5 Steps to Help Build Your Brand Online

By Duri Greene

Duri Greene is a Floor Support Manager at Main Street Hub. Duri brings a background of expertise in social media, branding, and digital marketing to our NYC Sales Team. Don’t miss Duri’s tips for small businesses on how to be successful building your brand online.

Whether you’ve been in business for over 20 years or you’re just about to open your doors for the first time, you know your brand needs to have a strong presence online in order to keep up. You already have a great logo, a quality product/service, a clean place to operate your business, a website, and you might even have a really big sign out front. But your brand is a lot more than that. Your brand lives in the experiences of your customers, it represents what and who you are, and ultimately you want your brand to instill trust. So how do you communicate all of that online?

Here are the steps you need to take in order to successfully build your brand online:

1. Be where your customers are.

When customers don’t have a referral or recommendation for a business like yours, they will go online (most likely on their smartphone), do a quick search, and then they’ll choose where to go based on what they see. So how do you make sure they see you? Well, first you will need to claim your business pages on the top two review sites, Yelp and Google+. This is where your prospective customers will look first for businesses near them when they are in need of a product/service like yours. So, it’s important that you also make sure your information is consistent.

2. Show and tell.

Now that you’ve claimed your Yelp and Google+ business pages, you need to make sure your brand stands out and has a voice. Since you only have a few seconds to make a good first impression, show your customers what your brand is all about. Add photos! And a lot of them. Describe your specialties, your signature dish for example, and the quality of your product. Share your story, the history of your business, and even some information about you, the business owner. This personalization is key for showing prospective customers what makes your brand so special and why they should choose you.

3. Customer service.

Your happy customers will want to share their experience, praise your brand, and even offer or ask for advice — all in the form of reviews. Once they do write a review, you need to respond so that your customers feel appreciated and more connected to your brand. These two-way conversations online make a huge impact because thousands of prospective customers can then see that customer service is a priority for you from the very first moment they come across your brand online.

4. Be social.

Millions of people are having conversations online every single day. They talk about what they are doing, their interests, and even their problems. Chances are your product or service can solve that problem, so don’t wait for them to find you. Be proactive and reach out! Start a conversation and invite them to come to your business. Twitter, with its 320 million active users, is a great place to get your brand into more conversations. You’ll be able to find new customers in your own backyard and start to create an online community for your brand.

5. Stay in touch.

When a new customer walks in, obviously you will take great care of them while they are there, and then they will eventually leave. A great brand doesn’t let the customer’s journey stop there. You need to create the opportunity for your customers to take your brand with them by connecting online through a platform like Facebook and even incorporating steady contact in the form of email newsletters. Once you connect with a happy customer on Facebook and they become your fan, you empower them to promote your brand to all of their friends and family simply by checking-in or liking, sharing, and commenting on your posts. With email newsletters, your brand will show up in their inbox and remind them of the great experience they had with you. This will not only increase the odds of customers coming back, but it will also let your happy customers spread more word-of-mouth for your brand.

Too busy running your business to handle all of these important steps? Don’t worry! We can do it for you. Get your Main Street Hub journey started here.

Want to learn more about the talented people in our NYC Sales Office? Meet Perry Landsman, Mike Zaretsky, and Alexa Berube.