How to Build an Online Presence (Without Losing Your Mind)
In our ongoing community survey, we asked the question:
“What challenges are you facing in your business or side hustle right now?”
To which we received the anonymous response:
“How to build up an online presence (i.e. on Instagram with its crazy algorithms) while staying sane and true to my concept of slow, deep work.”
This one caught our attention because it stands out as a challenge that all artists or creative entrepreneurs face when it comes time to establish and grow their businesses online.
We all want to have a presence online so that we can reach our dream clientele and make sales, but we don’t want to absolutely lose our minds in the process. We want to stay the course and grow our business, all while being able to dedicate ourselves to our process of producing intentional, deep, creative work. But HOW? How do we work through this push and pull challenge of growing an online presence and staying sane?
To encourage and help this sweet anonymous member of our community, we created this YouTube video to talk through our best advice.
And if you prefer to digest information through a written format, keep reading for the outline of our discussion!
How to Build an Online Presence (Without Losing Your Mind):
1. Know the difference between marketing strategy and tactics.
Your marketing strategy is your master plan, blueprint, and broad overview of why and how you intend to show up online.
Your marketing tactics are all your nitty-gritty methods of implementing that plan.
To use a building analogy: if you set out to build a new home, your strategy would be to hire an architect, engineer, and contractor. Your tactics would then be to hire the bricklayer, electrician, plumber, and so on.
The critical thing to remember is that your strategy must always come before your tactics. You should invest the time to create a broad plan with intentional goals for marketing your work online before you sit down to create content, schedule posts, and send emails to your audience.
This process of strategizing doesn’t have to take too long (and shouldn’t!), but it’s essential to the process of building a meaningful presence online because your strategy will give you the focus and clarity needed to put your plan into action using your tactics.
2. Put social media in its proper place (it’s just ONE of the tools in your toolbox).
It’s not uncommon for us creative entrepreneurs to focus a very large chunk of our online time and energy on Instagram. Instagram is a beautiful tool! But it should not be your only tool!
To build your entire online presence only on Instagram is like building your dream home on rented land.
On Instagram, you don’t own your audience. Just think, if it was gone tomorrow, could people still find you online? Could you still effectively reach your audience to share about a new offer? Would your business last?
If the answer to those questions makes you panic a little, don’t worry! This just means that you ought to consider some other ways of showing up online and think about how you can re-assign a more intentional, strategic amount of energy to the platform as a means of sharing your work.
3. Build your website!
The easiest way to establish a home online (building on land that you DO own) is to create or refine your website! Your website is your business’s home base. It’s a place online that allows you to take the reigns and shape the experience your customers will have when they walk into the world of your brand.
Websites are powerful, but they don’t have to be crazy complicated. The most important thing is that you establish your site (if you haven’t already) and dedicate yourself to the gradual process of refining it over time.
Your future self and business will thank you for all the love and attention you pour into your website!
4. Focus on growing an email list above all else.
We could go on a rant for days about the power of an email list, so we’ll try to keep this section brief—the key takeaway: you NEED an email list.
Having and growing an email list should be a top priority for an online business. Your list is your best means of communicating with your audience, and it’s your surefire bet that if all social media apps crashed tomorrow, you could still keep your business alive.
We are obsessed with emailing our audience at Chez Núñez because it offers us the chance to communicate more intimately with our community, it’s the most effective way to share important updates, and it’s become the most profitable means of offering new education or items in our shop.
As long as you’re providing value to your audience, you’ll be able to grow your email list (aka your online presence) over time! So be sure to get yours started, or dust off your current one, and start sending some emails.
And if you need a platform that actually inspires and motivates you to send beautiful, engaging emails to your audience, we use and love to recommend Flodesk. If you want to sign up with our affiliate code, we can get you 50% off your subscription; click here for that. We share this to help, but seriously, it doesn’t matter the platform; what matters is that you start regularly nurturing your email list! You can do it!
5. Consistency is the key to growth.
If you want to grow your online presence, there is nothing more powerful than consistency! Set some sustainable goals to engage with your online audience regularly, and then stick to them!
Remember, meaningful work doesn’t just happen overnight. You have to dedicate yourself to the slow, consistent process of growth.
6. Limit your input (comparison is the thief of joy).
Throughout your journey to build and grow your online presence, make sure you limit the amount of outside influence you’re letting into your heart and mind!
We’re no strangers to the ways that comparison can rob us of joy and focus as we strive to grow our business. So we want to encourage you to try and limit comparison as you share your work. Unfollow people or brands that don’t inspire or encourage you, delete apps, set boundaries around the time you spend scrolling through apps, create more than you consume, etc. Do what you gotta do to protect your precious time and energy. It’ll only help the long-term growth of your business. We promise.
Thank you so much for reading this post! We hope you found it encouraging and motivating. You CAN grow an online presence, even if you’re starting from complete scratch. Just follow the points mentioned above, and you’ll be heading in the right direction.
Lastly, if you’ve enjoyed this but are looking for an action plan to follow – and you want our help in the process – CLICK here to check out a course that we made just for you.
We’d love to see you over there and give you all the tools you need to confidently present your work to the world. Again, click here to learn more.
We’re here for you and we believe in you!
Love,
Anna + Jesús
