3 simple ways to own your digital presence

April 2, 2023

What is a digital presence?

A strong digital presence can help you engage with your customers, increase your visibility and credibility in the online world, and ultimately drive more leads, sales, or donations.

We believe your website is the cornerstone of your digital presence, but we know that’s not always the first place your customers find you.

Your target audience uses the internet like everyone else, and it’s important to be in the right places online, sharing helpful content, and links back to your site where they can learn more about what you offer.

While what is included in a Purrly Digital Strategy will be unique for every business or nonprofit, there are a few easy, free things we generally recommend that anyone can get started with right away.

1. Claim your Google Business Listing

It’s free, it’s pretty simple to use, and it controls what your customers see in the sidebar of their search results and on Google Maps.

You can claim or add a Google Business Profile and fill in your contact information, and add information, images, and more about your business and services.

Make regular updates to let your customers know you are reliable and care about helping them find accurate and up-to-date information about your business.

If you hire a partner like Purrly Digital to help you maintain your digital presence, you can also easily control administrative access to add or remove others from the account.

2. Claim your Bing Places Listing

Once you have your Google Business profile all set up, you can hop over to Bing and connect the two.

Bing is not used as widely as Google, by a wide margin, but it’s growing in use and can be a real driver of traffic for certain industries.

It’s an easy process and worthwhile to make sure you’re reaching everyone searching for your services.

3. Clean up your social media presence

We have all been there. A social media account that’s been abandoned, or one we’ve lost access to that we’d like to use again. It’s something that has happened to just about every client we have worked with at least once.

That’s why we often recommend an annual social media clean up day. Whether or not a channel you once had is currently part of your plan, if it’s still active, you need to log in once a year and make sure everything is up to date.

Create a master list of all your social media accounts and schedule time on your calendar to review them in a recurring annual appointment.

Check the bios, click the links, look for anything that you need up update, and make sure everything is still secure.

Even if you don’t use the account?

Especially if you don’t use the account.

Should you just delete an inactive social media account?

That depends on a lot of things, but generally we recommend keeping accounts open and on your annual list to review, even if you aren’t using them in your strategy this year.

Based on what your users and target audience want, your strategy could change. By having an open account, you will still have access to historical data and your established user names. Dormant accounts with up-to-date information can direct users to another channel or to your website where they can engage with you where you are more active.

Take control of your reputation

When people find old, outdated information online it creates a sense of distrust. Don’t let abandoned socials, or listing you lost access to do any damage to your reputation.

If you need help refreshing your website, taking control of your digital presence and developing a comprehensive digital strategy, get in touch. We’d love to help.