Building your brand online goes way beyond logos and slogans. What do you think of when you see the word brand or branding? Images of certain logos or slogans might appear in your mind. These are companies that have successfully nailed the branding process. It touches on the roots of what the company is and who they stand for. It is what someone says about your company, and it can help gain a special connection with your audience. Having a great product or service can only take your business so far. In the end, branding is what will get customers to your business and have them stay. This article will cover the best way for your business to start or evaluate how you do online branding.
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Building a Brand Online
Trust is what gets a person to buy something. If they believe in what the product or service can do for them, they will be more likely to buy into what your company offers. People want to know who your brand is so they know if they can trust you or not. Building your brand online is key for any business.
What is a Brand?
A brand is what makes your business stand out among others. It is what consumers associate your company with. Consumers could connect feelings or other aspects and tie them to your brand. Good or bad, it makes a brand stand out. Obviously, every brand is going to want good feelings tied to them.
Know Your Audience
If you are a small business, then you can be competing with large businesses with lots of money for marketing. That is one of the amazing things about the internet. By building your brand online, you can start competing against those big-name brands. First, you need to get to know your audience and create a brand strategy. You don’t want to go into creating your brand online blind.
How to Build a Brand Strategy Online?
The internet is instant, but building a brand online is not. Creating a worthwhile brand takes time and strategy. A brand strategy is simply a way to make your brand stand out. It will help your brand grow and develop into what it is capable of becoming.
To create a strategy, you need to figure out some things about your brand first:
- What does your brand value?
- Who is your audience?
- How is your brand going to communicate with your audience?
- Who are your competitors?
After you figure out those four questions, you are ready to come up with a strategy. Those questions require some serious thought behind them, so don’t brush them off.
Brand Persona
You can create a persona for your brand and your audience. A persona is coming up with a fictional character of whom your brand or ideal audience would be. This can be a fun way to learn who you are as a brand and who you should be targeting.
Storytelling
After you have who your brand is targeting, you have established your brand’s voice. Use that voice to share stories about your brand. You don’t always need to be hard selling your company but focusing on creating relationships is at the heart of branding.
Build a Brand Kit
A brand kit is your brand’s identity in one place. You need to find font sizes, colors, how your brand would say certain things, and other important things that factor into making your brand. Building one is simple because you compile all the information about your brand into one place. A brand kit allows for brand consistency. This is especially important if you have more than one person on your branding team. Communication is so important in branding. You want to make sure your brand isn’t one person on email but another person on Twitter. Having a brand voice that encapsulates your brand and is consistent is what your company should aim for.
Best Branding Tools Online
Many branding tools online go beyond just social media. Branding tools help you establish your business and get people to recognize you. They can pair nicely with social media. Think of social media as the main course and these tools as the desserts that complete the meal.
Email Marketing
Yes, it is still a very viable way to help your business. You are sending an email directly into your audience’s inbox. It can be overlooked but is still a highly effective tool. You can also keep track of how many people have clicked on the link in the email to go through to your site, to see how well it is working. This is something easy to track and simple to use that will get your brand out there.
Incorporating SEO
Adding certain elements to your website can enhance your SERP (search engine results page) ranking. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way to let Google know you are credible and have what people are looking for. By adding keywords, link building, and creating a Google My Business page, you are on your way to climbing in rankings.
Content Writing
Along with adding SEO, content writing is a way to help earn favor from search engines like Google. Content writing is the meat behind your website, but it is quality writing that helps your website. You can outsource content writing or do it yourself. If you are writing quality work and using some SEO practices, you will see organic traffic flooding into your website.
Google Analytics
Using Google Analytics can help provide insights into how your branding is going. You will be able to follow where users spend the most time, how they arrive on your website, and if what you are currently doing is effective. Analytics are important to gauge how well your branding is working online.
Form of Communication
Having a consistent way of communicating with your team is important. Many businesses use email, but some prefer other applications, including Slack. This will hold your company together and help you to avoid confusion. It builds loyalty with your employees and helps your brand even more!
Build Your Brand Image Online through Social Media
Branding through social media is a must. It can be the biggest way to grow your brand. A big mistake brands make on social media is using the same content for all channels. Remember the audiences are typically different on each platform. Within each social media app, there are different tones of voice as well. You wouldn’t post what you tweeted to LinkedIn. It would potentially send the wrong message to that crowd. You can also use the same topic for different posts but change them slightly for each site. To figure out which platform is best for your brand, look at which each platform provides and is used for. Along with each platform having its own style, they also have a specific audience they attract.
What used to just be artsy photos, has evolved into so much more. Your brand can use photos, reels, and stories to communicate with your audience. The average age in the United States of Instagram users is 25-34 years old.
This is a great platform for hitting older generations. With the average age of a user in the United States being 40.5 years old, you can connect with a variety of people. Facebook includes many of the features Instagram has since they are owned by the same company. Facebook allows you to post articles, establish group pages, and post pictures.
This is where the largest group of networking professionals live. You can target professions, share articles, and engage in the community to become known. LinkedIn is full of users 46+ years old. That doesn’t mean that is all who is on this platform though. With the ability to target different occupations you can reach your audience. It is a great way to network and build relationships with other brands.
YouTube
After Google, this is the second largest search engine. People love seeing videos behind the scenes or about certain topics. You can make your own videos or put ads out to reach your audience. YouTube has a pretty consistent age demographic. The most popular ages are 15-35 years old, but 35+ years old aren’t far behind. YouTube is so versatile that it can be used by a wide variety of users.
No Limits
Don’t limit yourself to these platforms. Social media is constantly growing and adapting. Just look at how TikTok came about! New platforms will continue to show up and have their advantages. It is important if a social media platform fits your brand to be active on that platform. Everyone is on social media these days; you just have to know which platforms to focus on. Don’t try to spread yourself thin by joining all of the social media channels. If your audience is specific enough you should be able to know exactly where they are. That goes back to knowing your audience. It is a key element when trying to brand your company. Social media can help increase your conversations and engagement with your audience. This builds up trust, which is the foundation of every great, long-lasting relationship.
Wanting to Start Building your Brand Now?
If you are looking for some strategic experts to help you figure out where your company should start on branding, look no further. SEO Design Chicago wants to help your brand to be successful. We provide a variety of digital services from social media content creation to Google Analytics. Wherever you are in your company’s branding process, we want to meet you there.
FAQs
- What is branding?
- How to build a brand strategy?
- What is a brand kit?
- What are the best brand tools?
- How to build a brand on social media?
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