blogging Archives - Macaulay Gidado

To understand the question, you first need to understand what web presence actually means. This isn’t the time to go consulting Wikipedia because, for some absurd reason, they have the definition of web presence backwards on the site.

Web presence, also called online presence or Internet presence, simply means your online penetration. This is the simplest definition anyone can give you. But for the sake of folk that might beg to differ, here is a list of interpretations we can go with:

Online penetration. I’ve already mentioned that.
Your online visibility.
Your digital footprint, which is a summation of all online files, destinations, and touch points you own or that refers to you.

So can we safely say that web presence is all about your online penetration, about establishing your presence or that of your brand online, about making yourself or your brand known on the Internet?

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move on to what makes up a successful web presence.

When people hear web presence, the first thing that comes to mind is a website. But then our interpretations above clearly suggest that web presence is more complex than that — in fact, as complex as a person’s public image, which basically entails where they are from, what they do, and who they associate with.

With web presence, you are basically trying to put forward content that promotes your brand’s public image and in so doing help you sell your products or services. Take a look at the table below.

Macaulay Gidado - What Makes Up a Successful Web Presence?

Looking at the table above, you can easily identify the core elements you need to focus on to build a successful web presence around your brand. And thus we have:

Website
Social Media
Blogging
Email marketing

Let’s look at them one after the other

Website

As I mentioned before, this is your base of operation. It’s where your brand’s web presence begins and ends. Every other aspect of your web presence should direct people back to your website. Hence, you need to put a lot of thought into making your business website as focused, informative, coherent, and on-brand as possible. Learn more about setting up a website for your business.

Social Media

Now that your business website is set up, you need to draw people to it so they can learn about your business and products and possibly go on talking about them afterwards. For starters, take your business to where consumers gather. Think social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Think forums like Quora and Reddit. You could try to connect and engage consumers organically or you could run paid marketing campaigns on these channels. A combination of both is a better strategy, and your efforts here have to be perpetually ongoing and consistent for you to constantly achieve tangible results.

If running multiple social accounts is daunting for you, then you might want to check out Social Republic, which offers a central dashboard for managing all your social accounts.

Blogging

You don’t just create a website for your business and then forget it. To achieve the goal of building a web presence, you need continuous participation. This is where blogging comes in. Sadly, many companies online don’t have a blog integrated into their websites. Even many of those that have rarely update theirs. Online presence is all about penetration and visibility, which you can then leverage to drive conversation and sales. For better penetration, more visibility, and more traffic, you need to continuously inject more relevant content into your digital footprint. Regular blogging can do that for you, just as ongoing participation on social platforms also can.

Email Marketing

Say, your website and blog are booming and you have people flowing in from social media and search engines. How do you keep them coming back? Surely, if the content of your blog is valuable, many of your readers would want to come back. The question is: will they remember to come back?

This is why you need to be very proactive when it comes to retaining leads. These days, email marketing is the way to go. Simply sign up for a service like MailChimp, Aweber, and Mailgun. Then integrate an email subscription form into your blog and website and configure it to actively encourage your site visitors to join your mailing list. Getting them to sign up means you no longer have to wait for them to come to you. Instead, you can take your content, marketing offers and promotions to them.

Of course, there are many other elements of a successful web presence, but these four are the basics you need to cover before anything else. Do let me know what you think in the comment area.

This article also appeared in Macaulay Gidado Medium blog.

Every serious content marketer knows this truth. It’s getting harder to conceptualize original ideas pertaining to content marketing. This makes regular blog updates a Herculean Task.

The truth is: there are still a lot of untapped compelling ideas. It’s not just about using your imagination and putting more creativity into your posts. No. It’s also about your passion for content marketing and the reason behind your content marketing strategies.

Here are four ways you can maintain frequent updates of your content marketing blog without succumbing to despair.

Rediscover Your Passion for Content Marketing

Lack of passion. That’s where the problem lies.

They say content marketing generates leads and drives sales, but this isn’t true for most people in the business. Many are struggling unavailingly to come up with new ideas to talk about on their blogs.

A question you should ask yourself is: if you lack the passion to write a compelling post, how do you expect you audience to find the passion to read and enjoy it?

How do you find your passion?

The phrase, content marketing, alone suggests we are all in it for the money. That’s true. But there has to be a supporting reason, one that pulls you through the bad times when the money isn’t coming. It could be your need to get heard. It could also be your desire to help people.

Rediscover that reason. Perhaps it can help you restart your passion for content marketing.

Help People

If your passion is to help people, then leverage it. If not, learn to care about more than what you get out of content marketing. Why? Because focusing on just your gains can quickly turn into despair when your content marketing efforts aren’t yielding your expected results—this can hamper your zeal.

Content marketing concerns helping people. You help them acquaint themselves with certain subjects in the hope that the knowledge you pass on spurs them to make a decision about your product or service.

If you have knowledge or experience about a certain subject, share them. Use them as post ideas. If your expertise is beneficial, people will always show their appreciation, perhaps, by purchasing what you are selling.

Also, helping people comes with fulfillment, which can serve as inspiration for conceptualizing more post ideas.

Outsource Your Content

A lot of content marketers outsource their content. It’s just reasonable. Sometimes you may be overwhelmed or too busy with work to write. Forcing it can lead to further stress and frustration, and even when you manage to produce some content in that condition, the quality may be in question and would only jeopardise your readership.

This is why it is ideal to have another content writer on speed dial for emergencies.

Also, by hiring another content writer, you take advantage of other people’s expertise and introduce a new voice to your blog.

However, be sure to properly vet whoever you hire to ascertain they are passionate about your niche and are professional enough to follow your guidelines.

Do you need help with your content marketing, Macaulay Gidado is here for you.

Welcome Guest Posts

Publishing guest posts from other bloggers in your niche is another way of keeping your blog up to date even when you feel uninspired to write.

In addition, welcoming guest posts will not only help you introduce your readers to new voices and views. It will improve your site’s authority through link building too, since the guest writers will obviously link from their blogs to their guest posts on yours. This in turn channels more traffic to your website.

Still, you ought to have a ‘submission guideline’ page detailing the requirements you want guest posts on your blog to fulfil. That way you maintain a certain level of control over what appears on your blog and ensure they don’t go against your niche as well as your blogs goals and objectives.

Whatever you do, never fall below standards. Always aim to offer value, for it’s mostly with content that is valuable to your readers that your content marketing can yield the desired result.