You have a winning idea, concept or product. Does anyone know about it?
It’s incredibly frustrating to write an insightful blog post, record an intriguing podcast, develop new software or publish a book about a concept you’ve been honing for years and get barely any feedback.
Is your website a virtual ghost town?
Then it’s time to learn how to build your brand.
Make your company so recognizable and irresistible that people want to share your content and find you across the web, from social media platforms to Google searching, for more details about what you do. Become a go-to company for information, products and services.
It’s not good enough to simply create a great product.
You have to also have a highly visible company and online presence to back up the marvelousness of the product. You have to appeal to your target audience. Learn who they are, their age group, income level, education level, shopping habits, pain points and desires.
So, how do you go about doing that? Get to know them.
Each day set aside time to implement a few of these ideas and you’ll gradually notice your engagement rates on Facebook rise, your website traffic increase and a boost in your monthly bottom line.
1. Ask your audience. Take a minute and post a note to the fans you do have and ask they what they want. What do they like reading on your Facebook feed? What do they like seeing on your blog? What type of product would they love to discover? Simply ask. Create a survey. Then build your brand based on audience feedback. (After all, they are your potential customers and readers!) I find that too often we get caught up in what we personally think is amazing, and forget that we’re actually creating for our audience.
2. Write guest blog posts. Make a list of the industry-related blogs you read regularly. Now go to their websites and see if they accept guest blog posts or work with contributing writers. By penning a guest post (usually for free) your name, concept, ideas and backlinks to your website are being presenting to an established audience of like-minded people.
3. Offer expert insight to journalists. I absolutely love using the Help a Reporter Out website to connect with experts, authors, doctors and other potential sources to interview and quote in my articles. Why shouldn’t you be one of those people? Make yourself available to journalists to get your name out there as an industry expert. Be sure to request a link back to your website when you’re sourced.
4. Be active on social media. If all you do is auto-post to your social media feeds around the clock, you’re doing social media wrong. The idea of social media is to be — wait for it — social! That means having conversations, commenting on posts, liking, sharing and genuinely interacting on the network. Let your personality shine through and people will want to get to know you and your brand.
5. Set up an email list. For those who think email is dead, I have a question. When was the last time you went directly to a website to see if they’ve posted anything new? A few days or weeks ago? Now, when was the last time you opened an email and clicked through on an article link because you received an email notification from the website? A few hours ago? Building an email list (AWeber email service affiliate) allows your brand to stay at the top of mind of your busy readers even when they aren’t on your site.
6. Blog on LinkedIn. If your website doesn’t include a blog, why not test the waters by penning posts on LinkedIn? The audience is professional colleagues and acquaintances. They’ll give you honest feedback and share the post to their circles of friends and colleagues. Just be sure your posts let people know how they can get in contact with you by offering a link back to your website, email or social media profiles.
Have you found other great ways to build your brand online and drive traffic back to your website? Let’s talk about them in the comments below.
Wonderful pieces of suggestions. Being consistent and regular is a prerequisite to success in this era.