The content you publish about your brand plays a crucial role in building your reputation. The way you present yourself and the message you send through different content marketing tactics creates an image of your brand. Considering that a positive reputation brings viral brand awareness, increased conversion rate, and positive RoI, working on your content marketing is worth every minute of your time.
? Read Brand Reputation 101: Monitoring, Analysis, and Management Tools
The complex nature of content marketing makes choosing the right content marketing strategy a real challenge. To save you some time and effort, we’ve collected a few effective ways of powering your brand reputation so that you can start improving the content marketing campaign as soon as you want.
1. Polish Up Your Base – the Website
The website is like an ID for your business. It is the backbone of the online presence.
You can have the best social media content but when a customer visits your website (and he will trust me) and sees poor content, he’ll instantly back off. The best-case scenario is that he’ll think that you are an amateur and the worst case is that he’ll think you are a fraud.
To position yourself as a trustworthy and professional brand you need to make sure that the content you have on your website is presenting your brand in the best light.
Publish content that will build your credibility and let the website visitors learn more about you.
Take Eight Hour Day as an example. Besides posting all the important information about their brand and using an attractive design for their website, their “Studio” page humanizes the brand through a simple and authentic voice and a picture of creators.
“Two individuals with a passion for creativity — creativity makes us happy.”
Additionally, know that your website needs to be optimized along with other content and any SEO issues should be fixed. This is crucial for enhancing visibility and maintaining a strong online presence.
2. Employ Content Branding
Your content should exude your brand’s identity. At the very first glance, the users should recognize that the content comes from your brand.
Branding content goes beyond placing your name above it. It needs to make your brand recognizable through the content’s elements. To improve your branding efforts, the content’s style, voice, formatting, and visuals should be consistent.
What can help you with your branded content is:
- Using storytelling
- Presenting the content in different formats (podcasts, video content, interactive formats, events, videogames, etc.)
- Appealing to emotions
- Co-creating content renowned professionals (to improve the quality)
You should create a style guide so that content creators have something to look back at and remind themselves of how the content should look, feel, and sound.
3. Make the Most of User-Generated Content
The words that have the biggest effect on people are the words of previous customers or people who had experience with your brand. The thought that must have crossed your mind is how to use that to my advantage?
Know that 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. You shouldn’t fear of other people’s comments and reviews, but you should use them as a tool for empowering your reputation.
Use media monitoring to keep track of every mention, whether it is on a website, social media, or blog. If you haven’t heard of media monitoring software, the thought of browsing thought the internet daily searching mentions must give you a headache.
Luckily, there are media monitoring tools that do that job for you.
Use the mentions to re-post the user-generated content on your social media accounts and let the followers learn about your brand through the eyes of satisfied consumers.
4. Focus on Authenticity
The growing number of entrepreneurs, website owners, and bloggers, increases the competition and makes it harder for you to stand out.
In the competitive community that is the internet, you need to have your own voice that will give users original and relevant information. Also, consider which point of view to use for your content. The First-person builds authenticity whereas the second person makes content more relatable.
Numerous generic content bores the users so they’ll always lean towards authenticity and show respect for the brands that can provide it.
You can still deal with trending topics, innovations in your industry, and recent events that everyone is talking about but add your own spin. Give users an original perspective on it and establish yourself as an original brand.
5. Segment the Audience and Craft Targeted Content
Last, but certainly not the least, this content marketing tip is especially useful if your audience is diverse.
Grouping the audience based on demographics will help you create content that will appeal to users. Just think about it. A 19-year old female student probably won’t be interested in the same content as a 54-year old company owner.
For example, the content you create for Millennials can revolve around current trends and you can use a more casual and friendly tone. On the other hand, you can post case-studies and industry analysis that will interest your potential B2B stakeholders.
When you create targeted content, you’ll increase the chances that the audience will relate to your brand. Consequently, making an emotional bond with the users will reflect positively on your reputation.
Ready to Power Your Brand Reputation?
Content marketing is a great way to improve your brand reputation in a natural way while providing your audience with valuable information. Use the abovementioned tips and you’ll be able to reach more potential clients and establish a trustworthy relationship with the folks online.
