Any given town can be expected to have both positive and negative aspects of its public image. In fact, this is also true of any given brand. There are lessons to be learned from that simple truth, and we would like briefly examine them as they apply to Charlotte, NC internet marketing.

A few recent headlines have caught our eye, which reflect upon how Charlotte might be seen by outsiders and people who might consider visiting or relocating to the area. One points out that a recent Travel and Leisure study determined Charlotte to have one of the least attractive populations in the country. But that same study acknowledged that people in the area are committed to health and fitness, which is made more interesting by the fact that the other headline deals with the ongoing improvements in the region’s air quality, and its impact on local health.

These simultaneous claims about the area illustrate a problem that’s likely to confront a Charlotte, NC internet marketing company, or anyone else who’s tasked with balancing positive and negative perceptions. If you’re handling internet marketing for a town or brand and you hear people saying both mean and nice things about that brand, you have a decision to make.

Charlotte, NC internet marketing, like any marketing, is about two things: promotion and damage control. There are times when one is more important than the other, and there are plenty of opportunities to be wrong about which it is. If you we were planning to craft a tourism campaign for Charlotte, NC in the wake of these headlines, we could choose to either play up the existing positive publicity or play down the existing negative publicity.

Supposing that you ever find yourself employing the services of a Charlotte, NC internet marketing firm, you should be aware of the fact that they’re going to have to sometimes pick your battles for you. Obviously, you can help them, but you’ll probably want to defer to professional marketers’ expertise about which public perceptions are worth fighting back against, and which are worth embracing.

This is even more evident when there’s data involved. A Charlotte, NC internet marketing company should be capable of analyzing recent internet searches and social media activity to get a clear picture of whether people really see Charlotte as healthy but ugly, or whether opinions are sufficiently divided that the overall opinion can still be shaped in one direction or the other.

The resulting data can also be used to hone which message was deemed most likely to be effective. If, for instance, a municipal campaign was aimed at emphasizing air quality improvements and Charlotte’s green future, one could use social media and SEO to push such complementary stories as the opening of a solar powered sun deck at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Whatever the chosen message and the supporting data might be, a Charlotte, NC internet marketing company can then use further data analysis to identify the right audience to target with the relevant campaign – such as people who follow either fashion models or fitness gurus on social media and who visit websites to match those priorities.

We can’t say with certainty which of the recent headlines would be better to focus on in a Charlotte, NC internet marketing campaign, but we can say with confidence that we would have the tools to shape such a campaign and also to use after-the-fact data analysis to determine whether it had proven as effective as anticipated. That is the power of data-driven social media marketing techniques to amplify positive perceptions and diminish negative perceptions of any given brand.