We live in the digital age. This makes communication activities much easier: instead of hiring expensive PR agents, today everyone has the opportunity to use digital communication channels themselves and thus effectively address a large number of users, customers and interested parties, even with a small budget. In this article, you can find out what you need to consider as a consultant with regard to digital communication, how you can plan your digital communication and build a personal brand through strategic networking.
Digital communication - website at the heart
Already in the last article of my personal branding series you have found out which touchpoints exist between you and your target group.
Your website is a crucial point of contact. It is the most important communication and information channel that you use to draw attention to yourself, provide information about your portfolio and get in direct contact with your customers.
You can design your website yourself or work with an agency. It is important that the design authentically reflects both your personality and your expertise. To this end, you should design (or have someone else design) a corporate identity that bears your signature in terms of graphics and design. This applies to the choice of colors, fonts, slogans and photos.
The following also applies on the website: When addressing customers, you should always take the customer's perspective and place the needs and wishes of your customers at the center of your information.
Search engine optimization through relevant keywords
Providing high-quality content also has a positive effect on the ranking of your content in Google search results. This is because Google ranks high-quality content higher. To do this, the search engine applies various criteria based on which, for example the SEO plugin Yoast (WordPress) Texts checked.
The prerequisite for this is,
- know the relevant keywords and
- know the search terms that customers and demand groups use to look for solutions.
There are various tools for keyword research, for example Keywordtool.io, Google Ads or also Google Trends. With their help you can find out,
- how large the search volume is,
- how the search volume has developed in recent months
- and how strong the competition is.
Keywords with a high search volume and low competition are ideal. This is best achieved with so-called "long-tail keywords", i.e. keywords that consist of several terms.
Google Trends also tells you which search terms are currently being searched for most frequently. This allows you to adapt your current content accordingly.
Blog - always up to date
An important part of the website - in addition to the homepage, service overview and "About me / About us" - is the blog. You can use the blog to strengthen your reputation as an expert by providing good content and improve your position in the search engine results. Interesting and well-researched blog posts can significantly increase the number of visitors to your website.
Tips for finding a topic
The high-quality content of your blog posts is crucial. High quality is what interests your customers. How do you get such topics? Here are a few possibilities:
- Customer surveys and direct discussions
- Research in forums
- Research in social media groups
- Specialist articles in industry magazines
- Blog posts from competitors
- Own projects
- Reports from events and conferences
- Summarize and present current studies on relevant topics
- Statements from associations on current topics
- Research on Google Trends.
Tips for organization
Your blog should not only be of high quality, but also regularly updated. Ideally, you should blog once a week. As this is difficult to implement in addition to your day-to-day business, you should schedule fixed production times every month. For example, pre-write all blog posts every four weeks and publish them successively.
Newsletter - interface for direct customer contact
When it comes to digital communication, a newsletter is the interface between your website, blog and social media channels. You can use it to inform your customers and readers about current offers and prepare relevant content. You need to strike a balance between information and advertising in the newsletter - if the latter is too strong, it will not be read and may even be unsubscribed from altogether. The decisive advantage of a newsletter for you is lead generation and the creation of a mailing list. Be sure to offer the option to subscribe to the newsletter on your website and social media channels.
Ideally, you should sort your newsletter subscribers by tag so that you can send your customers individualized information.
To attract newsletter subscribers, you can offer a free product - for example a download, an interesting study or a maturity level test.
Digital communication 2.0: Social media
In addition to the website, blog and newsletter, social media are of course also an important part of a digital communication strategy. They give you the opportunity to get in direct contact with your customers and promote dialog, exchange and networking.
Communication tips for social media
Social media have their own style of interaction. It is important to take this into account if you want to position yourself here as part of your digital communication. Here are some tips:
- Be approachable and authentic.
- Present yourself as a person and as an expert.
- Communicate your values.
How can this be implemented in social media postings?
- Better imperfect: Formulations, language and images do not have to be glossy. This is at the expense of authenticity.
- No advertising: Social media is about getting information and getting in touch with each other. No sales animation!
- Be approachable and genuine. Tell your customers what you are passionate about and inspire others. Keyword emotions, as I mentioned in the Contribution to storytelling have described!
- Actively seek interaction and encourage participation in surveys, sharing of posts and respond directly to requests and impulses.
Plan items
As with maintaining your blog, you can plan your social media posts in advance. Because here too, regularity is key. You should therefore also spread out your social media posts over a longer period of time.
The Hootsuite or Buffer tools post automatically at set times. With Facebook, you can use the Facebook post scheduler to directly specify when the post should go online.
A strategic approach to digital communication and networked planning
Always consider your digital communication as an overall strategy and not each platform separately. This is the only way to exploit synergy effects and achieve the greatest possible impact. It also allows you to save time by using content multiple times. You can do this in five steps:
- Define channel: Which platform do you want to use? Blog, Facebook or YouTube channel?
- Collect topics: Consider the relevant keywords and search terms for each channel.
- Set format: Are you shooting a video or writing a blog article?
- Create an editorial plan
- Create production and publication plan
In any case, keep in mind that regular publications are mandatory for anyone who wants to retain their readers, listeners, viewers and thus customers in the long term. Google also rewards regular updates with a higher ranking in the search results. So: get started and launch your digital communication for your personal brand!
(Cover image: © mrmohock | Fotolia)
