Engaging with your target audience and improving your brand presence both with both online and offline marketing is vital to any business. Besides the traditional form of advertising, there are various ways that you could explore in getting your brand name in your audience’s thoughts. But, how can you stand out from every other business attempting to reach customers online and improve their brand presence?
For most customers, their first introduction to a business is by discovering the business online. This should inform you that a business needs to have a strong online presence. This is not limited to increasing your brand’s reputation, but it will establish you as an authority figure. Having more targeted audiences and page views on your website can be difficult. Yet starting without any knowledge and experience in online marketing can also be time-consuming.
We’ve developed 4 Ways to Building A Strong Brand Identity For Your Startup.
Here are six simple yet strategic methods that will not only increase your online presence but also attract more customers. Let the customers discover you and the services or products that you provide.
#1. Absorb and Listen
A brand’s customer care process has a direct impact on brand perspective across online platforms.
Content marketing and social media success demand more listening than talking.
To win on your customer care on social media, a brand’s first priority should be to ensure all customer concerns are addressed and resolved quickly.
However, customer care listening doesn’t necessarily have to be solely about negative conversations.
If your brand is not participating in listening for customer care mentions across social media channels, chances are you might miss on negative brand mentions and conversations which could go viral if left unanswered.
Listen to what people are talking about and determine how you can provide solutions to their problems. Knowing your audience’s pain points will give you the insight you need to contribute and establish your credibility.
#2. Be Consistent in Curate Quality Content
Consistency is the key to delivering on that brand promise and increases on its awareness. Review the brand guide on a consistent basis to ensure synergy in promoting visibility and the company values.
Within your company or business, the team should understand the brand story to be ready to articulate it in a consistent and clear manner. Brand consistency is a company-wide effort.
Encourage employees to get involved with understanding the company values and the story behind them as they are the channels to pass your brand message.
Also, online marketing is not just about promotion. Don’t spend your time and money trying to reach your target audience while disregarding the quality of your brand.
Your prospects must be able to get something of value from what you’re offering.
So, add as much value to your online conversations as possible.
Write authentic brand storytelling blog posts, reports, and guides. You can also answer potential customers’ questions on your social media accounts.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are great platforms to engage your target audience in this manner. Doing so will provide you with authority in your prospective field.
Make it simple for your audience to do business with you, not complex.
#3. Be Accessible to Your Online Audience
The point is, always be there for your prospects!
Your online audience might have the tendency to be moved with all the options out there readily available to them.
Gaining loyal followers through consistent updates is not an option in order to establish your online presence and authority in your prospective field.
Having developed an audience, it would be hit only to lose them within a week because they cannot access new curated content.
The best option would be to update your content if need be. Be sure to optimize your updated content for online visibility. Also, be consistent with your blog posting.
Create an editorial calendar and post valuable content on a specific day every week. Have a commitment to respond to all incoming questions or concerns in a timely manner.
Another great alternative to remaining consistent and accessible is by sending out updates to your email subscribers.
#4. Optimize Your Website for Mobile
As a business having a website is much important, however,
- 70% of small businesses do not have a website.
- Of the small businesses that do have a website, 79% say their website is mobile-friendly.
- High-quality web content and increased mobility are top website priorities in 2017.
- First, this is a major concern when you have 97% of consumers searching for products and services online.
So, if you haven’t done it, it is not too late to start and it doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated.
Keep it simple with pages that showcase your work, services provided, a bio, contact information, testimonials, and a blog where you can share your expertise and unique voice.
Secondly, having a website or when updating an existing website, the point is to optimize for your mobile visitors.
With 30-70% of mobile search traffic coming from mobile devices, so you can’t afford to have a site that is not optimized for mobile.
Optimize the website for the response, the loading speed, a click-to-call button, have updated information (work samples, resume, contact information), that are easy on the eyes, and optimize your URLs.
Read more on How Design Mistakes Could Hurt Your SEO Effort And How To Avoid
#5. Leverage Social Media Platforms
You’ve heard time and time again that you need to be active on social media.
While engaging and interacting with influencers and customers via social media is one of the most effective ways to grow your online presence, you don’t have to be on each and every social media channel.
Mostly the contentious question is on how many preferred networks you should at least focus on.
Therefore, instead of spreading yourself too thin, focus on the primary social channels that you can easily manage and grow.
Being in at least three is standard to increase brand awareness and visibility; Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the preferred choice to network and generates leads while Twitter is excellent at conversations.
With your preferred social network for your business, company or organization, spend close to 20 minutes every day curating content that your customers would enjoy and use tools like Buffer to schedule and manage your accounts.
The rule of thumb applies, that is the 80/20 rule during your social media campaign – 80% should be shared content created by others and 20% should be pushing your content.
Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Instagram, and Whatsapp offer a favourable platform for businesses to promote and carry our campaign to build their brand reputation and loyal audience.
#6. Participate, Engage, and Share
One rule that applies to the online audience is the “give-and-take process”.
You shouldn’t expect your audience to talk about you and share your content if you’re not willing to do the same.
Social media works in a harmonious. Encourage your fans and followers to share your posts. The way they share will depend on the platform. A retweet, repin, or shared Instagram image can spread the word about your brand and earn you new followers.
No matter which social media platform you’re using, remember the fundamental tenet of social media: Be social.
Do not make the mistake of focusing solely on your content, consequently, you fail in the end.
To create a brand community and loyal audience, you need to interact. Likes, shares, and reposts what your audience finds valuable.
In appreciating your audience, they’ll be more likely to reciprocate. Having the willingness to help others will benefit you in the long run.
It’s as simple as sharing an article you enjoyed reading!
