By Michael Georgiou
Building online credibility is the definite key to success for enterprises, organizations, and even small businesses and startups. What only looks easy from afar needs a lot of time to gain momentum, given the ever-growing competition from rivals. Additionally, there are millions of potential users out there, and without the right strategy in place, you’ll have a difficult time converting leads into sales even with an outstanding website to boast about.
If your target users don’t have any notion about your services, solutions or how sincere you are in your approach to deliver timely results, they won’t respond to the desired call to action even after having visited your website more than once. This lack of engagement from users will surely lead to a sharp decline in your sales figures.
So how can you make your brand credible for your end-users?
To begin with, you need to follow certain brand credibility tactics that are bound to positively influence your business growth. An essential tool that acts as the cornerstone of your brand building efforts is content.
Content is a broad term. In the past, when simple websites were the order of the day, website content used to stand for lots of texts, some images, and occasionally, animated graphics. Today, the scenario is completely different. The ever increasing populace of smartphone and tablet (and other handheld) users have brought about a huge change in the browsing habits as well as the type of content that’s being posted online. For instance, according to a research, as many as 2 billion consumers worldwide are set to have a smartphone by 2016. This means more and more content will be optimized to suit mobile technology – something that fits the small screen yet makes an impression on the user.
Apart from textual content such as blog posts, articles, white papers, case studies and press releases, visual content such as videos, podcasts, blog posts, articles, infographics and charts are being circulated online. The trend is to deliver short, impactful content that drives the end-users to engage with you, perhaps by visiting your website, filling up the contact form or subscribing. Here are some examples of content that will make your brand more visible and drive more traffic to your website.
Also, when your target audience knows that the information provided from your end is authentic, it will add to the reputation of your brand on the market. This will, in turn, make it easier for you to sell your services, products or solutions rather than luring users and wasting your time and resources in the process.
Now comes the question that most online businesses dread: What are the ways to use the right kind of content to help build your brand credibility? Here are three points that will get you started on this.
Curate the Content for Better Visibility
Content curation is far removed from content creation. It in essence, involves sifting through copious amounts of data that are doing rounds on the internet and taking your pick from them judiciously. The core idea is to select content that fits your niche, sticks to your brand value and generate a reaction from the target audience. Once you have curated content that matched your requirements, share them with your targeted user community. This way, you can still get your brand the desired viewership without directly convincing them to do so and adds to your credibility.
Promote Content on Reputed Platforms
There is an overabundance of social media sites, social bookmarking sites, blogging sites and other platforms, which let you showcase the curated content that we discussed in the pointer above. This gives you the freedom to choose the platform that aligns with your business objectives. Make good of this choice by opting for the ones that have credibility of their own. LinkedIn is one of the best examples in this direction. The posts you publish on it, gets linked to your professional profile and this generates a number of followers, even those who are not in your network. So, do your homework and research on reputed platforms that will give your business a boost.
Develop Your Brand’s Personality on Social Media
The growing popularity of social media means, there is hardly any brand that doesn’t have its presence on popular social networks. Facebook is of course, one of the top preferences followed by Twitter. Even visuals-focused social media sites are not far behind with businesses taking to Instagram and Pinterest to promote their services and solutions. To be a clear winner, develop your brand’s persona on these channels by creating innovative pages, profiles and posts that represent your brand in the best way possible. Share content that belongs to your niche (curated content) and take out time to interact with your audience. Reply to their posts, react to their status updates and address their concerns at the earliest. Remember, your audience is your brand ambassador and nothing works best than word of the mouth publicity from them.
The options to use content as a foundation and enhance your brand’s credibility are immense. Have a plan in mind and put it into action to further strengthen this foundation. Share your insights on the topic with us.
Michael Georgiou is a dynamic business professional and entrepreneurial guru associated with Imaginovation – Raleigh Web Design Agency who has proven his success in creative strategy, online branding, project management, and communication projects in both the public and private sectors. Follow at @ImaginovationCo.
