Everyone knows what an office looks like: grey walls, cubicles, or an open plan space with beige walls, uninteresting desks and a forgettable carpet.
The image most people carry around in their heads of the office is not an inspiring one. And similarly, many corporate websites are entirely forgettable. This does not need to be the case.
Build Up Your Brand With a Better Website
To revolutionise your company’s image, there has never been a better time to create an excellent website. With many freelance programmers around, as well as professional services which will design a professional website to your specifications quickly and cheaply, there is no reason to have stock images and ugly blocks of text on your company website.
To enhance your company’s image after setting up a website you can work well, see if staff are happy to be photographed and potentially quickly interviewed to gather promotional materials.
You can then put this promotional material together and present a warm and positive impression of your company online.
Having a positive online image is one of the first things that people will check for when looking up your company, and encountering a positive online presence can make a difference in how both potential employees and potential clients see you.
However, if it is true that you can increase interest and traffic with a better website, especially one which is better advertised with modern Search Engine Optimization techniques, it is also true that you should be looking to your physical office to see what can be improved. The stock image of the physical office is an uninspiring space.
To boost productivity and employee happiness, it is well worth looking around and seeing what you can do to improve the physical experience of coming to work.
This can seem far harder than updating your online presence, but its positive effects can be many times greater on staff morale, focus, and productivity. People work better in spaces where they can feel positive.
Workplace Design
Many companies that put a good deal on money into maintaining a cutting-edge online presence fail to consider bringing their online dynamism into the office itself.
This might sound irrelevant, but poor office design can affect a huge host of things, from making people mildly irritable, to having serious effects on workers mental health in the case of people who have Seasonal Effective Disorder and are stuck away from windows and other sources of light in winter.
Improving your office interior design can seem like a daunting task, which is why it is worthwhile looking for a professional, specialist firm to improve it.
Before contacting your chosen firm make a list of your requirements. If you make this a collaborative process with your employees then you will pick up on issues you might never have realized needing resolving.
Also be clear on your budget and make this clear to the design firm from the outset so that all parties can quickly get a sense of what is viable.
Make the Most of Both, Going Forward
With your new strategy of recording and photographing your own people in place – and potentially an incredible new working environment for them to operate in – you’ll have everything you need to avoid resorting to stock imagery ever again.
Even if you don’t have a dedicated marketing department, you can still encourage staff at all levels to think about what it worth recording with short videos and photography, from day to day.
And really, once you’re in the habit of doing so on a regular basis, this becomes far easier over time. Your striking new work-space will be the centerpiece of your new online presence, with people able to recognize the style of your brand, the ethos of your company, and the setup of your business – all as part of the same, positive and progressive entity. And the result of this process can be astounding, whether it’s meeting with clients, inviting potential applicants into the building for interview, or building trust with customers.
Essentially, with so many options available for people, particularly online, putting your reality into your online presence helps you to stand out from the crowd. While everybody can be enticed by offers, prices, and USPs, it boils down to people engaging with other people.
So, if you’re using other, other people as part of your digital presence, you’re losing the personality of the very people you depend on to run your business. Put them, your brand, and your working environment front and centre of your online presence as often as possible.
Author: Edwin Owusu Peprah
