Establishing your brand and getting noticed for it is the most effective way to drive new traffic to your business.

A few key components solidify your brand and from there, you can amp up your social media engagement and blog content to generate more followers. 

Online branding can be a fun and creative process to share your company's vision with the world. By having a strong brand, you'll be able to connect with new, interested customers. 

How to Build a Brand Online

So how do you get started in online branding? We're here to help! Let's take a look at the best ways to cultivate a strong following with expert branding. 

Know Your Audience

To establish brand awareness, you first need to know your target audience. Who is your product or service geared towards? What problem is your product or service solving, and who benefits the most from that? 

Once you have a general idea of who your audience is, build personas for them. This can help visualize who you're targeting for certain campaigns or promotions and ensure that you reach the true depth of your following. Use data from your own sales team and access 

An example of a persona might look like this: 

Alice Smith is 25, does all of her shopping online or through Instagram, and works from home. She's single and lives in New York City. She likes to support companies with a strong mission and commitment to reducing our impact on the planet. 

Now that you know a bit more about Alice Smith, you can create social media interactions that target her type of shopper to increase brand awareness. A person like this would also be a great online brand ambassador for your business. 

Lead With Content 

The best way to gain traction for your brand is by creating valuable content. To make sure your content is maximized, you need to harness the power of search engine optimization. 

SEO and brand strategy might seem unrelated, but in fact, your brand relies heavily on SEO. You could have the best content in the world, but it doesn't matter if no one can find it. 

Optimized content will get more traffic which leads to more business and brand recognition. To start building your brand with SEO, start a blog on your website. It doesn't need to have tons of content right away, but it will help humanize your business and allow you to provide valuable information to your followers. 

After doing some keyword research and discovering exactly what users will search to get to your site, start writing! How did you come up with the idea for your business? How did your business evolve to what it is today? 

Make sure you have a call to action at the end of your post to encourage readers to follow your social media, contact you for more information, or share your post. 

Get on Social Media

With so many platforms, it can be tricky to decide where to start with social media. It really depends on what your business is. Are you a product based company? Try launching an Instagram page with high-quality photos of your products. Are you a service provider? Facebook is probably best for you. 

Take some time to think strategically about who your audience is and where you think they spend the most time on social media. Then, start building a strategy for that platform. 

Make Data-Driven Decisions 

There are many tools out there to measure your brand's "stickiness". Even data as simple as follows, follow backs, and unfollows can help you make data-driven decisions next time you're starting a campaign. 

Maybe your unsubscribe rate on email campaigns is higher than the industry standard. Keep that in mind next time you're sending a blanket marketing email. Try breaking it up by persona or offer specific coupons for each person to measure how many people actually use them. 

Data-driven decisions take time because your organization or business needs to have enough data to work from. However, after some time you'll be able to use your customer data to stay well-branded online and increase brand awareness. 

Invest in Online Branding Tools

While online branding can be done with just a computer and a single person, it takes a ton of work to do it well. A few valuable tools on the market can help you make the right choices to amplify your brand. 

SEO Tools

In the biz, sites that help with keyword research and blog post planning are very crucial to developing an online presence. Some tools can even help you with the writing process of each post and show you how other sites are ranking. 

Since SEO is an integral part of brand awareness, it's important to give it your full attention and keep your content trendy. These tools will make sure you're spending your time wisely. 

Social Media Tools

Even though everyone can use social media, tools can help you plan out content for the coming weeks and maintain a cohesive online presence across all of your channels. 

These tools can help mock-up posts and ads, inspire you and measure your engagement with customers. 

Get to it!

Now that you know the basics of online branding, get to it! Not sure where to start? Try out a brand audit. Professional marketers will check out all of your online presence and let you know where the gaps are. 

If you're ready to invest (which is very worth it in the long run), here's what you can expect from partnering with a brand development company.