How to Build Your Brand Authority Online: Content Planning & Digital Marketing
Once you establish a brand that reflects your product, culture and market placement, being found online is a high priority. Higher Search Engine Rankings lead to more visibility and higher online traffic for your Brand. One of the keys to gaining more favorable placement in search is the brand authority. In this article, we will explore establishing brand authority. (Spoiler Alert: It requires a consistent long term branding and content creation plan.)
Focus On Core Competencies
No one can reasonably be an expert on everything. In creating true brand authority, it is vital to focus on the core competency of your brand. It can be service, knowledge, and experience in the industry or the presence of industry experts on your management and advisory teams. Focus on what you do well, and continue that focus until you are well established and can leverage that authority into other related products and uses for your existing products. The use of the word “product” does not mean that this is for manufacturing or retail firms only, the concept of authority is even more important for service firms, especially professional service firms like attorneys, medical professionals, CPAs and yes, even branding agencies.
Content Strategy
Effective content marketing requires a consistent plan to be effective. Wandering off-topic or mixing your message will only confuse your target market and even the search engines. Be sure to create cornerstone content around what you do well, and then back it up with additional content focused on new developments within your core expertise, and reviews, case studies, and professional awards and certifications that continue to build your brand authority. Video can be extremely effective, especially when used to explain your expertise to your target market. It is wise to use social media, your website, blog posts, and video to transmit your message. Different people want to be communicated with in different ways and making communication easy for your target market is key. Be sure to do keyword research in ahrefs, SEMrush, Wordtracker, or Google Ads Keyword Planner to ensure that you have included and addressed the most popular keyword streams that describe the products and services that you offer. Please do not overlook long-tailed keyword streams as they are becoming critical in the age of voice search.
Share Your Knowledge and Solutions
Sharing your expert knowledge is key to building brand authority. To get your target market to be more involved with your brand, give them information on what to look for, who to contact, and how to structure solutions for the problems that your product or service will solve for them. Don’t give the product away, but give information that is honest and helpful and will help someone make a good decision or solve a problem. Most folks don’t forget someone who helped them out, and fixing a small problem is a great way to establish credibility for being able to solve big ones.
Be Visible In Online Communities and Industry Forums
When you are seen with firms that may be competitors, you will be seen by those who follow your competition. This is an opportunity to shine and raise awareness of your brand, your products or services, and your authority. You will be able to establish a friendly online presence and also reach a relevant audience with content containing your best advice and knowledge. Engage in discussions with those in online (and in-person) forums. Be careful to always be helpful to all and respectful of those who may disagree with you. Even competitors who do not treat others with respect must be treated with respect-because it reflects your brand.
Conclusion: BrandAuthority Takes Time and (UGGGHH!) Patience
It is virtually impossible to build Brand Authority overnight. It takes time, consistency of effort, discipline and lots of patience to do it right. It can be difficult when competitors rally behind a product or service that is tangential to your business, but not really in your core competency. I am not advocating that you pass up valid profit opportunities, but sticking with what you do very well being consistent with what you do and say is the key to a successful online brand authority campaign. The typical successful digital brand authority campaign can involve SEO (search engine optimization), Paid ads like Google or Bing (Now Microsoft Ads) Ads, Google Display, Programmatic Ads, Social Media, and email marketing. The keys are to be consistent, be helpful, share valuable information and insights and have good customer service in place so that your customers have good things to say about the products or services that you provided to them.
Eric Van Cleave is the CEO and Digital Marketing Director for TIV Branding
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TIV Branding is a boutique branding firm in Sonoma County, California. We specialize in building brands by using traditional, social and digital channels in unison. If you would like to discuss a project or find out more about how we do what we do, please email us at info@TIVbranding.com.