It takes brands a lot more time to heal from a mistake than it does to make one. And little mistakes add up. All too often, I come across a website, Facebook ad, Instagram photo, PPC ad, sponsored Tweet or company email that has painfully missed the mark.

No business is the same as another, but no one is immune from making these basic mistakes– and you will probably see at least one of these today. Here are 5 ways to keep your brand’s image pristine!

Plan Your Livestream Events Strategically

Facebook Live, Snapchat, Instagram Live, Periscope– these tools and others are all great ways to build an audience and brand enthusiasm. But you can leave your audience baffled or even disappointed if you start streaming without a strategy and a plan (or at least a loose agenda) for your event.

All too often, I tune into Livestreams for brands that just want to say Hi, but end up fumbling with what to say or show, streaming something uninteresting/irrelevant, not getting things to work, or even admitting they did not have an actual idea what they were going to do. Every person in your target audience has a lot going on, and it is up to you to show them why spending precious time with your brand is important. Scripted lines and camera shots are not necessary, but do ask yourself before livestreaming: Who am I streaming to? What value will they gain from this? How does this change brand perception or add to brand image? How will using Livestream help achieve our brand/sales/loyalty goals?

Stop Promoting Other Brands (Unintentionally)

A few weeks ago, I was looking at a company website and noticed that a lot of the staff photos included a particular brand of carbonated beverage. Was it a partner of theirs? A client? Were they using the brand to say something about themselves? The answer to the first two questions is, No, although the answer to the third question is, Yes— though such a statement was probably unintentional. Even trickier, the beverage brand most likely is unaware that it’s being used to promote another company.

This problem is even more prevalent on social media, where photos tend to be less choreographed. But no matter which platform you use (including Livestreams!), people will likely interpret intentional or unintentional placements of other brands as full-on brand endorsements. And the assumption is that the endorsement goes both ways.

Far more than just unintentional brand image issues, brand endorsements may present a conflict of interest with a current client or clients, or even legal issues if the other brand believes you are using it to make money without permission.

Secure Your Insecure Connection

Especially if you run an ecommerce, membership, or donation site where people must enter billing information, you lose trust very quickly if you do not provide a secure certificate and private connection.

Plus, Google, Facebook, and others can penalize you by not allowing some users through if they are on, for instance, a public wifi server. So having people clicking on Google ads that lead to a message like this means you wasted money on the click and they do not get to see the website.

Repair Broken Links & Images

Links and images break most often when the source or destination code has changed. Much of this is in older content, and therefore a lot of companies take it less seriously. From a marketer’s perspective, however, that content is still benefitting you in both the Search Index and in giving people valuable strategic content. You will lose points with both Google and your target audiences if you let your links and images stay broken.

Make sure the links and images you use on your website are updated and working, even if they are on blog posts from 3 years ago (or more). Your credibility will fall if a citation or reference leads nowhere, and user frustration will increase. Plus, users often start believing something is wrong with them, their connection or browser, when they cannot access a link or load an image.

Fixing this is simple and will greatly enhance your user experience. If links provided on social media are updated, for example if you update your website, it may be worth posting again or at least editing the posts to reflect the updated URLs, too.

Get Rid of Your Stock Imagery

If you use stock images, at the minimum find a way to pay for a license. Using watermarked Getty Images as your header for your blog looks unprofessional at the least, and at most, the image license holder can take expensive legal action.

Contact Anvil for any of your marketing needs, we will ensure that you are not making mistakes like these.