Establishing Your Digital Presence and Foundation
To get this out of the way, building a website presence doesn’t require much attention and awareness building, compared to other platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram.
Also, those that say websites are dead—they are FAR from going to the archaic archives and will not go away anytime soon. It’s here to stay incase some of our favorite social media platforms decides to pull the plug or has a horrible outage.
So, what’s the deal with establishing a presence with one?
Well, it is not just a digital storefront; it’s the beating heart of your online presence, a 24/7 hub that speaks volumes about who you are and what you offer.
It’s your platform for showcasing your most incredible content, your deepest insights, and your unparalleled expertise—part of the key components that contribute of having a successful online presence.
Think about it. It’s able to with stand the tests of time the time you’re away on vacation or life happens and you can’t be on social media often (we’ll get into awareness briefly here and on another article).
Whether you have a brand or are operating an online business, you put yourself at an advantage when you’re looking to build an online presence.
Importance of Having a Website
In order to understand the importance of having a website, I’d like to think you’re building a mini universe much like how Oda is with One Piece. One Piece is a successful manga and anime created by Eiichiro Oda which has run since 1997. What is its strong point? You may have guessed it: WORLD-BUILDING.
(No spoilers I promise and I am caught up with the manga!) He starts off with painting a picture for the audience, a vision that the objective is for any pirate to go and find the legendary “One Piece” left by Gold Roger, thus starting The Great Pirate Era.
Through this, Oda begins to “work backwards” and starts building the characters: hero, villain, support, and builds worlds as the story progresses. The depth of the plot of the story deepens, hooking in the audience, “Well, what is this One Piece? I have to know more!”
Thus, theories are created! And curiosities leaves one wanting more.
Drawing from this parallel, think of your website as your central motherboard or command center—a treasure trove of knowledge waiting to be discovered. Potential customers or followers stumbling your website can learn more about you, your brand, your products/services you offer, and the knowledge you provide in your library.
More importantly, it’s about understanding their needs, their pains, their desires, and offering them the solutions they crave. And that’s where the magic happens. Let’s see how this happens in these 5 ways…
1. Creating Awareness to Drive Traffic:
- How can you effectively utilize social media to create awareness and drive traffic to your website?
- What strategies can you implement in email marketing to increase website traffic and engagement?
2. Proper User Experience (UX):
- How will people navigate your website?
- How will your visuals captivate what someone’s looking for?
3. Understand the Power of SEO:
Would you like to talk about visibility on your website? One of the most underutilized yet misused tools out there is using search engine optimization (SEO).
4. Guiding One Using Visuals:
- How can visuals help one navigate your website?
- How can you utilize your brand identity assets to communicate your messages to your audience on your website?
5. Utilizing Content Strategy:
- When a person comes to your website, what information do you want your audience to find first?
- What pains are you addressing for a person when it comes to their website?
Building a website presence takes time
First and foremost, a website does not build itself overnight. I wish it was possible.
Much of this building takes time: building awareness to drive traffic to your website, helping one navigate to the right place, building the right content strategy and implementing the right SEO to make you visible.
The list goes on.
The key here is you built your site for people to find information. When you build a site that makes one find what they’re looking for, you attracted the one person wanting to solve a problem they have.