3 Tips To Grow Online In 2023

The digital landscape is regularly changing, growing and expanding. Every day we see breaking news stories of a fresh update, big-tech whistleblowing or social media launch that the media deems as absolutely necessary for us to know about. There is so much information, data and numbers being continuously pushed into our online field of view that it can become harder to discern the truth from fiction, fact from lie and, ultimately, what we can take away and implement into our business to help us grow, gain an advantage and thrive.

So let’s strip it back to the essential elements of digital and, without jargon or complex terminology, lay out the three essential tips to grow online in 2023.

Step 1 - Create And Optimise Your Socials

Amongst all the noise, clamour and advice, one bright light has shone through allowing us to see the path we need to take to move our business forward in a meaningful way online.

From the early days of MySpace to the long-running reign of Facebook, the existence of an online presence has been paramount to the success or failure of many creatives, businesses and entrepreneurs. However, one key thing that is often overlooked is having optimised social channels and maintaining activity on them.

Optimisation means that all the correct information is filled up, whether or not your followers can see it. Every single thing counts in helping your profile to grow and potential customers to verify you by. So next time you’re on your Facebook, LinkedIn or any other social media for that matter, take five minutes to go through every single tab with a fine comb and ensure you haven’t left any box unfilled, uploaded any badly cropped cover pictures or have dead links in your bio.

And remember to stay active! Otherwise, all your optimisation will be for no end as your potential customers will run away within a few seconds of seeing your account that was last posted two months ago! A good rule of thumb is to post at least once a week.

Step 2 - Build A Community

Community has been the spine that binds together real society since the dawn of time and it translates just as powerfully into the digital world.

A strong, engaged and well-knit community will keep your audience active, listening and most importantly, manifests an air of respect toward you - the community leader. The proper term for this is ‘thought leader’ and this is something you may want to strongly consider striving towards. Becoming a thought leader can give you massive competitive advantages over other coaches in your niche. Thought leaders are generally the most successful individuals in their field and becoming one then creates a cyclical effect where you become even more successful by virtue of being well-respected, listened to and admired in your chosen specialism.

Forbes discusses the power of thought leadership as the following: “In effect, being a thought leader absolutely includes the ability to garner radically above-average returns for the investment and effort.”

“Thought leadership is about exercising your expertise, experience and passion to help, influence and inspire those in your target market”

So what exactly is a ‘thought leader’? A simple yet powerful concept, thought leadership is about exercising your expertise, experience and passion in your field of work to help, influence and inspire those in your target market.

The best way to do this is to lay the foundations of community and cultivate the roots of thought leadership is to start a Facebook group, post regularly on trending topics on LinkedIn and be engaged within your niche’s hashtags on Instagram.

Be consistent with this and you’ll find yourself with a large following heeding your advice, practising your ideas and, in the end, becoming your clients.

Step 3 - Stay Engaged

Engagement is a vital aspect of all online growth. Creating content, scheduling for months in advance and posting regularly may seem like you have cracked the social media and online code - and in many ways you have - but it is utterly futile without engagement.

Staying constantly engaged should be one of the cornerstones of your online strategy and will help to assert yourself as the thought leader that I discussed above.

There are many ways to stay engaged, whether it is by capturing an audience's interest through focused content, captivating new markets with groundbreaking ideas or simply by taking part in conversations happening in your space. The latter is what I recommend starting with. Always go after the lowest-hanging fruit when launching as these will be your easiest and quickest wins. Whether it be on your website live chat, social media comments section or replying to forum polls, there are countless ways to engage, remain and drive an online conversation.

Then we have trust which, along with the aforementioned ‘communication’, forms the very bedrock of a powerful digital strategy that can lead to regularly increasing your business. Trust is easily created by not being a faceless or distant business owner and by taking part in the discussions happening in your work and your industry.

“Always go after the lowest hanging fruit when launching as these will be your easiest and quickest wins.”

Check your comment section on your social media daily, make your website live chat notifications are turned on so don’t miss when someone reaches out to you and have a call to actions in your blog invokes people to create conversation and then go and take part in all of it. The rapid rapport and relationships you will be building will help launch your business to new heights.

Final Thoughts

I hope you can take these three tips to grow online and apply them as soon as possible to your business or plan to integrate them into your current digital strategy as the lasting positive effects they will have will be massively motivating.

Success is not overnight and the effects of creating profiles, building a community and staying engaged will not be seen in a single day but will be felt over a short period of time. Short being the keyword as I wanted to create a foolproof list of things you can do today that will have visible results in the shortest period possible and the steps I have given provide that. The more focused you are on the application of your strategy, the better the results you will see.

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or, if you're ready to take action and start scaling your business then schedule in a call with me here and let's have an informal chat about growth: 15-Min Growth Call With Elijah