Top 15 Actions to Build Your Brand Online

One can use the Internet to:

1. Increase brand awareness
2. Reinforce the brand’s unique value proposition
3. Tell the brand’s story
4. Identify customers and build lists
5. Create a dialog with customers and potential customers

Here are the top 15 actions to take to build your brand online:

1. Create and actively maintain a blog to significantly increase search visibility, establish expertise and build a community, brand trust, and subscriber lists.

• Close to 60% of the people seeking out a branded product online use a search engine to do so.
• Make sure you include the most important search phrases in your posts. (Google Keyword Tool can help you with this.)
• You must carefully think through how you will add meaningful content to the blog on a regular basis. Blogs need to be fed constantly or else they die.

2. Consider using the Google+ author tag for blog content.
3. As you build subscriber lists, send the subscribers email with meaningful content and links.

• Develop a regular distribution schedule and stick to it.
• Make sure to include your brand’s signature and web link in each email.

4. On the Internet, visuals/images matter. Make sure you use appropriate and powerful visuals to reinforce each blog post.
5. People watch 4 billion YouTube videos every day. 68% of video watchers share links to the videos. Create highly compelling videos that tell your brand’s story and post them on YouTube.
6. Use RSS feeds to distribute headlines, new content and notifications more broadly.
7. Include a “Link to This Page” button on every page that you believe has worthwhile content to increase your site traffic through incoming links. Also add Facebook Like, Tweet, inShare, g + 1, pin it and other similar buttons to all worthwhile content.
8. Conduct periodic webinars and teleseminars.
9. Consider Facebook advertising as a way to achieve unparalleled targeting. Also, consider using paid search campaigns using Google AdWords.
10. Create an affiliate program to extend your reach.
11. There are more than 5 billion mobile phone users worldwide and 1.1 billion smartphone subscribers. Develop smartphone/mobile apps for your brand.
12. Integrate online messaging with traditional media messaging for greater impact.
13. Share links with and advertise on those websites that rank highest against the search terms most important to your brand and business.
14. Monitor what people are saying about your brand in social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and on websites such as Epinions.com and Amazon.com.
15. Use SurveyMonkey.com or similar online research platforms to research how people perceive your brand and its competitors.

I wish you great success in building your brand online.