Nick Brogden, the founder of Earned Media, was recently invited to be involved in a fantastic project for Kochie’s Business Builder and Monday.com called Kochie’s Business Booster. It is a free course that can help people you a bit of extra information that may help you scale your sales, boost your brand and learn more about marketing.

Supercharge your sales and marketing

The below video is my lesson on building a brand reputation. If you would like to check out the complete course head on over to the Kochie’s Business Booster page, sign up and get into it.

Video transcript

Digital branding and PR are potentially the fastest-growing business strategies in online marketing. 

They are closely aligned as it’s hard to be successful in one area without the other and when done well these channels will also greatly assist your organic marketing efforts such as SEO.

So what exactly is digital branding?

Well in simple terms digital branding is about including a concurrent messaging style across all of your digital touch points including your website, content marketing, social media, email marketing, and paid channel advertising. 

You need to ensure that the design and messaging of your site aligns perfectly with how you want your product or service to be perceived. 

It’s generally best practise to try to keep the design simple with a limited colour scheme and make sure your brand name stands out with a bold, legible font.

The best place to start with your branding is your website

Your website should epitomise your brand as if the site branding is not aligned with your marketing campaigns the visitors it attracts will likely feel disconnected from the start of their journey.

But more than just design, your website is also the hub for your brand messaging which is portrayed via content. 

Customers want to see that you are knowledgeable and trustworthy. So you need to create market-relevant content to build authority behind your brand.

Successful content stimulates interest in your brand, helps build trust, and can establish lasting relationships. 

When publishing your blog content be sure it’s obvious that the content was authored by someone in the business as building up your own personal brand is part of the overall process.

Your customers want to know that the person they are dealing with is an expert in their field so publishing and promoting your own content is a great way to do that. 

Social media

Having an active social media presence is important as it’s where you can promote the content you have created along with updates about your industry.

Building a strong social media presence can be time consuming so ensure you use your time as wisely as possible.

Work out where your potential customers are and then put your focus on those platforms.

The general rule of thumb is if you’re selling retail then Facebook and Instagram are going to be a great place to start unless your target customers are under 21 as you might then want to check out something more modern like TicToc.

If you’re selling products B2B then Linkedin is an extremely powerful platform which should be used as an extension of your own blog. You can take articles from your site and post them with a catchy introduction and people will see it.

Then anytime one of your connections interacts with your post many of their connections will also see it. So of course it’s important to cultivate connections in industries you plan to work with.

A good tip for Linkedin is to take articles from your blog and post around half of the article copy on Linkedin via the ‘write and article’ function. 

Then add a link at the bottom saying something like ‘click here to read the full article.’ 

Doing this will drive people who are reading the article on Linkedin straight into your website where you have a much better chance of converting them into a sale.

What are the best ways to incorporate PR?

Once you have your branding worked out and have a focus for your personal brand you can start implementing your own PR strategy. 

The best place to start is by making a list of publications, podcasts and online groups that would benefit from your expertise.

Once you have the list you then find the best people to contact and devise a strategy on how you can send them something that would be of interest to their audience with the goal of getting published or interviewed.

If you’re targeting industry related publications then write an article on a topic that you’re an absolute expert in. 

That way the content you produce will be of high value to the editor and they will publish the article and probably ask you for more. 

Once the article is live you should promote it via a paid campaign on social media targeting that publications audience and instantly increase your brand authority.

A great tip to get the most out of this strategy is to write about something you often talk about in your profession. 

Then next time you’re explaining that to someone you can say, “I’ve written an article about this for “industry leading publication,” I’ll email you a link,” this will give your opinion on that topic much more weight. 

If it’s a podcast, then take a similar approach but rather than write an article, create a topic that would work well for their podcast and let them know why you’d be a fantastic guest to discuss it.

Once the podcast goes live create a post about it on your blog and promote it pretty much the same way as you would a published article.

For social media groups a great tactic is to contact the groups admin and see if they would be interested in promoting an AMA (ask me anything) for their group. 

For instance if it was a small business group and you’re an accountant you could offer to do an AMA on a specific tax related topic you’re an expert in.

Another solid digital PR tactic to go after tier 1 media is to keep an eye out for trending topics in the news that closely relate to your expertise. 

Once you see one, find some journalists who write about that topic and let them know you have extensive knowledge in that area and ask if they would like some information for any upcoming articles.

When done correctly, digital PR not only helps build your brand but also maintain and develop relationships. Ultimately, it acts as a game-changer in any marketing strategy and will help you to increase your sales.