Online Marketing

5 Actionable Steps You Can Take Today to Improve Your Online Presence

The marketing world is changing, and in many ways digital marketing is taking over the marketing landscape. While there’s still a place for effective traditional marketing methods, these 5 actionable steps will help you succeed in your digital marketing efforts.

Follow a content calendar

A content calendar is essentially a blueprint for online marketing. But before you begin building one, educate yourself about the platforms you should use, and create your calendar based on the optimal times to post for the platform and type of content you’re posting. Make content relevant to your business, but get creative by researching holidays during the year and national days to stay unique and capture the attention of your audience. Want to get started? You can build your content calendar using a spreadsheet like this.

Create beautiful graphics

You don’t need to be a graphic designer to create beautiful graphics for your online marketing content. Do you know how to use a computer? Great! Thanks to web-based design platforms like Canva, you can created branded graphics for free! Canva offers hundreds of layouts if you’d like a starting point, or you can create your own designs from scratch. You’ll find free pictures, illustrations, graphics and more! To gain access to additional features like premium photography, you can upgrade your subscription. Even though there are design layouts you can use, be sure to stick to your brand’s colour scheme and font families when building your content. This will help build brand awareness, so when your audience sees it online they’ll gradually become more aware of who you are as a business. Here’s a pro tip for Instagram: apply consistent filters (or presets using lightroom) to your photos to give them a cohesive look on your website and feed.

Repurpose content

There’s a good chance you have some content developed already without even knowing it. Brochures, print ads – even content from personal emails you may have sent to prospective clients that sell your product or service – all include content you can use in your digital marketing content. Secondly, repurpose content use in one digital platform such as your blog and create a Facebook post about it, use it as a feature in your next email or tweet a blurb with a link back to the blog. Integrating your content across all digital channels is a really effective way to get your message across without putting hours of work or hundreds of dollars into content creation.

Make email marketing a priority

While it’s not a new or trending digital marketing tactic, email marketing continues to be one of the most effective ways to stay in front of your audience. Consider this: the average organic reach of a Facebook post is about 6% of your following. The average open rate of an email campaign is over 20% (sometimes even hitting close to the 75% mark). And when it comes to lead nurturing, email marketing is most effective simply because of it’s incredible reach, which combined with the ability to personalize content based on specific audience details makes it remarkably effective. Using builders like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp, you can often start sending emails for around $5. Begin building your list by adding email subscription plugins to your blog and social media platforms.

Use analytics for continuous improvement

Each of the above tactics are only as good as you know them to be. Meaning, unless you’ve tracked their performance you won’t know if your email marketing is generating sales, your content is resonating with/engaging your audience or your content is being published at optimal times on platforms that work for both your business and your audience. While it isn’t always easy to create a benchmark of success for your digital marketing tactics, you can quickly understand if your efforts are successful by watching trends in analytics. Because so many platforms provide built-in analytics, this information won’t cost you anything. Once you’ve started creating content and building email campaigns, be sure to review analytics monthly or quarterly to ensure what you are doing is really paying off.

Lydia is a wife, mom and creative who is passionate about sharing her journey to intentional living and hopes to inspire others to live a life they love. Since 2013, she’s been working in digital marketing and loves helping entrepreneurs explore the possibilities of digital marketing. Follow her on Instagram for tips and ideas @lydiaboudreau

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