Online Brand Management & Reputation Building

As the digital landscape grows, companies have more opportunities than ever to connect with their existing client base and extend their reach to interact with new clients. In fact, 88% of medium-sized enterprises and 75% of small enterprises in the European Union operate websites. In addition to websites, businesses are building rapport with potential clients through social media, email marketing, and search engine visibility.

With companies investing more in digital marketing and customers spending more time online, online brand management and reputation building are more important than ever. Your brand includes the products, services, name, and design that distinguish your company from others. To be successful, your website, social media, and other online marketing efforts should paint a cohesive picture of your company’s brand, values, mission, and offerings.

Alongside building your brand, you’ll also need to focus on your company’s reputation. Reputation goes beyond the calibre of the products and services you offer to encompass non-tangibles, like the quality of your customer service and ability to engage with customers. And while you can work on these items offline, you should take advantage of the opportunity to build positive associations online.

Alongside building your brand, you’ll also need to focus on your company’s reputation. Reputation goes beyond the calibre of the products and services you offer to encompass non-tangibles, like the quality of your customer service and ability to engage with customers. And while you can work on these items offline, you should take advantage of the opportunity to build positive associations online.

There’s no magic formula for building a brand online. You can, however, avoid common pitfalls in online brand management. We'll review some suggested practices around building, monitoring, and maintaining your company's presence online.

Do your (competitor) research

Research your target audience and competitors. You'll want to spend time looking at competitors' websites, social media, and online ad strategies to identify what they do really well and what they don't. You can also peruse your favourite websites, regardless of industry or purpose, for ideas on building an attractive, easy-to-navigate website.

Solidify your branding

If you haven’t already, now is the time to confirm your brand’s mission statement, name, logo, and colour scheme. Your choices should be unique to avoid confusion by being too similar to another brand's, but also relevant and concise. Here are a few ideas to consider:

Carefully choose your domain name.
Your domain name should include your brand name and a top-level domain (TLD) — also known as a domain extension — reflecting your organisation's industry (e.g., .edu for a school). Make sure that your chosen domain name is short and memorable. Avoid adding hyphens and numbers to your domain — unless it accurately reflects your brand’s name.

Make sure your brand is consistent across your website and social channels.
While you might promote your brand with a different tone over social media than your website, all your channels should still feel cohesive.

Follow all applicable accessibility guidelines.
Consider adding colour contrast in text and graphics for those with eyesight impairment.
Add video captions to accommodate viewers who cannot hear.

Optimise your website for mobile viewing.  
Confirm that your website’s text, graphics, and links function properly, whether viewed from a mobile device, tablet, or desktop

Actively and consistently create quality content

Whether it’s eBooks, videos, blog articles, case studies, white papers, or social media posts, the success of your brand identity online depends on your company’s ability to post great content consistently.

What makes content great? Great content should be:

• Readable: Copy should be optimised for the web, grammatically correct, and easily understood by your target audience.
• Engaging: Your copy should invite online audiences and communities to engage with your company (e.g., a giveaway or trivia social media post).
• Valuable: Share copy that teaches your target audience about a concept or topic and helps establish your organisation as a thought leader.    
• Findable: Optimise copy for search engines. This includes carefully selecting keywords and metadata.

Consistently producing quality content will help your site rank higher in search engines like Google, expand brand awareness, and generate better-qualified leads.

Create an offline presence

It may seem counterintuitive, but the more your company participates in offline activities — attending events, running workshops, and networking — the better your credibility and presence will be online. Enriching your website and social media with videos, photos, and recaps of real-life events your organisation has hosted and attended will help your company appear more stable. It can also be instrumental in building better relationships with your client base.