Expanding your company’s online presence can be one of the core elements of a successful public relations campaign. As digital and online avenues become increasingly dominant in business communications today, it is important to give attention to strengthening your brand’s identity online and especially to ensuring that you maintain a high degree of brand integrity.
Increasing brand awareness has numerous advantages, including: increased customer loyalty, greater interaction with your client base, increased feedback on products and services, instant product recognition, easier introduction of new products and many more. Unfortunately, by misrepresenting or poorly presenting your brand online, people will start to form negative associations which may damage your company’s reputation and ultimately lead to a loss in business revenue.
So, if you’ve already established a strong brand identity and are looking to raise awareness by using online resources (as part of your comprehensive PR strategy), here are some of the key issues and potential pitfalls to be aware of:
Social media
Social media is not only great for networking and interacting with your client and prospect base, but it can also be one of the primary ways that your company’s news stories and blog posts are propagated on the internet. It goes without saying that your website should be fully integrated with social media buttons, allowing visitors to share, tweet and like your content to their heart’s content.
If you’re looking to increase brand awareness and position yourself as a source of value online, you’re likely to want to contribute to discussions pertaining to your field of expertise, respond to inquiries about your products and services and retweet good posts made by your followers. It’s becoming more and more common for companies to use their Twitter account as an integrated part of their customer support services.
There’s nothing wrong with using social media to promote your new product or to let the world know that your company has been chosen as the recipient of a prestigious industry award. However, if your Twitter feed reads like a ruthlessly self-promoting spam-bot devoid of any organic, non-sales related communication, the perception of your brand is likely to be severely tarnished.
Communications on social media should be friendly and welcoming, but not to the extent that it becomes so casual that all professionality is lost. Correct spelling, grammar and punctuation is a necessity on social media and using text-speak should be avoided as much as possible – unless you are targeting a segment of the market for whom this is appropriate.
It’s also important to ensure that the aesthetics of your social media accounts are in alignment with your company’s branding. Choosing your company logo as the profile picture for your account is a good idea, and choosing the company name as the account name is also advisable (if this is not possible, the company name plus the company’s geographical location or specific industry will surely suffice). Your profile description should be easy to read and up-to-date, based on your company’s current business objectives and product range.
Blogs
There are many nuances to writing great blog content for SEO purposes, but don’t forget that your company’s blog is also a representation of your branding online; getting it right or wrong can impact that reputation accordingly.
While there are numerous online blog services that provide free hosting, blogging from your own domain shows a higher degree of professionalism and also makes navigating your site a lot easier for your users. Blogging from your own domain also allows for a greater degree of customisation, meaning you can organise the layout, style and aesthetics to align with your company’s branding.
Update your blog regularly; there’s nothing worse than navigating one’s way through a well designed company website and arriving at the blog page – only to find that the last post was uploaded half a year ago! The SEO benefits of regularly uploading new blog content are well known, but in terms of brand integrity, it looks sloppy to have a blog that no one is taking the time to maintain. People might start to ask themselves questions about your company’s ethos, such as “If they can’t even update their blog regularly, how reliable are they going to be when overseeing the completion of projects as a business partner?”
Not all doom and gloom
Fortunately, when it comes to increasing your brand identity in this digital age, there are far more pros than cons. So long as you’re aware of the potential pitfalls, using online avenues to promote your brand can be an exciting and fun process, and can be highly rewarding in the long term evolution and prosperity of your business!
(Photo by Kevin Zollman)
