Articles in The 'branding' Tag

Six Ways to Establish Credibility with Your Audience

by Lauren Owens

Businesses seeking to establish themselves as industry experts or thought leaders should first take a look at whether their web content is helping or hurting their case. Follow these simple guidelines to start producing stellar content that not only increases conversions, but establishes your business as a credible voice.

1. Write with Authority

It’s important that you use an authoritative, yet approachable, voice in your blog, web and social media content. To write with authority, present thoughts easily, clearly and with confidence. And, write in an active (rather than passive) voice, putting the subject before the verb, i.e. “I ate five hamburgers” verses “Five hamburgers were eaten by me.”

Communicating clearly and effectively will go a long way in establishing your authority, but so will making sure you have something new to say. It’s important when you’re blogging to add to the collective conversation rather than simply putting your own spin on the same old information.

2. Know the Facts

Provide your reader with detailed information and back that information up by using sources. In other words — don’t be vague. Simply stating, for example, that ‘many’ people died last year due to lightening strikes lacks the gravity (and authority) that a real number can convey.

But passing along erroneous information will undercut your credibility more than anything else you do. If you’re citing a scientific study, government data or other industry expert, make sure you get it right.

3. Be Honest

It’s crucial that your audience be able to trust you. That’s why you should always convey honesty and sincerity — even if it’s bad for your brand in the short term.

4. Respect Their Intelligence

Your blog readers are just like you. They’re looking for solid information about something they’re interested in. If you talk down to your readers, give false information or attempt to “dumb down” your content, you’ll lose readers — and credibility – fast.

5. Maintain Consistency

Something as simple as using an en dash (—) in one place and an em dash (–) in another can make your website look as though it were rushed or cobbled together. It’s a good idea to follow style guidelines such as those defined by the Associated Press or the Chicago Manual of Style so that everyone who provides content to your website can do so correctly and with confidence.

Alternatively, companies can create their own style manuals that serve as quick and easy guidelines for anyone writing for your website, or about your products and services.

6. Do it Right

You can have the most brilliant ideas in the world, but if they’re not being communicated correctly and effectively, you’re undercutting your credibility. If you know that you’re not a good or effective writer, hand the task of maintaining your company blog, website and social media posts to someone who is. Because grammatical errors and clunky sentences can quickly repel readers — just as soon as they found your blog, they’ll back out and go someplace else.

If you need help in that regard, MoreVisibility has a team of seasoned copy writers ready, willing and able to help you with your blogging, web content and/or social media communication.

Audience Is Everything: Creating Effective Blog Posts

by Lauren Owens

If you’re reading this, you probably have a business, and it probably has a blog. Like many business owners, you most likely see your blog as just another way to bring more eyeballs to your website, and by extension, more customers to your company. But that’s just the beginning.

More than anything, your blog adds value for your customers and credibility for your brand. So if you’re simply writing for search engines, you’re missing the biggest and most important aspect of blogging — reaching people.

So, before you think about what keyword you want to optimize for, think about the types of people you want to attract. What kinds of things are important to them? More importantly, how can you add value to their lives while establishing your business as an authority?

Asking yourself these questions will likely take you down new avenues in terms of blog topics and social media content. It will also increase the likelihood that you’ll bring in qualified traffic, and have a better chance of converting that traffic into sales.

Even better, you can begin to cultivate a relationship with your customer base — one that will last far beyond any single immediate need.

Do They Know Your Name? The Case for Branding

by Katherine Bennett

Many companies are focused on their ROI goals. They want to know how much they are getting in return for every dollar they spend. It is good for companies to want to have good metrics, but not at the expense of getting their branding message to the public.

Branding is important for every business. A company can have the best product in the world, but if no one knows who they are, it is to no avail. In the world of online marketing, there are several ways for businesses to brand themselves. Content targeting is a great way to convey a message to the public. A content campaign can be set up that allows a company’s ads to show when people are browsing different sites that are related to what the company does. For example, let’s say Company A has a local dry cleaning business and they are running a geo-targeted content campaign related to dry cleaning and how to clean delicate clothes. As a local searcher goes online to research how to get a stain out of a delicate shirt, they see an ad by Company A. The ad gets their attention, but they don’t click on it. They continue to do their research on stain removal and after a few days of research they decide that they are better off going to a local dry cleaner. As they do a search for local dry cleaners, an ad for Company A appears. They remember that they have seen an ad for Company A before and they decide to click on the ad. As they browse Company A’s website they decide to try them. If Company A hadn’t been running branding ads on the content network, they might have lost that sale. In this case, the content ad didn’t get the credit for the sale, but Company A did receive profits from it even though there was no visible action trail.

Running branding campaigns helps people to know that your business is out there. One fact that businesses seem to miss is that just because they have a website or a store front, doesn’t mean that people know your company exists.

Another tactic is to bid on competitor’s names. Many times people may know who your competitor is, but they may not know about your company. If a company continually bids on a competitor’s name, they have an opportunity to get their name out there and also to garner some of the business of their competitors. It may not produce instant gratification, but it has shown to be effective. Think about it. When you switched car insurance companies or tried a new breakfast place, who was the first company that came to mind? More than likely, it was the company that kept appearing in front of your face, long before you ever thought of leaving the car insurance company or the breakfast place that you currently frequent.