5 Ways to Create Effective Online Visibility ' Social Media is Just One Part of It

Ok, so you've got your social media accounts set up ' and you've gone around things the right way, by ensuring that you

1. considered your business objectives when you set them up
2. have been pragmatic, done the research and listening to understand what's important to your audiences
3. created a content strategy so that you're ready to create and procure an ongoing pipeline of relevant content
4. have set up social media listening / keyword tracking so that you can capture and listen in and engage where relevant in a targeted way

Getting your house in order to start off with social media, as you can see from the above, takes a bit of thinking, researching and planning.

However, even making all the right noises with social, you still have to create a great 'space' to be able to drive people back to.

Here are some key thing to consider that impact your online visibility?

1. Website - What does your website look like? Is it up-to-date, enticing, trust evoking? Is it flexible enough so that if you want to drive people to a specific and targeted landing page for a Twitter offer you can?
2. Blog ' Do you have a blog incorporated into your website? Most website designs don't naturally lend themselves to having the need to constantly update the site. For example ' once you've got your services, about us, contact info, how it works sections in place ' you don't naturally keep adding pages. A blog provides you with the perfect vehicle to be able to share relevant and purposeful information consistently. And of course, you ensure that each blog post has 'Tweet this, share on Facebook etc ' share features enabled, to encourage others to share the content. Good content can really fly. So be sure to implement the processes to enable your audience to easily pass on what they are reading. And of course, your blog doesn't just have to be written content ' it can be video too.
3. SEO ' Is your website well and truly keyword optimised? And of course, those keywords don't only apply to your website ' you also need to ensure that you are leveraging them across your social media accounts too. For more about Keywords see this previous blog post here.
4. PPC ' Pay Per Click advertising ' is another way of gaining online visibility into audiences that you haven't touched before. Not only can you undertaken PPC advertising on Google ' to be found in search results ' but you can also undertaken targeted Pay Per Click advertising on Facebook and LinkedIn. The advertising here differs slightly ' as rather than bid on keywords so your ads appear when someone types in those specific keywords into a search engine, with social ads, you can target a specific demographic (usually using quite rich and specific information) ' so that your ad appears to that target audience when they're in their social networks.
5. Social Nedia / Social Networks ' And yes, of course, having a presence on social platforms certainly helps your online visibility. Once upon a time, all we had to do was consider our website and how great that looked ' now we have a plethora of social media networks to consider too. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+ , FlickR ' to name just a few.

Of course, enhances to your online visibility focus around

• Frequency ' how often you are 'live' on the platforms, how often you blog and share content etc ' eg: daily blogging, weekly blogging 'versus- an annual newsletter.
• Recency ' how recently you last posted. If a Twitter account was last updated in 2009, doesn't evoke trust and isn't going to get you much visibility.
• Authenticity ' The more authentic and unique the content, the better. People want to hear from you ' your opinions, what matters to you, your advice, your viewpoint ' and so be sure that you are creating unique content , rather than content that's ripped from other sites and isn't very unique. Add your own viewpoint. But make it yours. Be authentic. It's those blog posts and videos that really do engage and create advocacy.
• Creativity ' Yes, that little word. So simple to say, but so difficult to implement. Get creative, think about how you can engage an audience. This is where video and images and diagrams (quick plug for mine below) come into play. Be creative ' can you say it with an image or diagram or video ' add that in too. Also be creative with your messaging and how you get audiences to share.

I'm sure you'll agree that Online Visibility is about optimising the many parts of your online presence. Our advice is always to take a 'joined up' approach.

I liken not doing so to running a really successful direct mail campaign and the call to action is a telephone number ' and when a potential customers calls that number, the sales person they gets through to doesn't have a clue about the campaign ' and takes a message. It's a huge campaign FAIL.

Just so with doing one part of online visibility ' you could run a stonking social media campaign, but if the place you are driving people to is awful and doesn't engage and deliver on the call to action ' then again, it's a campaign fail.

So ' take that joined up approach and ensure you've got all your bases effectively covered.