In business and professional world Marketers and Business Coaches are all saying every now and then to Build Your Brand.
Internet and social media have entirely changed the way our entire personal and professional world works.
Every person has an equal voice and immediate access to vast networks of friends and followers in the digital world through social media.
Customers are vocal —at times passionate—about the brands, products, and services they use, and what they like and dislike.
Marketers and PR professionals understand and know this very well and they can help you build your brand in the digital world.
84 percent of the global brand executives stated in a 2011 study that they feel their brand’s sociability is not up to the world-class brand standards.
Since then a lot has changed and more companies, whether they are B2B or B2C, start-up or enterprise, are integrating social media into their overall marketing plans.
Also, dedicating a line in their budgets for resources like Social Listening and Monitoring tools.
They are also investing in hiring Social Media Managers to manage their brands and communication online on social media.
They have learned the power of social media and digital footprint and now they want to take advantage of the incredible opportunities available in the social space, like lead generation, sales generation, real-time customer service and the opportunity to identify and work with brand evangelists.
Build Your Brand
The discussion below will help you to understand how to build your brand in the digital world and what tools, techniques, strategies you would use to have a competitive edge over your competition.
Determine Goals for Your Social Media Engagement
Going online without a well-thought plan is troublesome at best and disastrous at worst. And when you want to Build Your Brand online then you need to be very careful in everything you do online.
First, think about the goals you want to achieve by engaging in social media. Do you want to have conversations and provide customer service?
Are you a retailer looking to drive better sales? Is your business highly visual? Are you looking for brand advocates and influencers to help you make your brand more visible on the digital mediums and search engines?
All of these should be considered when setting your goals for social media. Once you have them in place(documented), you can plan your social media strategy.
Determine Your Online Brand Persona
Before you go online, figure out how to take your brand out there in the social world. Your company already has a brand, so it’s significant to establish a “social media voice” that matches your brand’s personality.
Here is what to consider:
Your Values or Mission
What is the focus of your company; what do you do differently than the competition, or what you offer which no one else is offering?
Visual Style and Brand Identity
Your brand’s social media presence should be consistent with your offline and traditional media presence.
Your Tone of Voice
How you will be communicating online. Different social channels lend themselves to different tones; for instance, LinkedIn is more formal and professional than Twitter.
Once you’ve decided how your brand is going to live online, consider creating a handbook or reference document. This will help create a seamless branding experience both online and offline and will be a valuable resource for customer service, community managers, digital marketers, employees, and stakeholders.
Decide on Your Social Media Platforms
Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are some of the most popular social platforms, but with hundreds to choose from and new ones popping up almost every day, how do you determine which ones are best for you?
Remember the time you took to decide your social media goals? Apply the same practice here. If you’re a retailer, Pinterest or Facebook might be for you because of the ability to share sales-related images and videos. Customer service-oriented companies may prefer the quickness of Twitter.
Whatever your platform of choice, maintaining a social media presence takes a lot of time; the more platforms you’re on, the more time it takes.
Not all platforms will be suited to your needs, so it’s worth taking the time to figure out what channels suit your company’s product and message and best address the needs of your customers and stakeholders.
Social media monitoring tools like Hootsuite, Brandwatch can help you locate where your customers are talking and who are sharing information, whether they’re on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.
Once you’re armed with this information, you can focus your social media efforts and build your brand on the specific platforms that are best suited to your company.
Get a Social Media Manager
Just because someone in your company is constantly “connected” online on social channels doesn’t make him or her the best choice for handling the social media strategy and communication for your brand.
To succeed in social media, you need a dedicated social media manager who knows your company and your business very well.
A successful social media manager has excellent communication skills, the ability to build rapport and connections, and a keen awareness of your brand. He or she is essentially the “voice” of your company and plays a crucial role.
A Social Media Manager is vital to the success of your social media strategy. Whether your organization has been at it a while or is just starting its social media initiatives, knowing what to expect can help you avoid some of the more common mistakes—and help ensure your own success.
Social media managers have been described as “A Jack of All Trades”. They’re brand ambassadors, crisis managers, customer service representatives, they handle budgets, develop and write content. They do it all—online and they build your brand presence on digital channels.
Take Control of Your Customer Service
Customer service is sometimes seen as the “killer app” of social media because it is an effective and immediate way to answer questions, resolve problems, provide solutions and react to bad customer experiences and help them resolve their issues instantly.
Social Media managers monitor online conversations and keep an eye out for certain positive or negative keywords.
To let a customer’s problem fester and go unanswered on a blog, Twitter or Facebook is asking for trouble. Because it suggests your company doesn’t care and is not listening to what its customers are saying. The goal of a Social Media Manager is to be proactive and reach out to customers.
One key point: Do not delete negative reviews or feedback. Negative feedback is perhaps the single most underrated opportunity for reputation management the social web has to offer.
Publishing and responding to negative reviews opens the door for several online marketing opportunities.
And by deleting them, you might miss the chance to turn negatives into positives, gain valuable feedback from a free focus group, and even improve your brand’s reputation.
By being willing to acknowledge mistakes and learn from them and most importantly to let people know that you care for your customers and proactively help them to resolve their problems.
And this one step will bring you more connected and loyal customers for your business.
This one is my tried and tested method which gave me great results every single time.
Have a Pre-Determined Crisis Management Plan
Shit happens! And when something unexpected happens that could damage your company or brand reputation you should be alert. Social media monitoring can be a very useful tool to handle any such crisis.
Here’s what you need to do to have your brand ready for any crisis situation:
Get Real-time Insights
Often crises can be managed effectively or even defused by having real-time insight into what’s happening, and discovering who is leading the conversations. Real-time insights allow you to take charge of a potential crisis and control the situation.
Make Sure You’re Listening
A properly configured social media monitoring platform lets you stay on top of positive and negative conversations about your company.
Stay Alert
Ensure your community manager is notified when keywords pop up in conversations.
Empower Your People
Your Social Media Manager needs to be able to take action without waiting for permission.
Be Proactive
Don’t wait for customers to reach out if you see a crisis. Reach out to them and offer solutions. This can turn them into brand advocates and extend your brand’s reputation and customer loyalty.
Develop Media Relations to Build Your Brand
You can’t build your brand without building relationships. People use social media to share ideas and conversations and that might include your brand or products/services you offer and you have to participate to get the most for your brand.
Now you might be thinking where to begin finding the people to build relationships? It’s not just your customers who are crucial in your brand-building efforts; the media plays a critical role in helping you shape your digital and social media brand.
Journalists and bloggers use Twitter to find trends and sources. Follow the journalists and bloggers you would like to pitch. Their tweet stream will be a wealth of information about their activity. Retweet them and answer questions should they put out any queries.
Comment on any pertinent tweets they post-offer expert sources for their stories should they ask. Talk to them even when you don’t have an announcement.
Journalists like knowing what’s going on so that they can share it with the readers. There you have a chance to launch your next product line or service with great PR. With the help of these journalists and bloggers, you can share the story of your products and brand to the masses.
Find Influencers
It’s a simple fact. Tapping into the vast network of influencers will help you sell more of your products or services.
A social media influencer is someone with a lot of online clouts. Who leads conversations and shapes opinions about organizations and brands.
You can identify major influencers by:
- How socially active they are?
- How organically their messages are liked, shared and reposted or re-tweeted,
- The number of followers, they have on Twitter and LinkedIn.
- The influence of their networks and how connected they are in general.
Whether you’re sitting down with your clients or launching your company’s social media marketing initiatives, it’s the influencers who you try to target.
Knowing that if you develop a good relationship with them, their word-of-mouth recommendations will influence others to buy.
The Bottom Line to Build Your Brand
Social media presents a great potential for brand building. Companies know it’s no longer a question of whether to socialize their brands but how best to do it.
They know that the quality of their organizations’ online presence is a key contributor to its reputation, branding, and success.
Tapping into the social web’s tremendous opportunities takes enterprise-wide commitment.
So, the bottom line is to develop your own “world-class” social media management practices. And Build Your Brand the way you want your audience perceives you.
