On the Internet, it’s all about making a great first impression. This is especially true for anyone who might be relying solely on their company website, personal blog and social media to bring in new business.
While you may already be an established expert, it might not be so obvious to the rest of the world or anyone who visits your site for the first time — which is exactly what we are going to be helping you with in this article today.
There are nearly 1 billion sites on the Internet today. This means you are going to have a lot of competition, no matter what niche or industry you are in. The good news is that on the internet, your opportunities are endless, which gives you an advantage when trying to rise above the competition.
3 Simple Steps to a More Professional Online Brand
By implementing the following three simple steps into your brand and business, not only will you put yourself ahead of the competition — but you will also build your brand power and business in the process.
Step 1: Have a Professional Logo
Never underestimate the power of a great looking logo. When it comes time for someone to make a new purchase, you can bet they are going to pay a few more extra dollars just to have that nice and well-branded logo showing on their clothes, shoes, phones and everything in between.
If your brand doesn’t already have a logo design, then you absolutely must have one created today. It’s not just about having something to show off, it’s about having something represents you brand and continually becomes more noticed and associated with the quality that your brand represents.
It’s also important to note that creating a design of your own is now cheaper and faster than ever before, thanks for freelance design marketplaces like 99designs and Designhill. Through the use of online design marketplaces, no longer are entrepreneurs and small businesses left with the only option of paying a high priced ad agency, as they can now get multiple designs for a fraction of the price.
Once you’ve created a logo for your brand, you can then use it on your web site and all social media platforms. The key takeaway here is to create a logo that you can associate with your brand, while keeping it in the mind of your audience whenever they see something you create or publish.
Step 2: Create an Explainer Video
There is a big difference between running an offline business where someone physically walks into your store, versus having someone come to your website and never actually engaging with them. The big difference here is the attention span factor, thanks mainly to Internet and mobile usage — which is now down from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.
When it comes to connecting with your audience and getting them to engage on your site, you simply can’t afford to miss a single second. Video is a great way to grab the attention of your audience and getting them to stay on your site — especially when using white-board or explainer videos.
By creating an explainer video for your audience, not only will you be able to relay them a lot more information in a shorter period of time, but you will also be able to engage with them through video visuals and keeping them active on your site.
A great example of this can be seen at Blogging.org, where our main page has over 3,000 words of text. While it’s extremely informational and perfect for anyone who is willing to invest they time, we know it’s not right for all of their audience. The alternative is to include an explainer video as well.
After watching the short explainer video above, you will get some clear ideas on how you can do the same for your website and audience.
When crafting an explainer video for your site, start with a draft text write-up and focus on the main benefits of your site. Since you can only fit a limited amount of words within a short video, be sure to hit on all of your data points and not waste the end users time. This will also lower your video production costs as well.
Step 3: Create Interactive Content
One of the best ways to establish yourself as an expert and professional within any niche, is to simply provide the best information possible.
While it may seem like every topic under the sun has already been written about a million times over, there are still plenty of ways for you to deliver this content better — especially when you bring ‘interactive content’ into play. Here are a few ideas on how to create better content.
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Compile the best data into an amazing infographic
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Interview experts within your niche
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Build a comprehensive guide of best resources
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Provide a simple step-by-step guide to anything
No matter which content creation method you choose, know that the more interactive and engaging the content is, the better it will perform. Also try to incorporate a call-to-action within your content as well. The last thing you want to is to spend hours working on an article or resource, and then having your audience get to the end — only to then leave your site. Just to back up these statements even further, let’s take a look at some data points from a new interactive content white paper and marketing trends within the industry.
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Articles with images receive 94% more views. (Source: Jeff Bullas)
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Customers who receive email newsletters spend 82% more when they buy from the company. (Source: iContact)
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Around 82% marketers who blog see positive ROI for their inbound marketing. (Source: HubSpot)
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Approximately 73% of B2B marketers are producing more content than they did in 2014. (Source: CMI)
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Website conversion rate is nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters (2.9% vs 0.5%). (Source: Aberdeen)
In most cases, the content that is already out there and ranking well in Google is probably just basic text articles with a few images. This leaves so much room for you to do it better. Once you put in the time and effort to create a high value resource, it’s then time to focus on the outreach and letting other people know about it.
Again, this will definitely boost your site past the competition, as many sites don’t have the knowledge, time and resources to get this done.
Now that you have some new ideas on how to better brand yourself and create content for your audience, it’s time to put these methods into action for your own business. Create a logo, incorporate explainer videos into your site and provide only the highest of quality and interactive content for your audience!
This article has been edited and condensed.
Zac Johnson, the creator of Blogging.org, is an entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in the online marketing space. You can learn more about Zac through his blog at ZacJohnson.com. Connect with @zacjohnson on Twitter.
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