7 Ways To Expand Your Web Presence

Here is a simple truth about your business’s web presence: the more useful, relevant, and positive data about your business on the web, the better it is for your business regardless of how small  or insignificant the data may seem.

In my last blog post I discussed easy ideas for making regular changes and updates to your website content and why that is important. Today I want to build upon that and discuss easy ways you can expand your web presence and why that is important.

First I want to define web presence. When I use this term I’m not just talking about your website. I’m talking about every bit of data on the World Wide Web that promotes your organization. Everything including your website, any images, your logo, reviews about you, any comments you post, your blog posts, pdf documents, advertisements…… ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING that has to do with your business, organization and/or brand.

Why Expanding Your Web Presence Is Important

The answer to this is fairly simple: the more positive data about you on the web, the more opportunities there are for search engines (SE) and humans to find and interact with you. If all you have for your business or organisation is a website with a few pages and photos, all the SEs will index is a few pages and photos. But if you are regularly adding new content and photos to your pages, adding blogs, commenting on other blogs, posting your ads, uploading print documents, etc, then the SEs will index those things increasing the chances people will find you.

I started thinking about this topic after I recently finished a print marketing job for my client Glenn Family Bakery. They needed professional wholesale price sheets to give out to potential clients. Upon completion of the job I asked them, as I always ask a client for this type of job, if they wanted a combined pdf version of the different sheets to post online? After throwing that together I started thinking about how many people realize that a good portion of the marketing they invest in could, and possibly should, be used to increase their web presence. These printed wholesale sheets, for example, are very simple to combine into a single pdf and upload to the internet. Now, the Glenn Family Bakery has yet one more small thing the SEs will pick up to carry their brand to consumers.

7 Ways To Leverage Existing Marketing Materials to Expand Or Reinforce Your Web Presence

1. Repost Your Print Ads. If you are investing in print advertising in any of your local mags or papers, ask for a copy of the ad. Create a page on your website titled something like “Local Press” and update that page with an image of the ad and a sentence or two every time you run a new ad.
2. Repost & Link To Your Online Ads. When you run online advertising be sure place an image of the ad, a blurb, and a link to the ad from the sidebar on your website. Something as simple as, “Check out the ad running on LocalMagazine.com for our special offers!”
3. Post Your Print Marketing Materials. As I described above with the Glenn Family Bakery wholesale sheets, convert any print materials to pdf, image, etc, and either update a page on your website or write a quick blog post. It can be almost anything: menus, yard signs or flags, coupons, door hangers, product labels, new brochures… whatever. If you are spending money to have something printed to market your business, why not leverage that investment as much as possible?
4. Post Your Newsletters As A Blog Post. If you are investing the time or money into a regular newsletter, get a double-whamy by also publising the newsletter as a blog post. (Be careful not to post on your blog if your newsletter management company is already posting your newsletters online. You could get tagged for duplicate content).
5. Link To Any Articles About Your Biz. If you’re getting any press coverage at all you’ll want to amplify that by reposting the articles. If the articles have links to your website I would post to the article from your social network (SocNet) sites and maybe a separate blog site. This way you can get maximum backlink benefits.
6. Post Special Offers Or Coupons. Everybody likes a deal. Create special offers, build pages for each offer, and post them on your site. Then post links to these offers from your SocNets and maybe an external blog site. Make sure you create an image for the offer… like a coupon or something. This way the SEs will index the image. Also, be sure to post limitations and an expiration date for the offer!
7. Repost Older Blog Posts To Your Social Networks. Take great care when doing this. You don’t want to annoy your followers. But, SocNets are about what’s happening now, so any post has a life span of about 3 1/2 minutes. If you have blog posts that are older, repost them to your SocNets if you think they will be relevant to your viewers.