Driving your online branding strategy often requires one to be perceived as a key resource or authority within your market or niche. Sometimes referred to as thought leadership, aiming to position yourself as “The Source” (or one of the top alternatives) poses more of a challenge than one might expect.

If you’re committed to this approach, read further for details on how to get started.

It’s important to have c-level buy for this approach to work within a market that has any real competition as it will require both resources and commitment for an extended period of time before you begin to see things working.

Communications are the cornerstone to developing authority, and as such, it’s important that a team of competent writers are at your disposal. While you might consider turning to internal resources, its worth mentioning why this often fails. Staff that already have a job to do or typically busy with doing just that, and even with the strongest intentions, will often find it difficult to find the extra time necessary to research and produce the content required to achieve levels of authority.

If cost isn’t a big concern, then creating an editorial team is the start towards success. Since most won’t have this luxury, or to a limited extent, another option would be developing a network of freelance writers that can complement the writings of any internal contributions. Be forewarned this often has mixed results, and if you’re handling your own administrative tasks like sourcing, proofing, and providing creative direction, its all far more time consuming than it seems.

Building authority creates trust, when builds equity in credibility. Keep in mind this can go far beyond a blog and include graphics, webinars, white papers, interviews, video and other mediums to distribute and share knowledge. Curation of resources to filter out noise can also be a great equalizer towards your quest.

But positioning your digital brand starts with a strategy or direction that’s been mapped, so dive in and explore the above options to see what makes the most sense for your own organization. It’s also worth noting that before you commit to a direction, you should do a competitive analysis of your chosen niche to get a sense of how difficult it might actually be. If you look up a few phrases in Google and keep seeing the usual suspects showing up, analyze them individually. How old is their site, how many pages do they have indexed, and refer to their backlinks to get a sense of their authority. Saying “we’re going to become the ultimate finance resource” would require extremely deep pockets and patience, but zoning in one certain aspects often makes more sense, in almost every instance.

Positioning With Digital Branding is a post from: Online Branding Blog - reactorr.com

The newer, cleaner look is easier on the eyes. Click image to enlarge screenshots.

New Look for Google is a post from: Online Branding Blog - reactorr.com

The results? While the clear winner is SEO, about 60 percent of respondents said they will increase their budget for social media marketing; with 53 percent planning to increase their budget towards SEO and 40 about percent will be increasing their PPC budget.

While social media is clearly the trend as of late, it’s often difficult to measure. But despite this, social media is not hype. What needs to be understood is that it takes time, and it can have significant influence towards online branding efforts.

SEO might take a while before seeing signs of progress, but it’s the clear winner. With the highest conversion rates, SEO outperforms all other means of online marketing. It’s worth mentioning that while PPC can bring traffic almost instantly, it will cost more over time than SEO, and is most suitable for starting a campaign to acquire traffic until an SEO campaign kicks into high gear. Additionally, PPC only earns about 10% of the potential search traffic, and if you’re not in the top spots (which are more expensive bids) then you won’t see a lot of visits.

Report

SEO, Social Media, PPC Compared is a post from: Online Branding Blog - reactorr.com

Story telling often creates an emotional connection that the listener can identify with. One of the great examples of story telling would probably be Nike. In case you haven’t heard, they sell running shoes. Nike’s positioning strategy has been to appeal to those that not only take their sports seriously, but the product is also for those that want an edge to be at the top of their game.

The heritage of your company could be an intrinsic part of corporate culture, and also your brand. There might be a story there.

Recommended:
The Importance of Story Telling

How to Tell a Great Story

Steve Jobs and the Power of Story Telling

Brand Building and Story Telling is a post from: Online Branding Blog - reactorr.com

Let’s clear the air and get this in the open to remove any misconceptions. They aren’t one and the same, but one can have a significant impact on the other.

Online branding and SEO (along with social media to some extent) have shown an increasing value to each other in the last few years, but somehow more than a few don’t get it. So let’s break it down and get to it.

When taking the approach of using online branding with SEO, you need to build your rankings for keywords of relevance so that your brand begins to become synonymous for a phrase through search. Read that last sentence again.

Not only does it have a positive affect on your online reputation, it also creates momentum for the entire marketing initiative.

It’s not one versus the other, they need to work in a cohesive manner.

Online Branding SEO is a post from: Online Branding Blog - reactorr.com

Over the last few years marketing budgets are seeing an increasing shift to digital marketing. With budgets tightening, there was a natural attraction to online advertising for reasons like its improved measurability and ability to make campaign changes almost on the fly. Almost as appealing is the near real-time tracking and analytics that online advertising can offer.
Does this mean an entire marketing campaign should be online? Definitely not, but it should be part of every campaign. Online marketing and advertising have proven themselves as part of the marketing mix, and that now includes social media.

An issue with offline advertising is its based on presumed eyeballs (or in the case of radio, ears) but it doesn’t mean that your ad was actually seen. Someone came up with the expression that an ad needs to be seen 7 times to be effective. Yes, there are variations such as 11 or even 20 times. Whether that’s true of not, the idea was probably started by someone looking to sell more ads. Although it does stand to reason to some degree.

One area I think that’s often overlooked is the entire campaign is a factor of influence. From the print to outdoor or any other advertisements, they all contribute towards brand awareness. It just so happens that the click often takes the credit.

Digital branding is the new frontier, and we’re starting to see more Facebook pages and iPhone apps integrated with a campaign. Brands are placing more emphasis on “fishing where the fish are” and increasing their social media efforts.

Yet there’s still one undeniable fact, that being that when a customer is looking to make a purchase, the vast majority will do a search on Google or another search engine.  Sure, consumers often rely on social networks for referrals, but that’s usually followed by a search.
If you’re to consider how SEO and social media affect digital branding, they aren’t really comparable, but linked and can work together.

Recommended reading:
Comparing SEO & Social Media as Marketing Channels – SEOmoz

Social Media, SEO, and Advertising – A Digital Dilemma is a post from: Online Branding Blog - reactorr.com

The release of their new Instant Search could be an indicator of the strength of online brands. Type a letter, and it will pre-populate the search field along with the pending results. Results can be different depending on your location.

A – AOL

B – Best Buy

C – Craigslist (now more family friendly)

D – dictionary (ok, that one doesn’t apply)

E – Ebay

F – Facebook

G – Gmail

H – Hotmail

I – Ikea

And so on. See a pictorial on search results at Huff.

Predictive text results in the search field aren’t new, but dynamic page loads are. I sort of like it, and hope they keep it. I also hope there is an option to turn off if I choose when logged in.

Notice the above presenter had the excitement of an Apple announcement in his presentation?
But here’s how its done;

Google Instant Search is a post from: Online Branding Blog - reactorr.com

What most advertising agencies and businesses don’t realize is when they build a mini site, they’re giving up some of their brand’s equity by doing so. Links are like an Internet marketing currency of the web, and the equity they build also builds the brand online. Rather than creating mini sites, which can be cool, its of more value in the long term to keep everything on your main site.

First off, even though you could redirect it later, it dilutes the strength compared to any natural links that are deep linked into your site. If you have to have that cool domain for a campaign, you could redirect it. But the best advice is to keep it all on your site for the direct links instead of resorting to redirects.

If the new addition goes a few pages deep, you might also acquire new deep links as well. When it comes to link strategies, it’s all about keeping it natural. And deep links should probably out weigh the ones pointing at the root by at least 3 to 1. There’s no reason a campaign can’t be a sub directory of a mini site, and you can even deviate away from the main design. But it’s strongly advised to have the logo clickable back to the index so visitors can explore the rest of your site deeper.

I had talked to some folks about their site recently, and after examining their other web properties and a little investigating, it seems a few agencies they worked with each had them create new sites for new projects. Now they have some nice sites, but had these all been incorporated into the main one, they’re site authority would be stronger by the sheer volume of the links combined pointing at the main one. Containing within the main site would also probably lead to more stickiness and pageviews, which in this case would help, along with stronger rankings for a variety of phrases.

That’s not to say there isn’t a place for mini sites either. Often there is a need in SEO to build out a network of these in order to improve your inbound links (IBL’s). The advantage being you control the anchor text, and so long as they maintain relevance and a few other things its all good right? Well, yes and no. A surge of low ranking sites without being interwoven into the network or social web is just a bunch of low ranking unauthoritative spam to the search engines, and possibly does little for you. And you also tasked with creating links for all the new sites as well. In the long run, if you don’t do it right, you probably made twice as much work for yourself.

The majority of the time you’ll want to keep your content, campaigns, and mini sites within the framework of your main site. It’s your brand, and you want to create the equity through content and social strategies, not campaign clusters.

Eroding Site Equity With A Brand Strategy is a post from: Online Branding Blog - reactorr.com

Social Media – Engage with your audience. It all sounds easy, but it mostly falls apart in a week or three. While starting with good intentions, other duties call. Most companies don’t have the luxury of hiring a dedicated social media specialist to manage these things, so it usually gets added to the list of tasks an employee needs to do. The best way to manage it is scheduling a block of time at least once or twice a week. Find the medium that suits you, but also look at where your customers are. It’s also recommended to grab your brand name as a username for the bigger sites like youtube, facebook, twitter, flickr, technorati, ning, delicious, yelp, scribd, and others.

Reputation Management – Staying on top of what you rank for and the conversations around your brand allows you to stay a step ahead, and possibly avoid putting out fires later. If you were to google your brand name, do any of the top ten listings have negative impact? Are you monitoring the dialogue around your brand in social media? If you see negative results in the top 10 listings  when searching for your brand, you’ll want to address it before too many customers come across it.

Search Marketing - If you run an affiliate program and pay for leads, you might consider taking over bids on your brand name in Google Adwords. Why pay more for leads if you own the trademark to your brand name? Run your own campaign for those searching your brand to retain control.

Search Engine Optimization – Companies searching for your brand name obviously know of you already, but what about the ones searching for the products or services your offer? These are targeted prospects, often in buying mode. Many companies make the mistake of not including SEO in their marketing strategy. The game has changed, and those that are late will have to work twice as hard to catch up, probably more. Displaying in search engine results for phrases your customers are looking for is an excellent way to build credibility for your brand. Being synonymous with a phrase strengthens that top of mind awareness and would be comparable to branding on steroids. If you’re a customer and searching for a phrase, research shows 42% click the first listing, and 74% of the results clicked are in the top 5 positions. In a recent study, SEO shows to provide the best ROI over all other forms of online marketing.

5 Quick Tips for Online Branding is a post from: Online Branding Blog - reactorr.com

When building your brand online there are several ways to go, or you can include them all. Internet advertising is often the route many will choose to start, yet similar to branding offline, it is both time consuming and expensive.

Social media is another option, but I don’t think this a strategy to rely on entirely. More of something to include with your internet marketing plan in addition to other strategies you might include.

With search engine optimization (SEO), there is really only one downside, and that is that it takes time to develop before seeing results. However, it’s been proven time and again that SEO provides the best ROI in the long term.

With SEO, not only do the links drive potential customers, it also has direct correlation to online branding because as you begin to rank for key phrases that consumers are already searching for, it creations a connection to the brand. This means that a brand can become synonymous with phrases that consumers are looking for, and creates that top of mind awareness when a site is ranking.

By including SEO in your online branding efforts you’re going to push your brand harder, and can achieve the branding holy grail – having keyowrds trigger consumers to think of your brand. This is how strong brands evolve.

By ranking (or owning) a phrase, your brand becomes synonymous with a phrase. In the offline world, it takes marketing and advertising agencies years and years to achieve this. If ever.

Your brand image is more than the logo or identity created. It’s about reputation management, advertising, public relations, and the emotion or thoughts that it conjurs up when mentioned.

SEO could be one of the most powerful tools available to grow, shape, and ultimately reach brand status.

      “The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose.”

- Richard R. Grant

You can define and craft a vision of what your brand stands for through SEO by ranking for terms and phrases which represent your product or service.

Case in point; if you were to search for “buy books”, depending on your location, you’ll probably see Amazon as the first result. In Canada the website Chapters displays first. And considering that 42% of the clicks will go to that first listing in the search results and only 12% to the second result, its clear that the majority will click on that first listing and probably associate it as where they should just go if they wanted to buy books.

It’s important to note that online branding success factors differ from those of offline brands. If you take a look at Interbrands top 100 you’ll notice that many of those such as Google or eBay are unique to the web, or that the internet would have played a large part in their development.

Brands overestimate the extent to which consumer pay attention to branding, but the way it influences their decisions is almost subliminal, and SEO can be a major force.

Pick your battles/keywords wisely and you just might shave a few years off of developing your brand online.

Online Branding and SEO is a post from: Online Branding Blog - reactorr.com