Building a business is an exciting time. It’s a time when in many ways you take a great leap of faith that you will make that connection between what you are offering and who wants to get their hands on it. It’s all about customers, or clients isn’t it? If enough of them buy what you are offering then success will follow right?
Many successful businesses rely on their branding to allow their message to reach their potential customers, even if that business isn’t specifically campaigning to reach that customer. Reaching that sweet spot where there is a general awareness about your business, or product, makes the connection between potential customer to customer that much easier.
But how do you build your brand online?
Building your own brand online contains a lot of small steps (and a few big ones) designed to put you in a position to gain trust and authority for yourself online. You may have the best shop downtown, but if you don’t have an online presence, you simply won’t exist for anyone that doesn’t know that or searches online.
In order to take your brand online you should do some basic steps to get started.
Let’s have a look at four steps to get you going with building your brand online.
Four steps to begin to build your brand online
Getting your brand known and trusted by the Web is the task set before you. Use these steps to help you get there!
Know who your audience is – You might have an understanding of who you want to appeal to, but this is the time to do some research and see not only who your ideal customer is, but who you will be in competition with for their attention.
Secure your Web properties – Acquiring a domain name for your brand that accurately reflects your business is crucial. Have a website built. Don’t pick a free site you see advertised, as this will severely limit your alternatives and you won’t really own anything. Bite the bullet, secure web hosting, and get a site built that you will be happy with for a while.
Establish Social Media accounts – Social media is very important these days, as it can have a positive effect on traffic, authority, search ranks and a lot more. Deciding which social sites to employ is up to you, but most likely you’ll be using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Create a presence on these sites and be sure to have a consistency in your contact information across these as well as your website. Having this last element wrong can really cause search engine problems so pay attention to it!
Begin to post content and engage people – Once all of your properties are ready to go, it’s time to populate them with content. This is a required step, and one to take care with. It is where your authority, search engine ranks, and traffic will ultimately sprout from. When people begin to engage with you through comments, be sure to keep up your end of the conversation, and help begin your brand’s authority online!
Branding doesn’t have to be about spending big bucks to maintain your businesses awareness in the community. You don’t have to have the top-of-mind awareness like “Coke” does for you to have a successful branding strategy. If you can maintain a level of engagement in your target communities or markets then you are well on your way to building your brand.