Your brand is the first thing your target audience should mention. Do you agree with this?
In order for your potential customers to know about your brand, they need to come across your brand in multiple places.
Your marketing strategy calls for you to use multiple channels to get your brand name and products out there. This is the basis for mentioning your brand name.
You are probably running PPC campaigns, advising posts, promoting backlink acquisitions, etc. All of that is good and, if you do it right, will help your online presence, but not necessarily your brand name.
You see, our brand name requires a very different strategy to really bear fruit.
That’s exactly what you’ll learn in this post. How to use your brand mentions the right way.
The power of mentions for online marketing
Mentions can come in many different forms, but generally, they refer to instances where a specific brand name, company, or website is referenced online. Mentions strengthen your brand name and help drive traffic and increase your brand awareness.
From a search engine point of view, mentions send signals to all search engines that your brand is being mentioned in other places on the internet rather than on your website alone.
These signals can be either positive or negative. Regardless of what they are, when a brand name is mentioned in other places online, there is always the chance that the brand will become more recognizable.
The value of mentions in SEO is just as important as the value of any other SEO factor you can consider.
If you implement a content strategy, a backlink strategy, or a technical optimization strategy without having a brand mention strategy, the true potential of your online advertising campaigns will not be realised.
Debunking mentions for Search Engine Optimization “SEO”
Mentions are not your last resort to get your brand noticed. There are other ways people can get to know your brand. For example: Bombarding your audience with your products multiple times and not letting them know it’s the brand they’re consuming.
You can see this multiple times, with products that practically ignore the fact that their brand name should be more prominent in all promotional materials.
Mentions are NOT backlinks. Backlinks are URLs embedded in a text or image with the intention that when a user clicks on it, they will be redirected to the landing page of that hyperlink.
A brand mention is just that: somewhere or someone “mentions” either through text, voice or image the name of a brand.
Mentions are NOT citations. Citations work differently than brand mentions, although a citation includes a “mention” of your brand name.
You might like to read: Citations, All You Need To Know
You need to understand them differently because the strategy for citations is different from the strategy for mentions.
Mentions are NOT only for local brand awareness. Mentions can work locally and globally. Depending on the goal of your marketing strategy, mentions should provide a framework for that goal, whether you want to create more brand awareness in your local area first and go global later. Or you want to do local #online marketing.
Mentions expire and expire quickly. Since they don’t include a hyperlink and are tied to the visibility of the location, mentions can lose their impact pretty quickly.
Focus on frequent brand mention activity and monitor it, and your brand mentions can live longer.
Never underestimate the power of mentions
Digital marketers usually focus on getting backlinks. Some of them underestimate the power of mentions. Too many of them aren’t even aware that they should be paying attention to mentions in the first place.
You don’t necessarily need to see mentions with a link. Because of this, some digital marketers assume they have no SEO value. Especially when it comes to SEO strategies. And as you can see, this assumption is completely wrong.
Mentions may not have the SEO power of inbound links, but don’t think they don’t count – especially if the referring source or website is one that people know and trust.
It’s a well-kept secret that Google has been taking mentions and links seriously for several years now. No one outside of Google knows exactly how the algorithms evaluate mentions and links.
But we do know that mentions and links contribute positively to search engine visibility. Likewise, it never hurts to have prospects read about you or your business on reputable websites.
It’s a real benefit to be promoted by your local media or industry press. And after reading this, you’ll better understand why online reviews, testimonials, or social mentions help you build your online reputation.
It can also hurt your online reputation if these mentions are negative and you ignore them.
How to get mentions to increase your brand strength
Just working on brand mentions will give your business a nice SEO boost in search results, as mentions count as implicit brand signals for building trust. is there a better exercise to get your brand known?
Bookmark this page for the near future, because you need to know the best 6 ways to build brand mentions from scratch.
Best 6 ways to build brand mentions from scratch
- Share great content
- Encourage and follow customer reviews
- Guest blogging
- Participate in forums and online communities
- Public lectures and events
- Issuing press releases
1. Share great content
If you create good content, you don’t have to do much to get some visibility. But if you also encourage sharing and redistribution of your content, that will drastically increase the traction of your content.
Implicitly, this visibility is mentioned. People will probably remember where they got that content from, and if your content is really great, that means you have some branding strategies built into it.
Images, logos, addresses, all that kind of #branding information that your potential customers need to see to remember.
👍 Pro Tip: brand your images and creative with your brand name and loges when possible
2. Encourage and follow customer reviews
Encouraging your actual customers is a great way to get brand mentions. When you get good feedback, your brand awareness increases and your business growth speeds up!
But you need to monitor these reviews. Keep an eye on them and track them on the internet. Otherwise, you might get some bad mentions that you might ignore completely.
3. Mentions in guest blogging
Guest blogging is great for brand name mentions because this is a strategy for brand awareness and not just backlinking.
Despite the myth that guest blogging helps your domain authority, you need to use guest blogging for what it is meant for: “brand awareness”. Let Domain Authority be a consequence of your guest blogging strategy and not as the goal for it
Use blogging to let people know about your brand authority in your industry. Forget about trying to get a backlink. Google and other search engines are well aware of guessing blogging for backlink manipulation.
This makes these websites or businesses lose trustworthiness to Google, the main search engine you should be concerned about.
4. Participate in forums and online communities
Your industry will likely be filled with discussion on the topic. Many websites have active discussion boards that people can visit and ask questions about their topics of interest.
When you use these online communities to reach potential customers, let them know about your brand name and your products or services.
You can find these communities on social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
Let your brand name be active on these social channels which are an opportunity to bring business.
5. Public lectures and events
Public events are a discreet yet effective way to add power to your brand mentions. Invest in more offline marketing activities, such as public speaking, interviews, and in-person networking. These activities allow you to build more personal and genuine brand awareness in your industry.
Not to mention the power that comes with being a public speaker. You gain instant brand recognition as the expert in your market. Try to find public events that are geared towards your potential customers.
You can also ask the event organizer if they are looking for public speakers.
Yes, do a quick search on Google the result will probably be a list of local conferences in your industry.
Measuring the ROI of activities like public speaking and networking is not easy, nor should it be your goal.
You want to build brand awareness, and getting online mentions probably shouldn’t be your only goal when engaging your brand in offline activities. These public events are effective in building your overall brand strength and creating real relationships.
6. Issuing press releases helps brand mentions
A press release enriches the power of “brand mention” with a variety of benefits for your business. Press releases are essential in shaping your brand’s engagement.
Press releases target journalists who matter when it comes to increasing your brand awareness and trust. By doing so, you influence the reach of your target audience.
Don’t focus your press releases on how great your company is, but on getting others to talk about your brand name and products.
The difference is clear; a press release is not just a mention of your brand, it “mention” your brand name, but the reason for the press release is different.
Why press releases are important for your brand awareness.
- Business credibility
- Cost-effective marketing
- Rich information
- Positive impact
- Engagement with the customer
- Engagement leads to higher sales
- SEO and search engines
Remember to track your brand mentions.
You track your backlink profile, and you also need to track your brand mentions. It’s important to monitor your brand mentions to find out what people are saying about your business online.
How can you track brand mentions?
When users tag your brand in their social media posts, you can see what they’re writing about your brand by checking your notifications. But what if they do it outside of your social media? OK, Yes, freak out now… 😋 Nah, just kidding!
Social media uses these “listening tools” to monitor these “keyword mentions”.
Take note of these eight great tools to help you monitor your online reputation.
- Google Alerts
- Social Mention
- TweetDeck
- Reputology
- SentiOne
- Reputation Ranger
- Sprout Social
- HootSuite
If you use any of the above brand name monitoring tools, you will instantly know when your brand is mentioned positively or negatively. This isn’t about tagging; they don’t have to tag your business name or even use your social media brand name for the tracking tools to work.
It’s worth noting that you should keep track of your brand mentions and your competitors’ brand mentions. You can use the same social monitoring tools to check your competitors’ activity to build awareness and spy on what their online customers are saying about them.
Focus on the type of content they share and their audience’s reactions to it. Don’t just look at the “likes”, but also the reactions, comments, questions, and the number of shares. Look at their content or sharing strategies that you can learn from. Find ways to incorporate them into your own marketing strategy if it makes sense.
Wrapping up mentions
The more positive brand mentions, the more people think positively about your brand, which leads to more trust and more sales and returning customers.
I know you just read a long, detailed article, but our hope is that you learned a lot from it.
A brand name mention strategy isn’t complicated, so anyone can do it. (Meaning you!)
And your business will reap more benefits.
Follow these steps shared here, and you’ll soon see your website rankings trending upward, and you’ll get more qualified traffic and customers.
In terms of our connection to SEO, remember that brand name mentions are a long-term strategy. Forget overnight successes in SEO.
Brand name mentions are becoming more and more valuable, and if you get a lot of them, it will drive your rankings up.
You’ll also improve your brand’s perception and visibility online. Remember, more positive brand mentions equals more people thinking positively about your brand name.
Use a brand mentions strategy along with all of your SEO strategies. Doing this will give you more from your business than what it already is giving you.
