Years ago, it was just a matter of having a nice website, a presence on the social media field, and effective branding of your products and services. There are now new rules when it comes to branding your business online. It does not have as much to do with how your present the information. It has a lot more to do with how well you interact with the public. Here are some of the best tips to help you with your online business branding to ensure that you are doing it as effectively as possible.
1. Engage Your Customers
When you start a conversation with your clients, that is not really enough these days. You don’t want to just start the conversation. You need to help the conversation evolve. Social media can really help when it comes to branding your business, but you have to build the relationships online for it to work to your advantage. Branding through social media and branding through traditional methods really isn’t much different than it used to be. It has really just made it easier and made marketing better. Don’t just open up a Facebook or Twitter account for your business and expect it to start booming. You have to actively participate. Make posts on your page regularly, and stay involved and interact with your customers. If you stay on top of it, you will have a lot more success.
2. Don’t Focus on Your Personal Brand
Sure, you want to increase the number of people who follow your social media networking sites, but don’t do it at the expense of your own personal brand. The number of Twitter followers that you have will really not matter too much to your customers. Growing your personal brand can actually distract people from your company. There are many entrepreneurs out there that try to just get as many people to follow them as possible, when really it is more important that you get people who are actually interested in what you have to offer.
3. Try to Make Headlines
Having your business out there in the media can be a great thing. This is a good way to build your brand up. The key is identifying the outlets of media that will be most pertinent to your industry. Then, you can target your pitches to that industry. Being in the headlines can also help to give the public in idea about your company, and your personality. The web has definitely changed the way that people do business. There are applications such as Blog Talk Radio, and other web based air broadcasts. You can also become more active in the organizations in your area in order to reach the media. People will remember your appearance as long as you make it a memorable one.
4. Find Your Niche and Be Persistent
If you are going into a crowded marketplace, you will want to make sure that you find a way to allow your company to stand out. It used to be that people thought that all types of water were the same, but now you can see that there is a vast variety of brands in your local grocery store. Marketers have found ways to make water different, so that makes it clear that business owners can find ways to get their brand to stand out among the rest. The key is to be creative with your branding approaches.
5. Focus on Your “About Us” Page
This is the page that visitors will go to in order to find out more about your business. This is one of the first pages that people see when they go to your website. They learn about what you have to offer and more about your business values. With this in mind, you should really put a lot of consideration into this page of your site. You will want to make sure that you include the basics, but you also want to make sure that you make this page exciting so that people don’t navigate away from your site without seeing everything that you have to offer. Don’t focus on writing too much text. Instead, make sure that you just provide small snapshots of information that will keep the reader interested.
6. Use Social Media on Your Website
This will help your business to look up to speed with current technology, and it can also help you to stay connected and increase your web traffic. You don’t have to put out great viral videos or hire an agent to vamp up your site in order to get the traffic you desire. Sometimes, you just need to put some effort into it. Make sure that you have your social media sites linked on your page, create a blog, use SEO to your advantage, and focus on driving traffic to your site naturally.
7. Keep a Good Reputation
The reputation of your brand is very important. Sure, there are a lot of great ways to market your business, but if you don’t have a good reputation then you might just be wasting your time. You don’t want to leave any stone unturned when it comes to your customers. If they have questions and concerns, make sure that they are addressed in a timely manner. This will help to prevent tarnishing your brand name, which can scare away potential customers. This is why companies are starting to use new online tools, lick Google Alerts, to stay up to date with what is going on with their site.
8. Create a Portfolio
This day and age, your brand is going to have a lot to do with trust and your relationships with your clients. With that in mind, you will want to make sure that you create a portfolio in order to showcase the work that you have done. You can do this in a variety of different ways. You can also post testimonials from customers that were satisfied with the work that you have done for them. This is a great way to allow others to see that the can trust you to do business with.
