If you want your website to get noticed, you have to promote your personal brand online, having a website on the internet is no longer enough to get you noticed and generate traffic regardless of how active your site is. If you want search engines to take you seriously you need to build your brand on several sites to ensure the search engines like Google believe you are a decent business.
Whether you are a small business, a freelancer or even just working online for fun if you build your brand properly online you will be able to rank much better in all of the search engines and you will generate a lot more traffic for your website.
What Does It Mean To Build Your Brand Online
Building your brand online is all about expanding your presence, making sure that you appear in lots of different places so that you get noticed more, doing this also helps to build credibility in your business and massively expands your opportunities online. The internet is full of scammers and fake offers but if you appear in multiple places and various platforms then people instantly feel more comfortable that you are a legitimate business and are much more likely to do business with you.
Imagine two different scenarios :
1) You Google your business name and all that appears in Google Search is your website and nothing else, in fact Google will probably show a lot of completely unrelated websites that will appear before your actual business and these will steal your customers.
2) Imagine now you Google your business name and as well as your website, your business name appears on multiple different options from blog articles, social media sites, adverts, YouTube videos and even other businesses mentioning you. Whichever option gets clicked in this scenario leads customers to you, which one do you think is better for your business?
The second option sounds much better doesn’t it and it isn’t that difficult to achieve if you focus on the right things.
Why Do I Need to Build My Brand Online
Even Google is working like this now, when Google is crawling the internet to create it’s ranking lists it isn’t just looking for content, it is looking to see if you are a real business or just a random post that isn’t really going to offer value to Googles customers. If Google decides that you are not worthy of appearing in its search results then your business will essentially die in online terms if Google is the only place you are hoping to get customers.
If you build your brand online you will first of all improve the image and credibility of your business by appearing all over the internet in multiple places but you will also create multiple ways to generate customers for your business too. If you want to build a solid sustainable business then hiding in a corner in Google is not going to do achieve that, you need to expand your online footprint and make sure that it is easy for your customers to find you.
How Can I Build My Brand Online
This will depend on your business and specific niche but there are a lot of pretty standard places you should be building your brand whatever niche you are into. It is important to remember though that you can’t do everything (unless you want to pay some freelancers on Fiverr to do some work for you) so you need to be selective about where you put your efforts.
Your Website is your base
First of all in most cases getting your Website up and running is how you build a base for your brand, if you want to know more about how to do this I wrote a post on starting a blog website. It is is essentially your head office and is where most things will start from. Ideally you will build a website, you can do this direct with a hosting platform like WordPress if you are comfortable doing this or you can sign up to a community like Wealthy Affiliate if you want some extra guidance or support in getting started. I also did a full review on Wealthy Affiliate if you want to check to learn more.
Once you have your website created you are going to need to start creating content using keyword research to make sure you are targeting the searches that people are looking for. You can use keyword research tools like Jaaxy to help with this. Creating content like a blog that is targeted at you business will start the process of creating your online presence and the more content you create the bigger the presence you will have.
Social Media Makes You Real
The next step is to select two or three social media platforms that are relevant for your niche and create a business page where you can start adding content. This will ensure that your business starts to look like real and will also help to drive traffic to your website.
Most people interact with social media EVERY day, even weekends and having a presence on social media is one of the easiest and best ways to build your brand online.
Facebook – Facebook has millions of users all over the world and is relevant for most niches, you will need to use your personal page initially as Facebook prohibit having multiple personal accounts.
- From here you will create a business page – this is not linked to your personal page at all so if you don’t want family and friends to see your online business they will never know.
- You can follow and connect with other relevant Facebook pages and accounts, this will mean that all of their followers will also be connected to your business page
- Then you can start to add content to your business page, you will be adding links back to your website as well so this also becomes a traffic source for your main page.
LinkedIn – Like Facebook LinkedIn has a function that allows you to create a business page where you can link with other like minded pages, groups and companies, you can post your content and interact with others. This builds your brand online and creates additional source of traffic.
You can also use Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest in the same way but you need to pick the ones that are more relevant for your audience type.
UGC (User Generated Content) Sites Increase Your Relevance
UGC sites used to get overlooked but are now one of the biggest drivers of traffic, sites like Medium and Quora now rank really highly in Google’s search results. You should sign up to one or both of these platforms and post your content on these too, they get millions of views each day and everyone of those viewers is a potential customer for you. These websites are also very highly regarded by Google and have what is known as a high domain authority so if anyone clicks on your article and visits your website this automatically gives your website a lot more credibility.
Discussion Forums Demonstrate Your Expertise
Discussion forums like Reddit are fantastic places to engage with millions of people that are already interested in your niche area, I guarantee that you will find a sub-reddit (this is a sub group) that is specifically dedicated to your niche area. You will be able to interact, answer questions and post content. This is another fantastic way to tell Google that you are a genuine business and a reliable and knowledgeable source of information that they should show to their customers. It will also generate extra traffic
Top Strategies For Building Your Brand
I have covered most of the best places online where you can build your brand but it isn’t just about being active on these sites, if you want people to remember who you are then you need to give them something to remember you.
Be Consistent – The first thing is to be consistent with your content, you might have a fantastic article but if you don’t post on any platform again for 3 months then don’t be surprised if everyone has forgotten who you are.
Be You – Don’t try to be like everyone else, you won’t seem authentic or genuine and you will also just blend into all the others online. Be you and you will connect with others
Build Credibility – Using the multiple platforms outline above you can build your presence but offering good comments and writing really informative articles will make it much easier for people to take you seriously and they will then start yo take an interest in what you do. Everyone wants to listen to people that help them to learn (even if they don’t like to admit it)
Be Responsive – If you get comments or questions online make sure you reply promptly and honestly, Everyone likes to be heard and there is no better way to let someone know that you are listening than to reply to their comment.
Stay Relevant – Some niches are constantly evolving and this gives you an opportunity to stay in touch and show how you are up to date in your field of interest.
Keep Learning & Sharing – Lifelong learning is a fantastic concept and is genuinely good for you, but it is also a great way to keep building your brand online, when you learn something new this is a great opportunity to share this and help others learn too.
If you want to learn more about building your business online then check out Wealthy Affiliate’s online learning platform below
Hopefully you have noticed that none of the above topics are too difficult or technical, you just have to start doing them and you will see your online brand increase massively. If you have any ideas or feedback on how you built your brand online please feel free to leave me a comment and I will definitely reply to you
Pete