Using Web 2.0 Sites to Establish Your Brand
It is vital to a successful online marketing strategy to have a company website. This is the foundation of your brand’s online profile and the place where all of the links will lead your customers. In order to maximize the value of your company’s website it needs to be noticed and its design should be optimized by using the right keywords for your niche and creating valuable content to generate good SEO. But to really get your brand noticed, you still have to get it out where people will see it and this is where Web 2.0 sites come into the picture.
Put simply, Web 2.0 sites are a second generation of web pages that are designed to be more interactive with users who often contribute the bulk of the content. Social networks like Twitter are examples of Web 2.0 sites that most of us would be familiar with and there are others that are specifically designed to allow people to share information in their niche. Websites like Squidoo and Hubpages that allow users to create pages around specific topics can be a great way to generate awareness of your brand and to lead new traffic to your website.
One of the objectives of many corporate blogs is to establish the business as an expert in their field and many of the posts on their blog will necessarily offer valuable information about their industry. These kinds of posts can be re-posted to Web 2.0 sites so they reach a wider audience. At the same time, the back links they create to the company website help to improve its SEO. At the same time, it is a good practice to also make sure you are listed in local online directories like Online Yellow Pages and it is usually worth the effort to make sure these listings are as complete as possible. Another Web 2.0 feature that businesses should be taking advantage of is the social bookmarking sites like Digg where it is simple to leave links that point to the latest post on the company blog or to special offers or events you are promoting.
A tried and true method of promoting a company’s services is to create reports or manuals for topics that are of interest in your industry or niche. Often these sorts of documents are created to entice visitors to leave their details on a squeeze page but they can also be shared on sites like Scribd where users upload all of the books and pamphlets that are available on the site. For technically oriented companies this is a great way to make an archive of business reports available after they have been updated or superseded. It also establishes your authority in your field by showing the length of your commitment to your industry. Be sure that any reports or info-graphics that you use in this way have your business’ name and copyright marks as well as any embedded links to your web page.
The importance of these strategies is that they can be leveraged for free apart from the time that is invested. Because you are taking your brand to the place where the most internet users are likely to see it this sort of marketing is likely to be hard to track but most marketers now view social media as a tool for raising brand awareness rather than to specifically drive conversions. Social media promotions are only one part of an overall internet marketing strategy but the importance of using Web 2.0 to increase awareness of your brand makes it a necessary part of any online promotional strategy.
