Underrated Tool for Online Reputation Management: Company Blog
For today’s customers, searching on the Internet has become a mandatory first step in choosing a product brand. This makes it important for businesses to effectively manage their online reputation.
This article discusses an underrated practice when boosting or repairing one’s image in the age of digital marketing: maintaining a company blog.
Through a blog, a company can publish as much shareable marketing content as it can. It costs very little to maintain one: The domain name purchase and data management expenses can be subsumed under the company website maintenance, and the materials – articles, images, videos, podcasts – can be easily provided by employees and executives, or composed by the members of the marketing team as part of their regular functions.
In truth, a company blog is an often overlooked online reputation management tool that fulfills many functions: It establishes your brand as a thought leader, as the source of the latest news and the most insightful analysis of trends in the industry. It is a cheap but practically unlimited space for promotional content – no word, dimension/size limits for your text or file. It can facilitate collaborative projects with merchant partners or influencers. Finally, it can be your tactic for local search engine optimization or SEO.
Reputation management and SEO are typically discussed as separate strategies, but the two are in fact inextricably linked. Being ranked highly on search engines is generally a good thing for a brand, as this means being easily “found” by the target market – a success SEO-wise. At the same time, one hopes that the top-ranking links will show positive content, which is the target of reputation management.
Since by now, many local businesses have already completed the ABCs of digital marketing such as site optimization, making Google+ updates, and encouraging customer reviews, most end up in the same low ranks of Google Local search results. To harness Google’s algorithms and be a step ahead of the competition, companies need to create fresh content that can attract audience and boost interaction, which will in turn enhance one’s prominence score on Google local search results.
Aside from fostering a relationship between a brand and its target market, company blogs are known for attracting frequent site visitors. It is then considered a core component of content marketing, which involves providing informative materials that link the brand with its prospective clients.
GBX Digital is an experienced team of digital marketing specialists. Talk to us today to know how to manage your online reputation.