As a business owner you know how important it is to brand your business. Your branding online is as important as your offline branding and the two need to be consistent. After all, is not that a big piece of branding?
A small business brand is much more sophisticated than a tag line, colors or logos. A small business brand is everything the business does and has done. I have a college who calls this "Brandography".
Small business branding is all about people! People want to do business with people, not with companies. It is important that your customers and potential customers know, like and trust you. You small business reputation is your personal brand.
First people want to know who you are. They want to know your story. They want to know your band's story.This information enables your customers to refer to you and to your brand.
Next your customers want to know what makes you different? You have to inform them about how they will benefit from your brand. Your story should include this but it is important to reiterate your unique benefits.
How do you build your reputation? Primarily by providing consistent quality products or services over time. It takes time! You can enhance your brand and speed up the process by using all the available avenues available to you.
There are several vehicles for branding yourself and your business online. You first want to research your current branding online. Whether intentional or not, you are most likely branded online! Simply doing a few searches will reveal your online branding today. Hopefully it is positive but whether it is or not, it is important to develop an online branding strategy.
Your online branding strategy should include:
- First you need to have a domain that includes your brand as well as your keywords. This is not always an easy task. If you can not cover both, you will have to decide which element is most important. If you are wanting to build your brand, then pick a domain with you brand name. If your priority is getting found in the search engines, then find a domain with your main search term.
- Secondly, start building your business brand or name online. You will want to have a website created that is the center of your online network hub. This will be your main website where you ever want all potential customers to visit.
- Next build your business name or brand on the major social network websites. This includes: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and sometimes MySpace. You setup an accounts at each branding yourself or your business.
- Just to cover all of your bases, setup a Google profile and Google Local Business accounts as well as a Gmail account. You can now use Google for voice but I would still go ahead and create a Skype account as well.
