Small yet strong: How to build a local brand online

In my last post, I touched upon the importance of building a brand, for small and medium businesses. In this post, I will elaborate on how SMBs can achieve that on digital as a medium, with limited resources and expertise.  

• Build a website and while you're at it, build a mobile optimized one as well. 50% of all queries on mobile are local in nature. Your website is a reflection of your business. it should communicate exactly what you want to communicate to your customers when they visit you. Make sure to write the site title and description meta thoughtfully, as your site title is what users will see as a reference to your website on search engines. Select the best keywords for the body of the site and revisit the keyword list regularly to make sure it reflects the current business focus and consumer search trends. 
• Try to incorporate a contact us or customer care number where consumers can reach out to your business, if needed. Human connection is an integral touch point in building trust.
• Run SEM campaigns to supplement the SEO efforts. Leverage the products best suited for small businesses like location extensions, call extensions, form or signup extensions. Upload the business listings to take advantage of the local listings offering that search engines have. This will ensure your business location shows up in the organic results.
• Upload images and monitor the reviews on independent review websites like Stellaservices and pricegrabber.com. Search engines aggregate the reviews from different sources and calibrate them according to their scale. Mostly, the ratings are only eligible to show if they are above a certain level like 3/5. If you are not confident that your business reviews show you in good light, then fill in a form to opt out of the reviews until you have fixed the problem and the ratings are up again. According to a survey conducted by Dimensional Research, 90 percent of respondents claimed that positive online reviews influenced buying decisions while 86 percent said buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews.
• Create a community on social media. Your business page on Facebook not only helps you spread awareness about your product or service but also drive engagement and guage your customers' sentiments. Similarly through your Twitter handle you can send crisp and succinct information to your followers. With social media, one must tread with caution regarding the content. The messages should be aligned with how you want to position your brand and respectful of the sentiments of the community. Do not leave the social media account unmonitored. Be prompt in responding to comments as you would do on a personal social media account. Remember, you engage with the audience on social media in their social sphere that is reserved for friends and family, live up to that. 
• Try rich media - Images and videos. Instagram ads are proving to be the most effective vehicle to convey your message online. They have the appeal, engagement rates and high recall when compared to the text counterparts. Through images that resonate with your audience you can create a stronger bond and register yourself as the brand they would like to do business with.  

Well, this sounds like a good list to started with. The beauty of online media is that it changes with each click, therefore experimentation and improvisation are your friends.