Just as you go for an annual physical checkup at your doctor’s office to make sure you are healthy and taken care of, you can also perform a digital checkup on yourself and your brand. Make it a point to stay up-to-date on your online branding in digital marketing to ensure the “health” and relevance of your presence. Just as you don’t want to neglect your own health and wellbeing, you can apply the same to your social channels, websites and search engine results.
Here are five ways to ensure the most effective digital check up for your brand image.
1. Deep Diving Into All of Your Socials
Think of this as a cyber spring cleaning, shifting through piles of personal junk accumulated over the years, and deciding whether or not to keep it, sell it, or throw it away. You find yourself asking, “Do I need this?” and “Will I ever use this again?”
The same concepts can be applied to sprucing up your social channels, and you can ask yourself the same questions. Experts recommend cleaning out your accounts at least once a year, or as needed, to keep unrelated content from piling up. This can apply to your personal or professional accounts, whether you are branding yourself or your company.
Making sure that everything you have posted aligns with your brand’s personality, narrative and desired image remains imperative to your online digital checkup. It’s natural if your brand’s design or messaging has evolved over the years, but you’ll have to make sure that everything posted now aligns with the current branding.
By deleting any old or low quality posts that don’t represent your brand, you help to contribute towards the image that you want to present to the world. Unrelated content will only distract from your true message. Going forward, creating a posting schedule of high quality content will help keep your brand on track in the social media sphere and improve the online branding in your digital marketing plan.
2. Discovering New Social Media Features
Content creation tools are constantly changing and becoming more user-friendly every day. Social media apps can now double as a production studio to create engaging and attention-grabbing content for your feed, especially with a new emphasis on video. For 2022, Instagram made it a point to “prioritize reels and creators”, so if you’re not taking part in this new feature, you run the risk of getting left behind.
Figuring out how to use new features to your advantage gives you a competitive edge against traditional branding strategies, and is an important part of your digital checkup. Make sure your apps are updated – or update automatically – so that you have the freshest features on every platform.
3. Check Your Network
A simple click on the “follow” button can go a long way, showing who you want to associate yourself with and whose content you want to see. As a part of your digital checkup, look through who you are following (as well as who follows you), making sure all of these people are relevant to your brand and are in line with your brand’s values.
Especially on LinkedIn, where your network creates a professional web around your brand, you need to be very strategic when considering with whom you connect and look out for any scammer accounts.
Additionally, keeping your relationships strong by taking time to message people digitally can help you in your overall and online reputation, strengthening your online branding in digital marketing.
4. Search Your Name
Simply by googling yourself, you can take a step back and see yourself through the eyes of others. When you step into their shoes, do you like what you see? When performing a scheduled search engine delve, pay close attention to what comes up and the order in which it is presented. Here, you’ll be able to see what others are saying about you, which elements of your are doing well and what content needs more focus on SEO.
If you’re not happy with what comes up when you search for your name, figuring out what keywords garner more search engine traffic can help you improve your Google presence.
5. Consulting with a Digital Communications Agency
Consulting with experts can give you a professional perspective on what you can do to improve your online reputation and stay relevant in the ever-changing digital landscape. A big part of your reputation and public perception comes from the content that you present under your name, the content that is posted about you, what comes up in your search engine results, and your overall presence on your social channels. Your online branding in digital marketing comes from a variety of aspects, and it may be hard to keep up with all of these on top of your everyday business practices.
Online marketing, PR and communications services can guide you in each of these aspects, from finding new and creative ways to get your name out there in the media, to helping you update your social channels, and everything in between.