There are two ways you can go about building an online reputation or digital marketing strategy. You can either create a proactive campaign designed to get content to readers which is intended to get an immediate reaction, or you can be responsive by creating content which takes advantage of a popular idea or a well-known event to raise awareness of your brand.

One example of the responsive approach is following up on the announcement of tax incentives for renewable energy with branded press releases by solar or wind power companies.

Proactive and reactive SEO

Most SEO experts take the active approach, since their job consists of keeping an eye on current and growing trends to decide how to capitalize on them weeks or months ahead of time. At the same time, there are also situations where SEO professionals and marketers can use both proactive and reactive marketing to increase brand awareness and get a reaction from consumers.

As you work on your next campaign, think about the following opportunities

1. Take advantage of internal events:

If you’re about to roll out a new product or service, hire a high profile executive from another company or your company is entering new markets, take this opportunity to let consumers know. Smaller companies are especially prone to passing up these opportunities, not knowing that they have a chance to raise their brand’s profile and drive traffic to their site.

Internal events are a great time to put out optimized press releases which may be picked up by local or national news organizations. However, Google does see some press release distribution outlets as basically link farms and may incur a penalty or even removal from search results, so be careful. A well written, properly optimized and carefully released press release can bring more traffic, increased backlinks and with luck, free exposure in the local or national media.

2. Make internal events an opportunity for guest authoring:

If your internal events are getting attention, you may be able to further raise your profile in your industry by having your company executive guest author something for another site. This could greatly increase your brand’s exposure to audiences who are likely to be interested but may not have heard of you before. Every piece they write for industry-focused sites or print publications can increase your perceived authority, drive traffic from relevant sources and of course, create high quality inbound links.

Naturally, work only with well-respected sites or publications which are seen as authorities in your industry. Low quality sources are not likely to do much, if anything for your search engine ranking and could actually lead to a penalty in some cases.

3. Get in front of a new, interesting subject

There is nothing new under the sun and it’s hard to find anything truly original on the internet. There are millions of sites out there all trying to create unique content, with most of it being duplicative despite their best efforts. Because of its difficulty, there is a lot of value in being one of the first to talk about new ideas or to present information in a different way. If you can do this, you’ll increase brand awareness, build a larger audience of potential customers, build your reputation as an authority, increase your visibility online and build valuable new backlinks.

4. Build content around keywords the competition isn’t using:

Search algorithms are continually changing and keyword research is evolving along with them. This means that there could be opportunities to use keywords that your competition hasn’t thought of yet. Tools like Google Keyword Planner or Soovle can help you to continually research for new keywords that people are using to search for the kinds of products and services you offer.

If you can find keywords with low competition and high search volume, start using them to build content. This can drive traffic, improve your backlinks and build more connections via social media.

5. Keep an eye on your competition’s social media presence

If your competition uses social media as a customer engagement tool, watch for chances to give their customers a better user experience than they can offer. If you see the competition’s customers complaining on social media, this is an opportunity to offer them a sympathetic message, along with a coupon or other incentive to choose your brand instead.

You need to act quickly when these opportunities present themselves, since your competition is probably also responding to consumer concerns and complaints. If you have the staff to actively monitor the competition on social media, however, this is a technique which can pay off.

Any one of these methods won’t make your brand the unquestioned number one authority in your industry, but implementing all of them consistently can gradually improve your online presence to the point where you’ll begin to see a real growth in sales.

Category Search Engine Marketing