The Internet Doesn’t Trust Your Company

Joshua Ahlers
By: Joshua Ahlers
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Make Sure You’re Not Making These 8 Mistakes

When it comes to the internet, the greatest curse within a blessing is the ability to be completely anonymous. This often comes with a lot of natural distrust, though, and when you’re a business that's online it’s easy to fall into dangerous waters. Simple mistakes can make you seem insincere, fake, spammy or even untrustworthy. Notice that none of these by themselves are exactly enough to make your company look fake, but they are definitely red flags you should watch for!

Tons of Followers, No Interaction:

Alright, let’s be real, most of us may have the second part of that, but “tons of followers” is not a term that many companies are complaining about. There are many of you, though, who may have used inauthentic means of increasing your follow or like count on your social media accounts. It’s a thing. For many reasons it does make sense and to a careless eye it may even seem impressive. However, your social interaction is what gives you away and this is what people will notice. 10k followers but only 2 likes per tweet on average? Something is up and not only does this cancel out any impressive perception of your company, but throws a negative shade on it as well.

You Only Use Stock Imagery:

Stock imagery is great, and as an agency, we use it all the time. Something we rarely suggest is using nothing but stock photography on your website or social media accounts. People are good at picking out a stock photograph. You are too, no doubt. If you lack unique and personal images within your online presence, you are failing to depict depth to your brand. It can also be taken as being insincere too.

You Don’t Feature Your Staff On The Website:

Once again, this alone is not by default going to make you look like an untrustworthy company. However, a business that displays its employees proudly not only says wonders about what it thinks of them and their work but also about how comfortable the employees are with the company they serve and the honest work it does for its clients.

You Don’t Use A Vanity Domain:

I almost didn’t add this to my list because, honestly, it should be a given. On the way back from the work yesterday I noticed a tow-truck with a sticker featuring a @yahoo.com email address. I went ahead and noted his number down because if he knew how easily he could use his website domain as his email domain, and how much of an impact that would be on how people perceive his professional profile, he would no doubt switch immediately. Due to how inexpensive domains are, and how simple they are to set-up or have set-up, not having one can say a lot of possibly inaccurate things about your company, how much it makes, and its attitude towards technological advancements. Again, many of these presumptions are likely false, but the tow-truck guy wasn’t going to settle that with me on I71.

Your Blog Posts Are Empty:

If you are at the point of blogging, I applaud you. It’s not easy to keep up a blog, and for that alone you should be commended. I have another challenge for you, though. Don’t write empty blog posts. It feels fake and insincere. It feels like spam. What I mean by that is don’t just fill a post with words that either repeat themselves or repeat a common idea that has already been expressed numerous times just for views and social-media fodder. Blog posts are an opportunity to be unique, be informative, and express character and personality. People love informative blog posts with personality. If all you’re writing is just 300 words on another blog post you read earlier from someone else, you are probably not helping the people on the internet out very much! Be personal. Be informative.

You Don’t Provide A Phone Number:

Unless you’re Google (who probably saves billions doing this) you probably don’t have a good excuse for not having some form of a phone number. Not everyone is comfortable emailing-- it feels slow, delayed and unprioritized. If you can give me a good reason to go all no-phone-oh-- cool, but you should know that on top of it being annoying, it also feels illegitimate and shady when you can’t get in contact with an actual voice behind a company.

You Permit Interruptions:

I have seen plenty business websites with ads, popups, self-playing videos, and plenty of other annoying nuisances that make for a confusing experience. A website should have a goal to drive viewers down a path, and if you are grabbing people’s attention in any way other than that, not only are you swaying them from your very own mission, but it actually feels like you don’t know what you want them to do. If you are Amazon, don’t listen to me. If you aren’t Amazon, please consider where you want your viewers to go on your website and the best, most pleasant way of guiding them there. People want to be led, not pulled in 10 different directions at once.

You Don’t Have A Website:

Okay so if your business has no web presence, and ESPECIALLY none in the form of a website… please call that buddy you know who makes them, or get on SquareSpace.com and make it yourself, or ask your teen relative/brother/kid/niece to make you one. It doesn’t have to be the best site in the world. A site is better than no site, even if it’s not a great site. Just start with a site! Obviously, The Marketing Squad is here as well and we’d be more than happy to assist you to get on the web, or even just consult you about one. Whatever you do, please just do it.

I can’t express enough how not any one of these alone is enough to make you look fake exactly. They are warning signs and if you feel that your company falls under any of these descriptions, then there are steps to fixing them. Once again, the people I work with at The Squad will be happy to take your email or call and discuss how you can be more relevant and appealing online!

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