails; creating graphics or images to post on socials; etc.

💛Use content categories.

It’s important to be intentional about what you include in your content. A good rule of thumb in marketing is to give more than you take, a.k.a. you should have the majority of your content be helpful for your audience and a small portion be asking them to buy from you.

To balance out your content topics and help you come up with ideas, try using three to five content categories. Try using the following categories: Informative, Resources, Personal, and Sales.

Informative content should educate your audience and help them improve. Resources can be freebies, giveaways, a business you recommend, a life hack, etc. Personal content helps your audience get to know and trust you. You can share behind-the-scenes, a personal anecdote, a testimonial/review from a former client, etc. Sales content is where you can promote your brand and highlight your offerings.

📅 Schedule your content to publish ahead of time.

Scheduling your content ahead of time will help you stay consistent and frequent on your chosen platforms! Plus it will save you the work of sharing it the day-of. There are many systems you can use to plan your social media content, such as Meta’s content planner for Facebook and Instagram (free), Pinterest Business (free), Canva Pro’s content planner (paid), Planoly (paid), Later (paid), are more.

To schedule and automate emails for your email marketing, you can use Squarespace Email Marketing scheduling and automations. Other email marketing platforms with scheduling include Flodesk, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Mailerlite, Hubspot, and more.

Pro Tip: You can get 20% off your first year of an annual Squarespace Email Marketing plan by working with us! Just email us to get started!

As you embark on the journey of growing your brand’s presence online, keep in mind that this is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time to rank highly on socials and search engines because their algorithms want to know that you have plenty of high-quality, helpful, and up-to-date information that people are searching for. So keep your hopes up, and put these practices in place to help you consistently build your brand.

We hope these guidelines and suggestions help your brand soar!

If you have any questions, insights, or breakthroughs we would love to hear them! Just email us at gingershermanllc@gmail.com.

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Here are all of the resource links we shared in this article: