By Media Manoeuvres Director, Sam Elam
The vast media landscape continues to change at a rapid rate and companies, their media spokespeople and their brands are now facing an immense land of online opportunities.
Many of these are being overlooked though, as companies and brands grapple to cut through the noise to get their message heard.
“Right now there is an abundance of opportunity for company spokespeople and their brands to get their message out and most importantly grab their share of attention in their marketplace,” says SEO expert, Andrew Webber.
“With the explosion of Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other content production platforms, it’s never been easier for people and brands to reach their customers.
“But the problem that companies are facing today, is that people don’t just link to average content – they tend to only share and link to exceptional quality content.”
As a stakeholder communications and media training expert, I would agree and add that there are so many more media opportunities in traditional online/offline media and content driven media owned by companies but companies need to make sure that if they are putting their executives out front and centre with journalists or in front of their own cameras that they are well trained to present themselves, the brand and the company properly.
We have seen CEOs with shocking on camera presentation skills and it kills the brand and the content instantly, game over!
In the current market, where such an array of amazing content is available, it’s crucial for brands and their executives to differentiate themselves – and the best way to do this is by producing unique and noteworthy content, reinforcing the importance of specialist media and communications training.
Another effective strategy is taking advantage of executive profiles.
There are three key methods of utilising staff social media profiles to help SEO, according to branding expert Tess Robinson.
Branding: When brands and social media executives are well connected throughout the internet with proper linking structures, Google will often reward a website with higher rankings. When staff take out strategic social and branded profiles, it not only helps the business but also the staff members’ long term prospects and personal branding.
Reputation Management: While there is no better reputation management strategy than good customer service, it isn’t always possible to keep everyone happy. This can result in negative online reviews.
“By using staff social media profiles that are well optimised for a brand and with links to a company website, negative reviews can be buried beneath positive and strategically crafted search engine rankings,” says Ms Robinson.
Ensuring staff profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (in particular) are well optimised for a brand and the company’s main keywords, with a link back to the company website or staff profile page, can allow a business to take over the first page of Google with positive results.
SEO: The changing landscape of SEO in 2016 means that local, relevant links from high authority websites are more important than a huge number of links.
“Staff profiles on social media networks can send this kind of high quality link back to a website.”
According to Mr Webber, creative, engaging and high quality content is key when it comes to rising above the others to ensure a brand’s message is received via your company’s social media spokesperson.
He emphasised the importance of on camera presentation skills and webinar skills training in order to take advantage of video content as well.
“I love video content as it gives a real personalised touch and can add a human element to the business, especially for key executives, allowing them to build their personal brands within a larger organisation, while adding a more personalised and approachable element to the brand.
“Richard Branson does this well, his use of Snapchat and Instagram to manage his personal brand and communicate his message is fantastic.”
He also suggests following Brian Dean’s ‘Skyscraper’ technique.
“Basically this suggests that you find what type of content is already performing well in the search results, and improve on it by making it more comprehensive, or introducing new ideas and concepts on the same topic.”
Are you unsure how to create more positive awareness for your brand? Can’t seem to stand out from the crowd? To find out more about how Media Manoeuvres helps brands manage their public image, contact Media Manoeuvres today!
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