7 Tools You Can Use Every Week to Grow Your Online Presence

Fair warning, I am seriously going to geek out a bit in this blog post.  Well, sorta.  

I know how frustrating and challenging getting your brand out there can be...especially if you’re new to the online world.  Building a great online presence puts your business in front of more people and will help you “get found" easier online.  

Now...I'm sure you may be thinking:  

"Uh oh...Kim, this sounds like it's going to be a lotttt of work". I won’t lie...initially it will take a little time to get things built up.  

But here’s the best part about building an online presence: 

There are a ton of inexpensive resources that you can use to make this process easier.

That’s what we will cover in this post.

Back in the day, before things got poppin on the internet, most businesses were using traditional marketing and advertising to get their businesses out there to the world.  

This included expensive things like:

• Running ads in major newspapers (which was hella expensive back then)
• Direct mail advertisements
• Printing out campaigns at a local print shop
• Billboards (for larger more established businesses with big budgets)...

Now, don’t get me wrong...

Traditional marketing still works.  But compared to online marketing, traditional marketing is crazy expensive.  

I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume you are probably running your business the “lean” way and are looking for inexpensive tools and resources to help you grow.

The great thing about growing your business's online presence is this:

The majority of your ideal customers are spending more time online shopping looking for products and services, hence why companies like Amazon are doing so well.

This is another reason why there’s never been a better time to start setting up online real estate and using it to grow your business.

As you know, visual content is HOT these days.  Fortunately, there are tons of online based tools to create branded images and other branding materials for your business, especially if you are starting up online for the first time.

3. Grow your business. Ever hear of this thing called social media? Yea...soooo social media is seriously a game changer on the small business growth front.  

I was reading an article recently from one of my favorite bloggers and mentor Don Purdum where he mentioned that in the olden days of marketing, it used to take sometimes between one to 12 months before seeing any results from running various marketing campaigns.

Now with various social media platforms available, you can simply point, click and send MASS marketing messages to your followers, fans and peeps in your community.

Growing your online presence is not going to happen overnight.  It’s going to take some time and great deal of effort especially in the beginning phases of your business to get things going.

To effectively grow your online presence, you will need to:

• Get extremely targeted + focus on getting your message in front of the right people.  

• Leverage technology!  Yes, tech stuff can be scary, but...when used correctly, it can work wonders for your brand.

• Market your brand consistently.  True growth comes from staying the course and continuing to do things consistently to grow your business.

1. Buffer - for social media marketing 

Guys, I mean seriously if you are not on the social media train and using it to grow your online presence you are seriously missing out on a ton of opportunities.

Contrary to popular belief, social media is not just a place where the “cool kids” hang out to chat. 

It is really a great communication tool and platform where you can engage with your followers, market your content, and grow like crazy… if you use it right.

I mean seriously...if you would have told me just 3 months after launching this brand that I would be:

• Collaborating with a fellow entrepreneur (that I met on Twitter) to run a 31 Day Startup Challenge

• Invited to write for a blog that gets more than 2 million visits per month -- all from using social media, I would have said no FREAKIN way!

But… this is what tools like Buffer helps you do. Instead of hopping from one social media profile to the next trying to publish content, I just use Buffer to send content to all of my social media accounts from “one” place. Hootsuite is another great alternative as well that you should consider.

Another feature with Buffer that won me over is their “Reshare” feature. This gives you the ability to re-share older content that performed well instead of having to re-create posts from scratch. 

3.  Canva Pro - for all things visual design  

It's safe to say that I use Canva Pro for almost 99% of my graphic design needs.

If you are struggling with visual design and want to create “stand out graphics” and designs that help your brand get noticed by your ideal audience, I would highly recommend heading over to start using Canva like right now.

With Canva, you are a “template” away from creating stand out graphics for things like blog post graphics, animated graphics, social media marketing graphics, course promo graphics and more.  

These are items that you can learn how to create with no design experience required at all in Lights Canva Action.

Yeaaaa so that is the Sumo.Me social sharing app that I use to encourage visitors to share my content across social media (and you should too).  

This app is free to download so make sure that you check it out and use it on your blog.

5. YOAST SEO plugin - to get your blog posts discovered in Google

Getting your content discovered in the search engines like Google is a fantastic way to get your brand in front of your peeps and also grow your online presence.

For my WordPress website, YOAST SEO is the plugin that helps me easily add the right mix of keywords and other information to my content.

This way, when someone is searching for a term like “How to Use Canva”,  my website will come up in the search results because I have added specific keywords and phrases to my posts that tell Google to send traffic my way.

This allows your peeps to get to know, like and trust you on a deeper level outside of just reading a blog post or seeing something on social media that you’ve shared.

I’m using Active Campaign right to communicate with my email subbies.  It also works wonderful for selling products, courses and services as well.

7.  Thrive Leads - to grow your email list

Thrive Leads is a powerful WordPress plugin that helps you grow your email list so that you can follow up with your email subscribers later.

The Wrap Up

So you've learned the top 7 tools that I use each week to grow my online presence.   Now it’s time to apply them to your business.  

Download my ebook Digital Domination guide to unlock all of the tips I've used to increase my social shares, readership and blog post popularity or enroll in Blog Like a CHAMP via the Blazing Branding Academy to start building a 365 day marketing engine that grows your online presence and attracts clients to you.