What Does Your Organizations Online Brand Footprint Look Like?
With over 2.4 billion internet users across the world this year it’s hard to imagine why any organization wouldn’t look online to develop (or work towards developing) a significant online presence. When we say significant, we mean – beyond just a standard html website with some company information. Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s it was all about “having a website” to say “we’re here…we’re on the internet” but the web evolved from the purely information retrieval / email / chat space into the social web which is far more interactive and is still evolving into perhaps “the most significant shift in communications medium” that organizations and brands have ever had to adapt to. It’s no longer a quest to create some website – it’s a quest to make a significant mark on the social web…have a footprint big enough to be noticed!
What does my organizations brand footprint look like online?
Actually…don’t ask yourself, Google it! After all that’s precisely what millions of users online do each hour for millions of brands, companies, organizations and people. What comes up when they search your brand – is your online brand footprint. Once you’ve Googled it, look a little deeper and ask some more questions…
How big is my online brand footprint?
Is it wide and far reaching or is it just a handful of search results that could be easy to overlook? A significant online brand footprint is one where a number of results show for the brand across social networks (like Facebook, Twitter,LinkedIn), across blogs, news sites, conversations on communities and mentions from other websites. It comes up in conversations on Twitter, shows in articles, press releases, YouTube videos and several other web based locations and has a wide reach. When an organization has been working towards developing a “significant” web footprint, it shows!
How does my online brand footprint come across to users?
When people click on various search results or come across mentions of your brand on different social sites or locations online, how do they perceive your brand? Do they receive a uniform sense of what your organization is about or do they get mixed messages when they come across related content on different sites?
Is it dynamic & consistently growing?
Hundreds of thousands of new websites go up each week and millions of new conversations flow across the web each day so for a brand to stay relevant and visible, it must keep growing it’s online brand footprint! It’s not about a single campaign, push or effort. It’s about being talked about more frequently as well as publishing and actively ensuring the ecosystem of content and conversations around your brand keep growing.
How significant is your organization’s online brand footprint? Ask yourself…and then work towards making it a little more significant each day!