So you have the ideas, you have the motivation, and you are in the early stages of your startup. You can tell others about your company via word of mouth, but what comes up when they search for your brand online? Without digital content for your startup, you are essentially a ghost with no digital footprint, unable to get your messaging and goals across. Posting consistent, quality content is key to establishing your brand name early on, and working with a content marketing agency can help strengthen this presence.
Brand Identity In The Early Days
You have probably heard the term “quality content” when talking about upping your online presence through content marketing services, and it’s important to know what sets high quality apart from poor. Quality can mean putting out media that brings together your brand identity in a clear, cohesive way, showing your target audience exactly who you are. Here, you need to be consistent with your messaging, overall tone and even the colors, fonts and logos in your content. At the center of all branding activities should lie your company values, letting these well-thought out and communicated concepts guide your content.
Creating a company-wide stylebook or branding deck can help keep all of your core branding concepts in one place, and allow for all team members to feel familiar and confident in your company’s identity. While it may seem tedious or even frivolous to emphasize typography, word choices and certain design elements, all of these aspects help build up a cohesive brand name. Especially when you are just starting out and don’t have a household name yet, you need to make sure everyone knows exactly what your company is trying to do. Being on the same page with all stakeholders in your company will help promote your identity more efficiently.
Building a Relationship Through Digital Content
By putting clear thought and effort into the content you post, you are able to show how you care for the people involved in your company. However you choose to provide media to your stakeholders, whether it be through blog posts, articles, videos or photo features, everything must have a purpose. Think about the communities that you want to reach, and the community that you want to create; what do these individuals want to watch, read or think about?
Your digital content for your startup should also help engage potential customers and connections by kickstarting a transparent conversation. Something as simple as providing a comment section under blog posts on your website can help streamline dialogue and show how you want to progress your brand. However, this comes with the need to stay updated on new comments, and having cohesive guidelines on how to respond to people’s words.
Digital content can also help bring a human face to your brand through featuring the people who make the brand. Founders or CEOs of startups can utilize an approachable, story-telling tone in written and spoken content to show vulnerability and share their perspective. Additionally, promoting the stories of all team members regardless of their role helps show the humanity and realness of your company.
Different Pros to Different Platforms
So now that you’ve curated quality content in line with your brand’s values, you need to think about how you’re going to communicate what you’ve created. The way that you push your content out can say a lot about your brand, especially with a wide variety of social media platforms to choose from. What channels are you focusing the most on, and who populates and spends the most time on these channels?
Platforms like LinkedIn have a more professional purpose, and can be used for adding to a company’s credibility in its respective field. According to LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, brands that post at least once a week can improve their engagement rates by two times. However, these posts still need to be engaging and interesting, aligning with the concepts of quality content.
Instagram and Twitter are both more fast-paced digital platforms, but with different emphasis on various multimedia. While images and video content run Instagram and help brands promote themselves as “creative”, “entertaining” and “relevant”, Twitter emphasizes fast-paced conversation and discovery within distinct communities.
Starting Your Story Through Digital Content
With the digital world providing a space to share your stories on a global scale, you have the opportunity to use content marketing services to build your brand and community. Content from the beginning will help you have a developed name in your later stages. Start your story now, and stay mindful about how to stay true to yourself throughout.