The Blog - Where Business Collides with Human Nature

Nowadays, in a post-social-networks world, making your company and brand feel relatable to your customer base is much more than just a boon. It is a necessity.

Regardless of your commitment to social media strategies and overall marketing approach, producing content that reflects your company as engaging, empathetic, and responsive, is something your marketing team should be (and probably is) actively pursuing.

Why? Because audiences are more likely to do business with you when they feel like they know your company and brand on a more personal level.  

Your customers may know what you offer from an explainer video or other sort of content.

But if they feel like they understand (and relate to) what your company stands for on top of that, they are a great deal more likely to engage with it and come back for more later. So, the question becomes how to go about doing just that?

The goal is to tell a story.

The goal is to humanize your brand. Put the values that motivate you and your teams in front of your customers for them to connect.

The best way to hit all those targets in the least amount of time?

…company story videos.

• Google has made it clear that it is keeping more traffic on Google owned properties through an increase in SERP features.
• The result has been a decline in the available traffic to the organic results.
• This has forced businesses and site owners to refocus marketing efforts on alternate sources of traffic, increase conversion from current traffic and branding as a way to improve search visibility.

 The competition for keyword rankings are increasing daily and it is becoming more important to protect the traffic you currently generate in order to sustain growth.  

 For the first time ever the total amount of zero-click searches have become the majority result in the total queries made on Google’s search engine.

 This landmark event should be cause for concern as the trend may continue past the 51% of searches that are now click-less. This has resulted from the emergence of Google SERP features that are more frequently being displayed in a search result.

If you introduce yourself as a broker, you may see eyes dart back and forth as the person you are talking to looks for an excuse to escape.  "Broker" in almost any context means "sales person".  The exception is when someone is already interested in buying or when they have something to sell.

Introducing and branding yourself as a broker is similar to branding yourself a doctor.  Doctors are more respected. Both "broker" and "doctor" are generalized labels which leaves more questions than answers.

In the new world of data and media, everything is indexed, including your services. When you dig deeper into Google's keyword ideas tool and ask for suggestions for terms related to "broker", there are many ideas provided:

A strong online presence is essential when it comes to the success of your small business.  In fact, according to the marketing firm Optify, it is vital for websites to appear on Page 1 of Google, especially in the top three positions. These spots receive 58.4 percent of all clicks by web users.

In order to increase your credibility and boost your online profile, you have a couple of options to select from.  You can hire a costly professional in the internet marketing field, or take hold of the reins and find ways to bolster your online presence yourself. 

If you take the route of doing it alone, there are several free applications you can take advantage of to help you.  Read on for 7 brilliant tools you may not know exist: