The Basics of Digital Branding for Beginners
In today’s fast-paced digital era, branding has undergone a great transformation. As social media and online marketing continue to shape the digital landscape, businesses have to constantly adapt their branding strategies to keep pace with this ever-evolving realm. Cause digital marketing has a pace that no other area can compete with.
The realm of digital branding has now become an indispensable component of any triumphant marketing campaign. Understanding its fundamental principles is not only vital but also crucial for businesses aiming to establish a robust online presence.
What is Digital Branding?
It’s the art of crafting and curating your brand’s online presence using various digital channels like websites by SEO campaigns, apps, social media, and videos.
By blending digital marketing techniques with internet branding strategies, digital branding helps establish and enhance your brand’s online identity.
Now, you might wonder, why does having a strong digital brand presence matter?
Well, let’s take a look up from our phones. In this age, we’re connected and engaging with the world through our gadgets and devices. So, as a brand you need to meet their target customers where they are and turn casual users into loyal advocates.
With digital branding, any company can make its mark everywhere, even in the palm of your hand. I mean, if my dear mom can have an Instagram account, why shouldn’t your favorite shoe brand?
Embrace the power of digital branding and let your brand shine across social media, mobile devices, and beyond. It’s time to make a lasting impression and capture the hearts of your audience!
Whether you’re an experienced marketing guru or an enthusiastic novice, this comprehensive guide promises to furnish you with invaluable insights and actionable tips, enabling you to construct an influential digital brand that deeply resonates with your cherished customers.
So, without further ado, let us plunge into the captivating world of digital branding together and unearth its remarkable possibilities!
The Basics of Digital Branding for Business
In the era of digital marketing, online presence and branding, your brand is the lens through which the users and consumers will understand and communicate.
How you showcase company, how people perceive that, and how all of those communications distill together, creates the essence of your brand.
There have been four important shifts in how companies approach branding from a digital perspective:
- How you are defined
- How you communicate
- How you interact
- How you deliver
1. How you are defined
Just a decade ago, most brands were defined through advertising and marketing efforts. These days, that is just one piece of the puzzle. Advertising and marketing both are two of the major arsenal of digital branding, but you are no longer defined by what you say about yourself, but also how you can get the most out of the consumers interpretations using the most out of the SEO benefits.
You are defined by what other people are saying about you on social networks, on blogs, and on the other media they make. You are defined by your own company’s presence on those digital fronts.
If you are there, you are part of your digital brand – if not, others will speak for you and your brand will be made without your input if you are not engaged.
2. How you communicate
This is both what you use and how you use it. Blogs are a great ex- ample, because companies use them in a variety of ways. Some CEOs or VPs have their own blogs where they keep a running dialogue with people about their ideas and their take on their industry.
These writers approach their digital brand to be a thought leader. That’s one way to do it, and it makes your brand stand out, as there aren’t a whole lot of CEOs who take the time to write a blog.
Other brands are utilizing social networks as an entirely new way to communicate. Having a group of people on social networks like Twitter or Facebook makes the communication between customers and executives more personal, and while most people will not approach an executive there, many more will look at what those executives are tweeting or posting about.
Digital branding humanizes your executives – people can relate to a brand when they find that the people behind it are, well, people – just like them.
3. How you interact
The biggest fear I hear from the people I work with is online presence. “What if we get on Twitter and people say bad things about our brand? What if they start complaining about my business or me or my service?” No matter who you are, that’s going to happen – just like in any other medium.
Social media and the process of digital branding is not a happy rainbow place where everything is always great and everyone sings songs together in the park. It is the kind of place where everything is public, and sometimes things do get nasty.
But this is much more of an opportunity than a problem or something to fear. The fact that everything is public lets your brand, again, be human about responding to complaints or problems.
Lets think about the last time you saw two people arguing, or the last time you were in an argument. Was it the person complaining or the person who dealt with the complaint in a calm, helpful way who came out looking the best?
If people complain or shoot daggers on the Internet, giving them a positive response and actually helping them to solve their problem will do wonders for your digital branding. Comcast created a Twitter account (@comcastcares) for just this kind of customer service reason, and it worked.
Not only do people loathe cable TV service, but they often have something to say about the installation or the actual day-to-day service. By creating a Twitter account to make their customer service public, Comcast turned the perception of their company as one full of problems on its head. They dealt with those problems out in the public eye, and came to be known as the brand that does care.
4. How you deliver
Deliver your products and services well and your customers will check in on Foursquare or Facebook and share their delight. However, there is no marketing cure for delivery that sucks.
If your products and services do not work then no matter how good your marketing, people will not buy your produces or services and they will share your poor delivery with potential customers.
A YouTube video of your McDonald’s server spitting in your bun before you get it will reverberate around the Internet faster than any viral video marketing video you could create.
Importance of Personal Branding within the Company
If people still trust people but not companies then the personal brands of the people in the company are increasingly important.
Individuals with positive and extensive personal brands are assets to the company. Personal branding is about creating and maintaining the essence of you in the digital space. An effective Internet presence represents you to customers, clients, and potential partners in a way that keeps you relevant and amazing.
Did I say amazing? Yes. As Seth Godin says in his book Linchpin, the way to get and keep a job is to be indispensable.
In digital branding using the benefit of SEO, you don’t want people to see you and say, “Yeah, that’s nice…” you want them to see your tweet, read your blog or read your profile and say, “That’s Amazing!” And that’s what I’m talking
about.
In some ways, personal branding is like packaging yourself. That packaging manages expectations and impressions of other people both within and outside your company. I’m going to talk about how you can create and build your own personal brand as part of the marketing department within your company.
Many of the same principles will work for individuals looking for work, working as freelancers or consultants, or simply looking to make a move in their field.