The 5 Imperative Elements For Improving Your Brand’s Influence

Understanding how much investment - in effort, time and money - is definitely required to improve your influence as a brand. 

The ladder to improving your brand’s influence is a long one. There are many steps along the way. Success in building your influence requires a steady pace, while integrating various tactics to build your brand.

While you’ll no doubt hit moments of fatigue — and a fair share of setbacks and doubts along the way — don’t let any of that knock you off your strategy. If I’ve learned anything from building my own brand, it’s all about consistency.  

Here are five elements for improving your brand’s influence: 

One: Create and Distribute Well-Crafted Content

“You are what you publish.” - David Meerman Scott

You can’t communicate your ideas broadly or scale relationships without content. You can’t be everywhere, meeting every single client or potential customer in person and answering all their questions. 

That’s where your content becomes so effective: It’s scalable.

Publishing and distributing your content is one of the most effective ways of positioning yourself as a leader in your industry and reaching your broader audiences. Eighty-five percent of B2B marketers tend to agree, saying that content creation was a key factor in their organizations’ overall success.

Two: Embrace Transparency

"A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity." - Dalai Lama

Customers want a business to be clear and open about their mission, products, and history. 

Details about the company’s founding, leadership, product reviews, and other pertinent details are acceptable forms of transparent branding. Sharing information that is tacky or in poor taste, however, should be avoided at all costs. 

Another method is to share your brand’s journey. As your company develops and evolves, one should share what is happening with your blogs, videos and podcasts. Share human interest stories, as well as changes occurring with your products and services.

There is a fine line between marketing an edgy brand and sharing details that are too personal or offensive, and business people should strive not to cross it.

Three: Exhibit Genuine Empathy

“Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.” - Oprah Winfrey

In an age in which understanding your customers and building relationships with them has become key to standing out in crowded marketplaces, empathy takes on a new level of priority. 

Empathy allows brands to build an emotional connection with their audience, to engage the people who use their products in real conversations and to inspire connection.

Now that we are illustrating our personal brands on Facebook and Instagram, commercial brands have the opportunity to not just advertise, but to create an identity. In other words, “What does your brand stand for?”

Four: Impinging Knowledge 

“Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.”  - Louis L’Amour

While showing empathy and character is key to building a brand, one must also appeal to those who want information, insights, metrics, and documented results.

Throughout your company's training and culture, as well as infused within all your content, are those facts and know-how that will impinge upon the cerebral aspects of how we get to know and trust a brand. 

There is something special about a waiter who has a deep understanding of not only the food, but how the chef meticulously crafts your meal with expertise and care. This is true of any brand: Do your team members represent your brand in their actions and the knowledge they share? 

It is also important that your brand shares knowledgeable content such as FAQ’s, reports, case studies, industry news, and “how to” information to make your brand transparent on what it knows and understands. 

Five: Get Involved As A Leader & Speaker

 "People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision." - John Maxwell

Community involvement, networking with critical players, and public speaking are all important activities to boosting your brand’s perception and leadership.

There is only so much you can do by sitting behind a keyboard, your blog or a video screen. Brands which have built epic leadership get involved with real people, elbow-to-elbow.

Look at the activities and lifestyles of Sir Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Garry Vaynerchuk, and Grant Cardone. They not only represent massively successful brands, they are upfront with their content, industry events and public speaking at various conferences. 

They lead their brand from the front. They are involved in a very personal way and they are engaging with their audiences on social media and in person. 

Study such leaders and develop your own strategy and style to emulate the examples that they continually set.