Nurturing your brand on the internet reflects business tremendously. It’s important to do so and it can impact your business in many ways. Recently I spoke with a family friend who was telling me about her new business adventure and how she was seeking new avenues to expand her reach. In today’s fast moving internet world every business owner should be concerned with their influence on the internet and communication with target audience. More than ever before consumers are exploring the possibilities of the web by utilizing various marketing channels including search engines and social platforms to perform comparison shopping, research, and reviews on brands.
The online presence of your brand says a lot about how you do business, with whom, and why consumers should choose you over the competition. Nurturing your brand on the internet can be challenging and quite competitive especially for someone who still lives in the web 1.0 era.
What are some strategies and tactics that every business owner should be focused on? How do you monitor and protect your brand? Is there value in domain presence, social media, and organic visibility?
You can do a variety of things on the internet today to help increase sales and protect your brand. Some of these consist of the following:
- Local Presence – for every business owner it’s important to have a local presence. Such can be accomplished by leveraging Google Places, Yahoo Local Listings, Bing Business Portal, & Yelp just to name a few. Your brand should have visibility here in order to connect with target audience and give consumers the ability to review your products and services. As a business owner you can communicate with your customers by monitoring and responding to their feedback.
- Search Engine Optimization – owning local space can improve targeted traffic to your domain not to mention help generate more qualified leads. Every business owner should have a strong focus on local visibility by optimizing their website for local specific keyword terms. For example, you have a lawn care business in Saint Louis, MO that services the entire metropolitan area. Your potential customers will most likely be searching for “lawn care services st. louis mo” or “lawn care st. louis mo“. Your domain presence needs to be positioned in such fashion that when searched for it will show up on the front page of Google, Yahoo, or Bing search engines. Going beyond keyword positioning and optimization should also include proactive monitoring of such terms on monthly basis.
- Domain Presence – many business owners out there still don’t see the value of having a website. Quite frankly some perhaps don’t understand the purpose behind it or even how to approach it strategically. A business website says a lot about your company. It helps display your products and services while giving enough exposure for visitors to identify the purpose of your business. Additionaly it’s probably one of the most important elements for your brand that you should be involved in that delivers a high ROI.
- Social Media – platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIN have given business owners an opportunity to expose their brand on a whole new level. With over 750 million users on Facebook and 250+ million tweeps swarming there’s no better time to establish your social presence. A big part of your social visibility on these platforms consists of proactive monitoring. Consumers search for products and services on these networks which gives your brand the opportunity to interact and communicate with them. Going beyond the conversation one strategy that should be in your back pocket is responding to questions submitted by your fans and tweeps. Nurturing your brand on social media is all about the conversation and build-up of your network. Keep in mind that what’s being talked about your brand on social media stays there and is visible by thousands even millions of consumers.
Nurturing your brand on the internet takes consistency and lots of monitoring and engagement. Remember that these are only a few ways that you can leverage marketing avenues to monitor your brand. The ever changing internet marketing world brings new tools and opportunities on daily basis. Who knows what will come along next.