As a business owner, one of your main goals is to build your online audience.

Many business owners I know focus most of their energy into building
their online audience via their social media channels. The problem with doing
that is, it doesn’t consider the customer’s full journey to making a purchase.

It’s not as simple as a seeing a social media post, clicking
through to your website and buying. The fact is, most website visitors are not ready
to buy when they visit your website for the first time (or even the forth or
fifth). They might totally fall in love with you and be super keen to work with
you, but maybe it’s not quite the right time. Or maybe you’re not in a launch
phase for your new course or product.

Once you have got your ideal client on your website, your next job is to find a way to keep in touch with them, in order to keep them in the loop and build that all important ‘know, like and trust’ factor.

In this article, I’m going to show you 3 simple ways that you can keep in touch with your website visitors and build your online audience.

1. Add Your Social Media Links… Everywhere

When your website visitors have finished reading your blog post, don’t let them leave the site without giving them chance to like your Facebook page or follow your Instagram grid.

Many WordPress plugins will allow you to automatically add your social media links at the end of each blog post, as well as in your header, footer or sidebar.

If you post lots of social media updates, but aren’t that great at blogging regularly, it’s even worth having your social media streams embedded on your site, so visitors can see what you’ve been up to.

Remember that not everyone is a regular social media user though, so don’t rely on this alone.

2. Offer a Freebie, not a Newsletter

If you’re still using the heading ‘sign up to receive our newsletter’, chances are, you’re not getting many new emails added to your list.

These days, email addresses are precious – we don’t give them out easily.

If you want people to sign up to your email list, you need to give them something more than the promise of regular ‘news’.

A ‘freebie’, ‘opt-in’ or ‘lead-magnet’ is the answer.

These instantly available goodies are tailored exactly to your ideal customer. They can be a document, video or series of emails that solve a major problem for your customer. Something that they see and think ‘YES! It’s totally worth you having my email address for that!’.

Just make sure that they’re fully aware that they’ll be signed up to your list in exchange for your freebie because GDPR yada yada yada.

3. Enable Push Notifications for Your Website

You know those little notifications you get at the top of your phone, with information about your apps? Well, you can now get those for your website.

After you set up an account with an app like Subscribers, when a visitor lands on your site, you can automatically ask if they’d like to be notified of future updates. Then, whenever you have something to say, just ‘push’ out a notification!

As with all ‘new’ technology, there are limitations. So far, these push notifications are only available for certain browsers (Chrome, Safari, Opera and Firefox).

You do also have to be careful not to go overboard, as, unlike emails and social media, notifications arrive with your subscribers regardless of whether or not they are on your website.

They are definitely an interesting development for online businesses though, and I genuinely get excited when I see notifications from certain websites, so I know they work!

Conclusions on how build your online audience

As people’s attention is being increasingly pulled in different directions, you need to make sure you’re top of their interest list.

Ensuring you give your visitors the option to keep in touch after they move away from your site is non-negotiable. Fail to supply a variety of ways they can do this, and you’re guaranteed to lose customers.

Watch me review the audience growth tactics of 5 social enterprises.