Corporate Internet Presence

Your corporate Internet presence is more than just your website, in the same way that you are more than your resume.

Both online and offline, your reputation precedes you.  But while memories fade over time, what gets said on the Internet also gets forwarded to friends, stored on servers and replicated across databases.

Your Online Reputation

So it’s important to have a strong corporate Internet presence, not only so people can find your company when they’re looking for the types of products and services your company offers.

It’s important to have a strong corporate Internet presence because it’s a record of your online reputation.  A company with a great reputation can easily overcome a few negative comments on the Internet.

But if the detractors are all anyone sees, it’s easy for prospects and customers to want to find one of your more “trustworthy” competitors.

Components of a Strong Corporate Internet Presence

In order to build a strong corporate Internet presence, you need to be where people are looking for information about purchases.

Corporate Website – Increasing ROI

The foundation of any corporate Internet presence is a website.  It’s open 24/7.  But many companies consider their website to be a cost center because they “don’t sell things online”.

This attitude leaves money on the table because every visitor that comes to a website has a potential revenue figure attached to them.

A solid online strategy considers the company’s cost per lead using other forms of marketing, their website’s traffic and their current conversion rate.

By increasing your site’s conversion rate, you increase the return on investment for your website — often for a lower cost per lead than other types of marketing.  As a bonus, the methods used to increase a site’s conversion rate can be fed back into your other collateral and sales materials, making them more effective as well.

This type of integrated marketing is essential for businesses.  We provide the Ignition Integrated Marketing Platform for maximizing your sales potential while reducing the resources you need to execute optimal marketing strategies.

Search Engine Presence – Get Found

The folks who do the Neilsen ratings for television also provide statistics for the Internet, and they say that when people use search engines, 77% of them aren’t searching for your brand name.

In fact, most people won’t know your company or its products before they find you.  That’s why it’s important to build a large search engine presence: it’s like having a larger fishing net.

Websites deployed using Ignition Systems products like the Ignition Web Content Publisher are search engine friendly and come with search engine optimization (SEO) software built-in.

Corporate Blog – Increase Search Engine Presence

Corporate blogs are an effective way of connecting directly with customers, bypassing the normal press release and public relations cycle.  Instead of relying on the press to pick up and distribute your information, your company can publish using a blog and all the automated syndication tools it comes with.

Blogs are websites that keep a running journal of entries, announcements and information.  They’re simple to update and don’t require a long publication cycle; a post the length of an average email can be very informative to readers.

What tends to get lost in the discussions around blogs is one very practical aspect: search engines love blogs.  Blogs are frequently updated, keyword rich content that search engines comb frequently for links they can provide for their users.

By blogging, your company isn’t only connecting on a more personal level with customers, prospects and other bloggers, it’s building a larger search engine presence — which means more leads.

Ignition Systems provides the best-of-breed Ignition Blog Publisher, which is a highly-customized, supported version of the popular Wordpress open source blogging software.  With the Ignition Blog Publisher, you’ll not only have the best blogging software, but the guidance and software support needed to thrive using it.

Social Media Engagement – Bolster Your Online Reputation

The traditional approach to public relations is to get critics at top-flight publications to review your company’s products and services.

But 83.8% of people said they would trust user reviews over a critic, according to a study by Marketing Sherpa in July 2007.

And in that same study, 86.9% of people would trust their friends’ opinions over that of a critic.

So the online review sites, blogs, discussion forums and social media networks where people talk to each other are an important channel for interacting with customers and prospects.

In many cases, they’re also business drivers.  Many businesses notice that customers who use online networking often purchase in clusters, and in greater volume.

Corporate web presences built using the Ignition Integrated Marketing Platform, with tools like the Ignition Blog Publisher, have integration with major social media networks built-in.

Improve Your Corporate Web Presence

At Ignition Systems, we can work with you to develop a corporate web strategy that helps improve your online reputation and grow your business.  Contact us today so we can tailor a solution to your corporate culture.