1. Social Branding Images
When you need to spread the word about your brand quickly, you’ll need a visual image that defines you. Customer connections have to be immediate as well as flexible, portable, and interactive. The brand image will make a lasting impression on customers and will be known to followers, so you need to provide a brand voice and vocabulary that describes your products and services in the best possible way.
You can create the graphics yourself with tools available online, or if you’ve got the finances it may be worth investing in the help of a marketing agency for advice and support. Remember that your social profile needs to attract customers and be instantly recognised by your audience. Use the elements of colour and text combined in the best way for maximum impact. Guidelines need to be established in regards to the size and general placement, and the fonts chosen carefully.
Use templates to maintain consistency and make the most of your visual assets. Photos need to be on a professional level and regularly updated to keep customer interest. Once you’ve made your decision on your photos and message, choose the social media sites on which you want to establish your presence.
2. Branded Infographic
The next step in your online presence will be to add more branded multimedia elements. A great way to promote your latest content collaboration: by creating a highly shareable infographic featuring your brand name.
People love infographics, and there is a number of good reasons why you ought to love them, too – here are four reasons for you.
- Infographics are very visual, and able to convey a lot of information without the need for words.
- Partly as a result of that, they’re also highly shareable!
- An infographic is easy to embed in your page or post, making them quick and convenient to deploy.
- Finally, they’re really not that hard (or expensive) to make.
So if you’re thinking of going down the road of a content partnership, why not launch your collaboration with a few co-branded infographics? Rather than drawing up a press release or some wordy document that announces your new partnership, give your users something interesting to look at – then simply sign it with both of your names. In this world of high-speed disposable information, you’ll likely find that a co-branded infographic does a much better job of getting your message across in an easily digestible way.
Here’s how the process might look in just three steps:
- Keyword research. Use Google’s keyword tools to find some hot topic in your field, and plan your infographic accordingly. Remember, it’s always more effective to mould your content to subjects that people are already searching for!
- Make it. There are a number of useful tools out there for creating an infographic. If you’ve got any experience of Photoshop, maybe you’d like to make your own… or you could always hire a freelance designer to help you.
- Promotion. With both of you on board, and both of your brand logos presented prominently on the infographic itself, you should have double the reach when it comes to sharing and promoting your new infographic. Make a plan, then get it out there for the world to see!
3. Google maps
Getting your business noticed is key in getting more work. We all have a few friends that will actively promote our business but when it come to really getting the word out there. With the increasing use of smartphones, searching the web for services in 2016 is getting easier and better. People spend any spare minute looking for new and interesting products and gimmicks just because they can. With the ever increasing amount of supermarkets, smaller businesses offering unique, quirky and homemade products have an important place in the market.
I am often searching for accommodation at the last minute, usually ending up with pages and pages of agents but what I really want is to find something unique and special, that has not been made available to the masses. A personal service, a family business even something quirky. I quite often search by location using Google Maps, this means that I pick up all kinds of useful information in that location at the same time. One great advantage of using Google Maps is the fact you can clearly see the location and what is in the surrounding area, giving you an option to tie in some other activities to make best use of your time, or to simply stay as close to your desired location as possible.
Depending on your type of business location can mean everything and deciding where to locate the business can be a tough decision so why not utilise a map listing service to help you decide, you can identify areas where your type of business is common and check out the competition, you can also pick out an area with a gap in the market.
It’s easy for a professional to connect lots of media networking services to your website and it can be almost interactive, one of the added benefits of the Google map listing service is that you can add lots of useful information like working hours, parking facilities, your business category, payment options, home delivery and even if pets are allowed, you can make a short movie demonstrating your business, upload it to YouTube and link it to your Google map listing. Short videos are a great way to attract attention to your business but make it interesting and fun. Adding plenty of photos is another good way of showcasing what you offer, you could also take some photos of the outside of your business premises, this way people know what to look for when they come to find you.
4. Responsive design
Responsive design incorporates resizing, panning and scrolling techniques to provide an optimum easy reading and navigating experience. As a small business it pays off to use a web design that creates dynamic changes by using flexible images and cascading stylesheet media. Sounds a bit daunting?
If customers are unable to view your products and services easily they’re unlikely to return to your site, so it’s very important that you keep it updated. Responsive web design will also work on mobile devices and tablets too, with the use of the three main principles of fluid grids, images and media queries. There’s a vast showcase of responsive websites available you can generate some ideas from.
With responsive design websites performance is everything. Ensure your site loads quickly and constantly performs well. Clean designs will improve page loading time and take advantage of advice with regards to what you need to do to make smartphone pages load speedily. Also bear in mind that all users will need to experience the same quality browsing without any function loss. When you’ve got the flexible images, content and grids you need, you’ll have a site that converts to all devices perfectly.
5. Explainer Videos
Short online videos used to describe the products and services of your small business are defined as explainer videos. It’s been proven that if customers are presented with text and a video to choose from, over half would prefer to watch the video! High quality, interactive videos are the way to proceed and do this the ideal length of your broadcast should be between three and six minutes.
You’ll need to do a bit of research to make sure the video you create says exactly what you want it to say. To get additional help and advice here, you may want to contact a trusted marketing agency. The script should tell a story and make people want to choose your products after they’ve finished viewing. Explain in an easy to understand format what your business does and sells. You need a catchy theme to engage your potential clients and to hold their attention. Make sure to close with an invitation to call in or leave an email.
The final video should be revised, edited and finalized before uploading. You can add visuals and music for that extra special feel. With a well written script and the proper preparation your video will be a winner!
