How to Use Content to Build Your Brand

One of the key tenets of successful brand building and brand management is cultivating and maintaining the right kinds of associations and perceptions that positively impact your relationship with your target audiences.

Brand identity, which you build through the consistent use of your logo, imagery, fonts, and color palette, all help to convey the values and ideas behind your brand. Much of the success of your brand in the marketplace, however, is dependent upon how well you build and manage the intangible components ― that is, perceptions, values, and beliefs.

When leveraged appropriately, your content can be a valuable brand-building tool that ensures your target audiences know who you are, what you stand for, and what you believe. Ultimately, your goal is to build trust, word of mouth, and differentiation.

A part of your overall content strategy should focus on “view us this way” conversations. And the more you know what’s important or interesting to your audiences, the better you can develop content that helps align your brand. Read on to learn how.

Brand Association Building in Your Content Strategy

Associations are those sorts of impressions, alignments, or memories that help your audiences better understand the idea behind your brand and what it is you deliver. They can be cultivated via endorsements, sponsorships, awards, partnerships, or corporate citizenship practices.

A blog is a tool that some brands use to help communicate and reinforce the intangible parts of their brand. How so? Let’s say your primary target audience cares a lot about the environment. Your company has sustainable business practices in place that, for example, focus on recycling plastic, cardboard, motor oil, or rubber. A blog article on sustainable business practices in the automotive industry could offer context that you can leverage to illuminate your own practices and align with what your target audience also cares about ― a cleaner environment.

The “bigger picture” concept of sustainability draws your audience in and helps create or strengthen positive impressions of your business. This content could also help the Google bots better understand your relevance for ranking in search, particularly if you post it right onto your website’s home page or relevant landing page(s).

What Do Your Customers Care About?

Perspective changes perception. The way we build stronger bonds is to understand and acknowledge where the other guy is coming from. When it comes to marketing consumer goods, for example, life stages become important pillars of an effective segmentation strategy. For example, consumers who are buying their first home and having children will have different concerns, interests, or needs when compared with retiring workers who are downsizing their lifestyle. Use context in your content to build an image for your brand that appeals to the target audience you’re trying to attract.

Google Trends & Trending Topics

Have you used Google Trends to see what people are searching for ― around the world, throughout the country, or in your state, metro area, or city? It’s free, and you can access it here. Go to the menu dropdown in the upper left corner on the Google Trends home page and click on “Trending Searches” to see what topics are hot around the country or world right now. You might find a topic that you could leverage in your content (e.g., Tesla’s market capitalization as a trending topic and the future of electric cars as a potential blog article).

Real-Time Data in Google Analytics

Another way to build and leverage audience-focused content is to look at how users search for your products or services on your website. View your real-time reports in Google Analytics to look at contextual influences, such as the day or time of day your audiences are searching for your product or service, the device they’re using, where they are searching from, or what channel they prefer. Your content strategy can include ways to deliver a message that will resonate with them at key touchpoints.

In our consumer-driven society, it can be a challenge to connect with an audience who increasingly determines when, where, and how often they want to engage. Learn all you can about them, and let them get to know you better.

For information on how Aronson can help you build or execute an effective content strategy, or how you can join the Aronson team, contact us today at 847-297-1700.

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