When was the last time you made an honest assessment of your business’ brand image from an outside perspective? It can be hard to do, particularly if it’s been business as usual for a long time, but taking the rose-tinted glasses off to see your business as others perceive it can be invaluable to your content marketing efforts.
Do people currently perceive your business the way you want them to?
Take a look at your website content and your contributions to the social media zeitgeist. If you were one of your customers what would you think of your products, services and your organisation as a whole? Write that down as honestly as you can under the heading ‘How people see us’. Now write another heading – ‘How we want to be seen’. Under this second heading write down as much information as you can about how you want your brand to be perceived by customers and the wider world. This might be single words, like ‘honest’, ‘friendly’ or’ professional’, or it could be in the form of sentences.
Once you’ve done both of these, compare them. If they match perfectly then congratulations, your brand image corresponds with the way you wish to be seen. If not, write a third heading entitled ‘what we need to do’, and come up with ways to bring your brand image in line with your ideal.
Is the image you project online true to what you have to offer?
Image is not everything. In fact image without substance can be next to useless. If your marketing copy is putting a particular message out there then you better make sure it’s true or else people are going to have trouble believing anything else that you have to say. If people are expecting one thing based on what your web copywriters have told them online, they’re going to be disappointed if that’s not the case. That may well mean that they never use your products or services again, and that they warn their friends and colleagues off doing business with you.
Have you found a niche?
Don’t try to be someone else – concentrate on making your business the best possible version of itself. Make sure you tell your web and product copywriters what niche you’re aiming for so they can really sell that in the copy.
Does all of your online content reflect your desired image?
Your online brand image is the sum total of everything that you have put out there on the internet – all the landing pages, blogs, tweets and status updates past and present. If you want to be seen in a specific way, you must make sure that all of these disparate communications conform to the same marketing goals and have the same ‘personality’.
What three things could you do to make your brand image stronger?
It’s good to ask questions, but then you need to take action. All businesses can take at least three concrete steps to make their online brand image stronger, even if they’re currently soaring high on the currents of positive publicity. Here are a few ideas that might apply to your business:
- Write a style guide for your copywriters to follow
- Conduct an audit of all internal and external online content
- Spread your social presence to two more networks
- Post blogs more frequently
- Incorporate your USPs into your copy
- Fortify your brand image with existing customers via an email newsletter
How do you want your business to be seen?
Follow these tips and you can be certain that you have improved your brand.
