Building authority and online branding are terms that are often mixed because of the similarity of the realization process. The goal is, so to speak, the same – to achieve, affirm and maintain your online presence.
This goal can be reached by utilizing the power of both social media and SEO (search engine optimization). The essential points of every Marketing campaign focuses on online branding and achieving authority by engaging with online communities – these communities are a powerful driving force which can greatly improve your brand’s online presence in your market’s landscape. So, how can you achieve such an online presence?
Authority building and online branding through blogging:
Blogging is a creative and efficient way of improving your online presence. The content you are presenting to your audience is there to inform and educate them. It is important to focus on a single particular niche, so that you are constantly updated with new and fresh information – this way, you can prepare fresh, quality and more engaging content to your readers.
Your main focus shouldn’t be your blog only – guest posts are a valuable tool for building your online authority. Spreading backlinks across high-ranked blogs will greatly improve your relevance as an author and will generate more traffic to your website. Page Rank (rank factor scale 0-10) and Domain Authority (rank factor scale 0-100) are the two most important figures which determine the power and popularity of your blog. You should always look for websites with high PR and DA to guest post on – there are a few tools which are free to use (such as MozBar, SEOQuake and AlexaBar) that will provide you with sufficient information about website rankings.
Google Authorship is not that hard to gain – if you are posting relevant content on websites closely related to your industry type, you are on the right track to achieving it. Google rewards authors like these by providing them with rich snippets with author rating, an image and a link to its website in Google search. Those same snippets are intentionally pushed to the top of search result pages because they provide relevant information given by verified authors and people of authority from that industry.
Utilizing the power of Social Media:
As mentioned, online communities play a great role in your branding campaign. Your engagement with the people over social media will bring them closer to liking your brand. This isn’t as hard as you might think. People are constantly browsing social networks for shopping, research and engaging in discussions. The key to every successful branding campaign is in engaging your potential clientele and drawing them closer to your brand.
Think of it this way – if a certain number of your friends and followers have liked a specific brand page on Facebook, it is more than likely that you will check out the same page yourself, but what then? All Facebook pages are built the same, design-wise. All of the pages have a profile photo and cover photo, it is your content is that makes you different and it is that same content that will keep new visitors on your page longer than 10 seconds. We are not talking about incentives, competitions, and giveaways just to getting more likes. Focus two-way communication and do not try to bribe your visitors with cheap tricks just to garner as much “likes” as you can.
Quality over quantity wins the race here. You can have thousands of likes on your brand’s page but that won’t help if they are not generating any activity such as shares and comments.
In order to affirm your presence as a brand online, you need to attract people to your website, have them comment and create a sense of anticipation for the next content update on your website. Show them various aspects of your brand and they might even come up with new ideas for it. Show them that you acknowledge them as your customers and followers; reward them for their effort and activity and they will most certainly share your brand with their followers based on their experience with you.
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