People are looking for your products and services every single day, online. And quite often the first point of contact with your organization is your website. First impressions matter but so do the ongoing activities and other initiatives you undertake. A good brand is built through the sum of positive experiences people have with your organization and increasingly these experiences are taking place online. How can you ensure that the brand identity you want to cultivate is being accurately represented in the digital world? Here's some things you need to know.
Digital Readiness
Businesses first need to start by getting training in the digital sphere if they hope to utilize it effectively. In my 15 plus years dealing with web-based marketing services that biggest obstacle was client education. Most small and medium sized businesses are underprepared when it comes to managing their digital presence - They spend thousands on a website and then don't have a strategy to attract people to it or worse yet they leave the website stagnant and ignore other online activities to promote it. If you want to successfully convey your brand online then you need to train staff and invest in proper technologies. If your customers are online you need to be prepared to meet them there. Take this Digital Readiness Assessment Survey by PwC to see where your organization sits.
Social Media
For businesses that ignore social media it has become more complex for brand management since they're not part of conversations mentioning their product/service and are missing out on opportunities. On the other hand, businesses that utilize social media for at least the purpose of monitoring enables brand management to become simpler. Monitoring social media chatter can be a great substitute for expensive custom market research; For just a few hours a month you can keep your finger on the pulse of what's being said and react in real-time. There are many tools available to small-medium businesses for managing their brand's reputation such as Sprout Social, Sysomos Heartbeat, and Vendasta Brand Intelligence to name just a few. Even if you choose to not actively participate by producing social content, at least using social media to listen can allow your organization to influence brand management by injecting yourself into conversations where appropriate.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The tactics surrounding SEO are constantly changing due to search engines efforts to thwart those trying to game the system. The most important thing to do is concentrate on creating valuable and varied content that your audience will appreciate - Good content will earn traffic. That said, there are a few technical principles that should be utilized to help with search engine results:
1. Know the keywords your customers are using to find your products/services and use them judiciously throughout your website and have specific pages devoted to a few of the most important ones. For instance, car dealerships often use the phrase "pre-owned vehicles" to describe used vehicles since they think it sounds better, but the reality is that people are not searching for "pre-owned vehicles" - They're searching for "used cars". Think like your customer's search and it will lead to better content development. Use a free tool like Google Adwords to discover search terms being used to search for your particular product/service. Some of the terms might not be inline with your brand values, but it shouldn't be about how you describe yourself; it's about what your customers say you are.
2. Use keywords in your url, page titles, image descriptions, and headings. It's important not to overdo things in this regard, but there are many places you can place keywords in the content and code of your website site that both aids search engines and people reading your content. Also, do not repeat the same set of keywords across multiple pages since this will be a signal to search engines you are trying to game the system - Content should be unique and specific for each page of your website.
3. Start a blog. In my experience, having a regularly updated blog is one of the best things you can do to build you personal brand since it shows thought leadership and provides new content for search engines to index on a daily basis. Every blog post you create is a new piece of content that is more likely to be read and shared than an "about" or "services" page. Utilize social media to share these posts and you'll start to build awareness of your expertise and build an audience. In addition, a blog is a great way to keep your website fresh and give people a reason to come back.
Closing Remarks:
You don't need to know how to do everything or be on every social media network - Have a well constructed content rich website, pick one or two social media networks best suited for your business, and ALWAYS collect email addresses for customers/prospects. There are some businesses where traditional methods of marketing may still be most effective but ignoring digital media will hamper the business in the long term as society becomes more reliant on the web. There are three certainties in life: Death, taxes, and eventually everything will be on the web 🙂
