6 Ways Your Brand Personality Should Add Value

6 Ways Your Brand Personality Should Add Value

What is the worst thing you can say about a person? High up on my list would be that someone has no personality. Who wants to spend time with someone so boring? I’d rather hang out with a jerk. At least then it would be interesting. The same reasoning applies to brands.

Not all brands have a personality, or at least a strong, distinctive personality. But the brands that do have a significant advantage in terms of standing out, communicating an on-brand message and supporting customer relationships. Personality is an important dimension of brand equity because, like human personality, it is both differentiating and enduring.

A brand personality can…enhance self-expression benefits
People express themselves in part by the brands that they buy, especially when the brand is socially visible. 

A brand personality can…provide the basis for a relationship
A brand personality can help lead to brand loyalty.

A brand personality can…represent a functional benefit
A brand personality can also represent functional benefits and brand attributes. It can be easier to create a personality that implies a functional benefit than to convincingly communicate that a functional benefit exists. Further, it is harder to attack a personality than a functional benefit.

A brand personality can…guide brand building programs
As a practical matter, decisions need to be made about brand communications packages including advertising, physical packaging, promotions, events, customer touch points, digital programs and more. 

A brand personality can…help understand the customer

The brand personality metaphor can also help a manager gain an in-depth understanding of consumer perceptions of the brand. Instead of asking about attribute perceptions, which can be both boring and intrusive, asking people to describe a brand personality is often involving and can result in more accurate and richer insights into feelings and relationships.

A brand personality can…provide energy
A strong brand personality such as those surrounding can provide energy by adding interest and involvement; it effectively amplifies brand perception and experiences. 

A brand personality can provide a vehicle to express a person’s self, represent relationships, communicate attributes, guide brand–building, understand the customer and contribute energy. It can also provide a sustainable point of differentiation – it’s almost impossible to copy a personality.

Keywords – brand, content marketing, loyalty, ICMA, content

5 Reasons to Integrate your Brand into your Content Marketing Strategy

5 Reasons to Integrate your Brand into your Content Marketing Strategy

In our age of changing technologies and the emphasis on content marketing for business, it would be easy to forget one of the most important elements of content strategies: branding. Effective branding does not just happen automatically. It’s not as simple as a logo or a catchy jingle. Branding must be integrated with your SEO content strategies in order to increase the reputation of your brand in a positive way. It must include the most important elements of your brand while also addressing what the search engines want in terms of SEO and content. How do you do this?

Here are five tips if you are just getting starting with your online content strategy that will help get your brand noticed while addressing the key elements of sound content marketing:

1 – Write for people first. Remember that the content you produce is for people, not machines. And while you are also inserting key words that search engines will pick up, the most important element is your content, and it should be rich in information. You should focus on giving visitors something valuable when they visit your site, so that they will be inspired to return. Engaging visitors on a regular basis with sound, quality content is the best way to increase your engagement and conversions.

2 – Write for SEO. Secondly, you need to keep in mind that, while Google has lowered the importance of keywords somewhat due to their latest changes, key words do still have importance in the search process. So, as a business owner, you will want to think about what key words (including long-tailed key words) people will use to find what you have to offer. For example, if you sell farm equipment, you may want to rank for “farm equipment.” But this is very general, so in addition, you will want to include terms like, “John Deere farm equipment” (if you sell John Deere products), “farming irrigation equipment,” and other terms. You need to think like the searcher so that you get quality leads and visitors who are wanting what you have to offer.

3 – Include a great design. Google has emphasizes that there is more to good rankings and content marketing than just great content. Content IS king, but Google Analytic's considers your logo, design, and branding almost as important in terms of site quality. This is partly due to the fact that there are so many mobile users online today. Your site must be responsive to mobile users, as well as traditional desktop users and it must look and function well in all contexts. So focus on your design, which will not only improve your brand’s image, but your Google rankings as well.

4 – Engage your viewers with social media. This point cannot be emphasized enough. Social media is the single most important thing you can do to increase your visitor interest and engagement and spread the word about your brand. Many companies are now hiring full-time social media managers to fill this need so that they can handle the comments and interactions that occur daily via social media networks. This is also a part of reputation management and is necessary to levelize problems that can crop up on social media with bad product reviews.

5 – Get in touch with your brand’s philosophy. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple after being fired by a hostile takeover in his company years ago, one of the first things he said to the board of directors was: “We need to get in touch with who we are again.” What he meant by this is that a brand must know their philosophy and what drives them to excellence. What makes your company unique? What says to someone, “I just have to have one of these?” Your brand’s ideals will drive your success if you go back to the roots of what your business is all about. So be authentic and get in touch with your roots, as to why you started your business. This will show in your brand.

SEO and content marketing strategies are still important in today’s digital and social media world. But we cannot forget how this is all tied in with branding. Branding is the embodiment of your company’s face to the public. What do people think of your brand? Is your design reflective of your company’s philosophies? Can people tell when they come to your website that you have pride in your brand? If not, your site might need an overhaul. You need great SEO, you need great engaging content, social media presence, and a great design. Tie it all together and you have what you need to drive a successful digital marketing campaign.

6 Tips for Making the Most of Your Digital Marketing Time

6 Tips for Making the Most of Your Digital Marketing Time

You likely have a great deal of responsibility already on your plate, and the last thing you can do is devote all of your time to digital marketing. However, this form of marketing is absolutely vital to the health of your business. If you want your company to succeed, then you have to market online through web content, social media, blogs, and much more. This is where people look for businesses these days, and if you aren’t readily available, then they will find your competition. Additionally, digital marketing will open the door to thousands more customers than you could have reached otherwise.
Despite the importance of digital marketing, you probably still have a very limited time frame to devote to it. So, here are six tips to help you make the most of whatever time you have set aside for your online marketing. Use these tips and it should provide you with the most action in the shortest possible time frame.

1. Use Monitoring and Management Tools

Social media marketing is important, but it can be a very time consuming. That’s because you have so much content to keep up with, and it changes constantly. For example, to really make the most of Twitter, you have to be posting, replying, and commenting throughout the day. Facebook isn’t much slower either. Those are just two of the social media websites you will need a presence on. Others could include Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn. All of this adds up, and in addition to putting out new content and replying to potential customers, you also have to keep up with metrics. If you don’t know how well you are doing with an advertisement or post, then you will have no idea what you need to change in the future.
The best way to maximise your time through social media would be to use a monitoring and tracking tool. There are many of these out there, so shop around and see what works best for you. The goal of these tools is to give you information about all of your social media presences in one place. You will be able to get a good idea of what is working and what isn’t. Then, you can make adjustments without having to track down all of that information on your own.

2. Put Things in a Priority List

Because you have limited time, you are going to need to prioritise so that you can make the most of the time spent on each project. Your priority list should follow a few important guidelines:

• When it comes to consumer brands, Facebook and Twitter will probably be most important.
• With B2B brands, you will want to put Twitter and LinkedIn as top priority.
• Social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest are only interesting if you provide new content, so you can put them lower on the priority list and update them less often instead of being repetitive.

The goal should be to ensure you know exactly what is most important for your business, whether it is creating video content, guest blogging on other’s sites, or social media. Then, you need to put together your priorities so that you know what to tackle each day.

3. Know How to Mix up Content

Remember that not everything you post has to be original. You can actually mix things up with curated content. This would be things you found elsewhere on the web, which is relevant to your brand in some way. You don’t want to stick with just one type of content. The ratio of original and curated content needs to be determined by your business needs and time available. Most importantly, do not opt for quantity over quality.

4. Always Respond to Mentions ASAP

Whenever you see your brand mentions on a social media page, you need to respond promptly. If you respond quickly, then your customers or potential customers will feel appreciated and important to you. This is simply good customer service, especially in today’s fast paced world. Additionally, responding promptly keeps things from adding up. If you don’t take action when the comments come up, you will have a whole list of them to handle the next day during your allotted marketing time.

5. Know the Trends and Real Time Marketing

These days, one of the most powerful marketing tools you have at your disposal is RTA or real time marketing. Essentially, with this type of plan, you don’t come up with a program in advance. Instead, you look into current trends and topics, and then you create marketing campaigns on the fly that are in keeping with those trends.
This can save you time because you don’t have to spend hours planning a marketing campaign, but for it to be successful, you will need to spend time keeping up with current trends.

6. Use Templates That Are Flexible

Templates can be your best friend when you are trying to save space in your marketing time. They make it much easier for you to just fill in information and templates are especially helpful for things like email.
However, you need to make sure those templates are flexible. If you just send the same canned information time and time again, this will not go over well with potential customers. It looks like you don’t care enough to write something new. So, make sure your templates can be changed to suit each new need. They can still save you a lot of time though.
If you don’t have a great deal of marketing time in your day, then you will want to make the most of every second you do have. Use these six tips and you will get through your marketing responsibilities without missing anything and while saving time for other responsibilities too. Just make sure you prioritise, make use of technology, consider real time marketing, and use flexible templates for the best results.

http://www.exchange4media.com/content-marketing-awards-icma-2016/ 

Content Marketing Strategy Checklist

Content Marketing Strategy Checklist

In order to ensure that the content marketing plan remains valuable and produces evergreen content, we have created a content marketing strategy template focusing on creating and distributing relevant content to attract, retain and grow your target audience.

• Set Goals – Start big and work down. This first stage of any content marketing strategy template.
• Know your target audience – Don’t just use demographics but expand with psychographics.
• Content audit – Have you already published an infographic or a video animation? By knowing what you already have in place the easier it is to identify where the gaps are.
• Editorial calendar – This can be viewed as your production and delivery schedule. When are you due to launch your video marketing campaign? A general overview can be monitored and implemented through content marketing software.
• Media – Now you have got a topic, what media is best for it? Will this be through owned media? Don’t be afraid to mix it up.
• Promote Planning – ahead can help you achieve maximum impact. Will you promote this through owned media or paid media?
• Measurement and testing – What does success mean to you? Don’t stop there, keep measuring and adapting your strategy. Content marketing software uses analytical services to identify integral information about your marketing strategy.