Increasing Brand Awareness: How to Get People Talking About Your Brand Online
By Sheila Kloefkorn
Increasing your brand awareness is a critical to ensuring the success of your online business. This article will provide you with information on how to get people talking about your brand online. Whether you”re a small business just starting out or a large corporation, the following information will be beneficial to you.
How do you get people talking about your brand online? Buzz! By creating buzz about your brand, you can increase awareness AND improve your search engine optimization campaign. How do you get started?
First, let’’s talk about one of the most fundamental parts of a successful SEO strategy - the importance of incoming links for search rankings.
What is an incoming link? An incoming link is any link to your website from another website. For instance, if you have a blog and someone likes it a lot, they might put a link to your site on their own blog to share it with other readers. Why is this important? Well, Google sees incoming links as a sort of “vote” for your site, so the more ”votes” the better. Plus, the authority and relevance of your links are just as important, if not more so, than the number of them.
How do you get authoritative, relevant links? Well, you need buzz. When people get excited enough about your brand, product, website or content, they usually become something of an online brand evangelist. They may post a link on their Facebook page, Twitter, blog ” you name it ” so they can share it with their friends. As this content gets shared over and over (now you”re going viral!), your site gains more inbound links. There is no better way to generate buzz than through social networks and user-generated content sites!
Here are a few social networking sites to help you get started:
- Get “dug” (on Digg)
- Get “upvoted” (on Reddit)
- Get “propelled” to the first page (on Propeller)
- Get bookmarked (on Delicious or Furl)
- Be “tweeted” and “retweeted” (on Twitter)
- Be “stumbled upon” (on StumbleUpon)
- Gain “fans” (on Facebook)
But before you start posting on social networking sites, you need to be absolutely certain that you have one critical thing down: Amazing Content.
Amazing content will naturally get recognition on social networks, because it has something of value that people will want to spread the word about. If your amazing content super relevant to your target audience and you”re still not buzzing on social media sites, you might need to step things up.
Here are five quick and easy tips to gain online buzz (and incoming links).
1. Make Sharing Easy: Include “AddThis” or “Share This” social media button links to your website, so people can share content quickly and easily throughout their various networks.
2. Keep It Fresh: No one will share a site that has outdated content. Keep it fresh and give people something new to talk about. Search engines like fresh content and so do social network users.
3. Submit, Don”t Spam: You can submit your own content, but make sure to always follow the rules and try to make it as natural as possible. Make your submissions manually versus through mass auto-submitter software.
4. Be an Active Participant: If you want people to take your submissions seriously, you need to build a reputation in these networks. Become a part of the network. Complete your profile, share other sites and useful resources. You”ll appear more credible and less biased. And don”t just submit — vote, comment, and share others” content as well.
5. Become a Power User: Be a constant presence on these sites (not just once a week). The amount of time and energy you invest will directly affect what you get back. Build your list of friends or followers. The bigger your network, the more chance someone will hear what you have to say and share it.
About The Author
Sheila Kloefkorn is President of KEO Marketing, a marketing firm specializing in innovative internet marketing strategies including search engine marketing and optimization, online advertising, social networking and media. For more information about increasing brand awareness, visit our website.
