Growing your online presence doesn’t have to mean that you have to jump to spending money.
In fact if you maximise your online presence organically first, before doing paid advertising, you will actually maximise your paid advertising budget. It’s important for these reasons to build your presence organically with who you know first so you don’t waste your marketing budget unnecessarily.
When we look at Social Media it is about being Social first in a positive way.
I get so excited when my sons (aged 3 and 5) say thank you without prompting them. Saying thank you is one of the most powerful things we can do. Say the words. They evoke a feeling of warmth, empathy, appreciation, positivity and most importantly, connection. When you say thank you, you feel the benefits and the person you are saying it to feels it too. Knowing that my sons know the importance of the words and are used to saying them from a young age is important.
Saying thank you in person has many benefits and can benefit those who hear them in person.
With Social Media Platforms we have the opportunity to like, comment, share and review businesses and the people connected with them. We can say thank you online and give the person who has helped us not just recognition on a personal level, but on a potentially global level.
I’m a Digital Marketing Educator and as someone responsible for implementing cost effective ways to gain visibility and build businesses, this could be considered just another tactic to build visibility. If you view saying ‘thank you’ superficially then you will not get the true value of it.
Rather than trying to gain visibility from positivity, view it as your opportunity to restore the balance in an often negative world. In person when we love someone or something we love to tell them. If we really love them, we’ll tell our friends. If we really want to make a difference we’ll do a review online.
Reviews online are highly regarded. Thanks to recent changes in the Google Search algorithm (the way you are prioritised in their directory) reviews are helping with your visibility. Reviews don’t just stay on Social Media Channels, reviews are also getting higher visibility on your listings too.
Approach saying thank you online from an authentic place.
Make sure the product or service you are reviewing is your experience (not someone else’s). Give your review without the expectation that you will be reviewed in return, whilst mutual appreciation is nice, it is not the primary reason you are doing it.
Please note: If you have a negative experience, always respond privately via email or direct message and give the person or respective business the opportunity to respond and resolve without any negative impact to their business (or yours).
Ways you can start to grow your online visibility are:
When a post is interacted with, regardless of the platform you are on, it is considered more valuable. When a post is considered valuable then it is shown to more people, this means the reach of the post (visibility) is increased.
Ways in which you can say thank you are:
- Like A Post – Likes can be more heavily weighted with the level of positivity shown. On Facebook there are reactions that can be used. Love vs Like will increase the value.
- Comment On A Post – Comments on posts help increase visibility. They take more effort and therefore have more value.
- Share A Post – Sharing posts can achieve up to 13 times more value than a like. Consider this as an endorsement by you of what the post is about.
- Write A Review – Reviews are also considered highly for their value
Please note: If you are the one receiving the ‘thank you’ as a comment, share or review, the most important thing you can do is respond.
How do you say thank you?