Anchor Your Brand With Your Corporate Website

There are many channels to spread your brand message. from the traditional print and electronic media, to the information age’s social media. So then why is it so difficult to make your brand identity stick to your intended audience? Answer – Anchor… Or rather the lack thereof…

Dawn Of The Information Age

With so many channels of information dissemination available to you (mind you, many of them are actually free), it is next to impossible for you not to be able to spread your brand message across. Gone are the days when media cost are way more expensive than the content creation cost. Plus, traditional media has a finite exposure window to spread your message.

Billboards would stay up about six-months, while poster ads at your neighbourhood convenience store would last perhaps a week before being taken down. Print ads in magazines would probably last you a week, while newsprint last no more than a single day. TV and radio ads are the saddest, lasting an average of only 30 seconds per airing.

Want your message to stay up longer and enjoy a wider exposure? Well, then be prepared to purchase more media. All in all, media cost will end up biting a big chunk out of your Advertising and Promotion (A&P) budget. Much more than the cost to conceptualise and design your message in the first place.

And just when you thought that you have come to the end of the road… You realise social media is actually free… Yes, free!…

FREE Media Channels For Brand Dissemination

Yes, social media is free… At least most of them are. Of course, there are those who offer “free accounts” for basic (and highly limited) access, and will then pester you to upgrade to the premium paid account for “unlimited” access. Yes LinkedIn, I’m talking about you.

Of course, you could easily set up a corporate account on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, or other social media channels that you can get your hands on. But do bear in mind that whatever content that you publish there, it will only last as long as the ten latest updates in that particular channel. Also, the more contacts that you have, the faster new updates will appear. Not many people actually bother to scroll down to read “outdated” updates. In short, your updates can probably last no more than just a few seconds…

Hmmm… So social media isn’t a sound business choice for a media platform?… Not quite… Social media is part of the answer to your quest to disseminate your brand message, just not the whole answer.

Anchor Media Platform

What every business really need is an Anchor Media Platform. A permanent platform that is available to you permanently. A platform that you have full control at all times. Full control here also mean that you must be able to update any latest news, and have the ability to add or edit information to an already published article.

Believe it or not, most companies already have one – it is called the corporate website.

Assuming that your corporate website isn’t an undead website, you can have a wealth of information and updates freely available to your visitors. As an anchor media platform, your corporate website will be the centre of your brand universe that stores your standard corporate logo, corporate colours, corporate tagline, and everything else that identifies what your brand identity is all about.

But having a well developed and regularly updated corporate website doesn’t automatically attract visitor traffic to itself. You will still have to go out and “sell” your corporate website to your visitors. You have developed your anchor. It is now time to start developing your satellites.

Satellite Media Platforms

Satellite media platforms include all the high-traffic portals, where just about anybody in the cyber world would congregate regularly. These are mainly social media, where people share their thoughts, photos, emotions, and just about anything that they think others might want to know about.

Once you have established your anchor, the centre of your brand universe, it is time to start making your presence on these satellites. Every time you publish an article in your corporate website, just share a link and a short description on what the latest post is all about in all your satellite accounts. Just make sure that you don’t over-sell yourself there. Make it as though you are sharing useful information to all of the “residents” of the channel. Your objective is to attract as many visitors as possible to visit your corporate website.

Contents That People Are Actually Interested In

Of course, visitors will come to your corporate website only if there are interesting and unique information to share on a regular basis. Nothing turns visitors away more than infrequent updates and irrelevant information. Always make it interesting for the visitors, not for your own consumption.

If primary visitors really like what they see in your corporate website, they just might share it with their circle of cyber contacts. And hopefully, that will attract secondary visitors to your corporate website too.

If all goes well, it won’t be long before you have a regular traffic visiting your corporate website on a daily basis. What better way to spread your brand message than to have visitors voluntarily coming to your website regularly?

But How To Guarantee Quality And Regular Content Creation?

While the “How To” part of this article is pretty straightforward, you still need specialists to churn out quality, relevant and regular posts to keep your corporate website alive. And no, you can’t get your product managers or marketing executives to moonlight as writers. They can’t be expected to produce quality articles while performing their primary duties.

If you really want to do it right the first time, consider hiring full-time professional writers to produce your articles. You need journalists more than technical specialists in order to keep your articles coming on a regular basis.

With a well organised anchor, and a regularly updated satellites, you will save a whole lot of money by not buying unnecessary media. Throw in a dedicated editorial team taking care of your anchor contents, your brand will grow exponentially within the next few months.