The modern business landscape is heavily intertwined with the digital world, which means that your online presence carries a lot of weight regarding your overall brand perception. At times, this might feel unfair – as if this is an area that is less important than your central service and should be judged accordingly.
However, it might be better to frame it in your mind as an extension of your marketing – as the way in which audiences become aware of you in the first place. That can help you better understand how to put your best foot forward in digital spaces.
Regular Updates
It is a simple element of the social media marketing game, but one that is easy to fall down the list of priorities. If people who are new to your brand come to your pages and find that you haven’t updated them in a long time (even down to a couple of weeks), they might feel as though it’s not worth following these pages.
After all, if the information is outdated or if it is not prioritized as a way of getting the word out to audiences, what function does it serve?
This can also be a mentality that you apply to your website or app as well. While you might focus on updates after the initial platform is rolled out so that you can tackle bugs and other issues that might arise, it is also a practice that can go long into the future.
As changes are made to your brand, or as specific announcements become relevant, you want your website to be absolutely the place to see this kind of update. People might hear rumors or second-hand information about such updates, and if they are looking for confirmation, this is where it needs to be.
Meeting Standards
Your brand does not exist in a vacuum – that element of competition is something that you always have to be aware of, and it means that audience expectations are always changing.
You might find that for a period of time, the way that you have styled your brand, and your online presence is striking the right chord with audiences, but that could all change once another brand in the industry does something different, something better.
Chasing these standards is not as prescriptive and linear as it sounds. There is room to get creative and put your own spin on things, but to do that, you have to understand what is driving these changes.
At times, it might have to do with changes in general taste, such as in how aesthetics like minimalism wax and wane in public perception. Other times, though, it could have to do with a breakthrough technology that alters how a user interacts with a platform.
The use of Istio API gateways is a good example of this – taking that foundational engagement of API platforms and making them more flexible and varied through a greater variety of microservices. Understanding what your own business stands to gain from incorporating these can change the way that online audiences engage with your brand.
Consistency Across Platforms
While each of your platforms is going to be unique in a sense, providing its own specific function, they all form a part of a greater whole – that whole being your digital brand.
If your social media pages are posting information that contradicts something on your website, that is going to be problematic and confusing for audiences – as it will be with smaller issues, like a different logo or tone of voice appearing across these pages.
Consistency is important – especially as you might go the extra step and link all of these pages together as to best increase traffic. It is easy to think about it from your own point of view and the differences that come with managing these separate digital platforms, but if you instead shift into the perspective of your audience, it becomes much more about a cohesive experience.
This is all a part of the experience that will hopefully end with them making a purchase, and that means that it is all about creating the right perception – namely, the perception of your brand being as considered and professional as possible in every area.
Leave a Comment