How Can Content Affect Brand Reputation of Small Businesses

If you’re like most people, you’ve had the experience of visiting a company’s website and quickly clicking the “back” button, filled with frustration or indignation. While web content may seem like a simple thing, it has the power to make a profound impression on customers, and poor web content can feel outright insulting. Sometimes, a visitor navigates to a web page only to find it so riddled with ads and annoying pop-ups that they can’t locate the content they’re looking for.

Other times, a blog post that was supposed to be informative boasts enough confusing grammar mistakes to sink a respectably-sized ship. When a customer interacts with web content, they’re not asking for much: they want simple, straightforward content that helps them answer questions and find solutions. If you’re not providing this for your visitors, it’s possible that your web content is damaging your online reputation.

Great Content Inspires Trust

Great content does more than just show your company cares about what it puts out to the world. When it is done correctly, high-quality content can help customers connect with your brand. According to these blogging tips and statistics, blog content is still a top trustworthy choice for online users looking for some recommendations. Because there is so much content available to today’s consumers, they’ve become more discerning than ever.

Because they don’t have to interact with low-quality, careless content, they won’t. What’s more, because there is so much content (more than 27 million pieces of it shared daily) and because so much of it is just downright bad, today’s customers appreciate helpful, well-written content that seeks to serve them rather than make a sale.

Content Pitfalls that Harm Online Reputation Management Efforts

In the same way that high-quality content inspires trust, poor content destroys it. While most marketers don’t mean to create shoddy content, restrictions on time, budget, or skills often make it difficult for businesses to churn out high-quality content. Here are some of the most common content mistakes online marketers make:

Hurried content: Hurried content is bad content almost without exception. When you’re rushing to get something (anything) published, you’re at a high risk of making mistakes, including facts that haven’t been vetted thoroughly enough or skirting around an issue rather than diving in and helping your readers solve a problem or learn something new. Hurried content is one of the most common mistakes marketers make because too many of them think that any content is better than no content.

Sloppy content: Even if you’ve spent a fair amount of time on your content, that doesn’t mean it’s fit for publication. Sloppy content is another common mistake, and this one has the potential to wreak havoc on your good name. Here’s why: your website and social platforms are your chance to make an impression on your new and existing customers. If you use those platforms to publish content that’s filled with typos, grammar mistakes, chunky wording, or poor writing, you come off as unprofessional. This, in turn, gives your customers the distinct impression that you don’t care how you look, which gives them a good reason to do business with your competition instead. Because of this, it’s critical to check and re-check your content before you publish it. Many experts claim that you should spend twice as long editing your piece as you spent writing it, so don’t shoot yourself in the foot by phoning it in at the last moment.

Duplicate content: Duplicate content is the cardinal sin of online reputation management. In addition to earning you Google penalties, this approach doesn’t serve your readers and earns you a reputation as a copycat who can’t be bothered to create unique, original content that caters to your specific customers.

Spammy content: Nobody wants to spend 1,500 words reading about how excellent your company is. Instead, they want valuable, objective content that leads them to a solution or a value point. Even if your business sells products, you’ll drive your customers away by attempting to “sell them” in your blog posts and social media content. Instead, focus on building a relationship with them, answering their questions, and being of service. This approach will guide them to interact naturally with your products.

To craft high-quality material for your online platforms, follow these guidelines:

Be informative, first and foremost.

Customers value information, and they’ll be attracted to your content if you offer them good content without the creepy hard-sell tactics of yesteryear. With this in mind, answer their questions, provide them with great statistics and supporting facts, poll them for questions or topics they’d like addressed and adjust your strategy to keep meeting their needs. They’ll thank you for it.

Get involved

If you’re doing online content right with the use of AI content generators, your customers will start having conversations about your content and products. An excellent way to boost your reputation and inspire trust in your brand is to get involved in these discussions. Not only will this allow you to cater more efficiently to their needs, but it will also show that you’re involved, engaged, and interested in what your customers have to say.

Infuse your personality into your writing.

While good online content should be formal, professional, clean, and error-free, it should also be fun to read. Because of this, it’s important to infuse your brand’s personality into your online content. Do this through custom visuals, funny memes, or on Instagram or Periscope feed that helps customers get an idea of what it’s like to work behind the scenes. These things contribute to making your brand more approachable and can serve to make you more relatable to your customers.

 

Final Words

Content is everything in today’s marketing environment, and bad content can destroy your online reputation just as quickly as good content can boost it. When you devote yourself to crafting professional, quality content that speaks directly to your customers, you help your brand stand out as a leader and build deeper, more trusting relationships with clients.

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