Social media has an enormous impact on brand equity. Brands
should "maintain a coherent brand position that unites your
website, your Twitter feeds, your Facebook presence and each
campaign you run
Forrester calls this idea "owned" media and argues that a
skillful understanding of the properties of distinct social media
orchestrated or leveraged effectively in service to brand
objectives will yield customer engagement, consistent messaging,
brand portability and possibly a boat load of "earned" or free and
viral media pass-along.
Imagine that rather than concentrating your web presence in a
single web site you distribute the messaging using satellite sites
and by syndicating content to present your brand in an array of
venues aligned with an array of target audiences and brand
objectives. This creates a much wider and deeper conversation
between your brand and your customer base at modest cost
increments.
Syndication trumps destination in this model where content
elements (e.g. games, videos, animations, polls, images) become
media attracting, alluring and interacting with those you seek to
know, engage and persuade. By orchestrating content and brand
positioning through social media, marketers can maintain a level of
control and initiative in the face of user-created content and
uncontrollable user interactions and conversations.
The key to mobilizing social media to achieve this result is to
understand clearly what the social media properties are, who uses
them and how they are commonly used. Consider these
preliminary observations:
Brand Website. Shop window for the brand aimed
at educating and engaging prospective employees and clients. A web
site validates the brand's claims offline and establishes a tone
and manner for digital communication. The persuasive burdens is to
quickly and easily present the value proposition, build demand and
prompt lead generation or purchase. A site should be the base of
operations for online marketing and include the mother lode of
data, imagery and copy necessary to fully represent the brand
posture. Separate landing pages should be constructed to manage
campaigns and the site should be optimized for natural search.
Blogs can be built-into brand sites or established (and linked to)
as independent entities depending on the content and the marketing
objectives.
Facebook. This is a personal CRM tool where
people of all ages manage relationships and connections. Different
age groups use it differently but all are protective of their
privacy and uniformly try to separate their personal lives and
connections from their business lives. Brands are welcome,
but only on restricted terms. Facebook is a cheerleading and
affinity building tool for brands. Some have sold merchandise and
distributed coupons but no best practices have yet emerged. Fans
seem to want deals but overt selling or shilling is frowned
upon. Brands are experimenting with Facebook in linking
online and offline behaviors, but its too early to make
generalizations. Facebook seems to be a place to illustrate or
articulate your brand personality and begin to gather friends and
fans around you. Linking your Facebook page to your web site adds
to your search authority because it is among the most semantically
optimized platforms. The same holds true for MySpace and
Friendster.
LinkedIn. Primarily a job-hunting,
network-building site, LinkedIn skews older and slightly more male.
They have a range of discrete targeting options that enable you to
zero-in on target segments or individuals. People to turn LinkedIn
to check out companies, prepare for interviews or find a way into
your eco-system. Your brand profile should be consist and enticing
but not enough to give away your strategy. LinkedIn Groups
are a second avenue into the database. Many offer discussions and
forums, which enable a marketer to float trial balloons, test
arguments or offers and solicit ideas and practical advice.
Conversation is fluid and almost entirely business focused.
Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the default knowledge
bank on the web. A huge percentage of searches end there so you
have to be present. Interaction is at a minimum since people
search, find, read, print and exit. Your entry should be
thorough, well written and up to date. Illustrate it with charts,
graphs, images or schematics and add links to other significant
assets. Police your page regularly since the changing editorial
policy may encourage unauthorized or inaccurate updates.
Twitter. This is a short, fast action or
reaction tool to pump out a brand's POV on marketplace, customer
service or merchandise issues. It's like having a party line
and being able to watch or listen in on popular sentiment change,
morph and evolve in real time. Some brands use it to talk; most use
it to listen and to gauge attitudes, sentiments and customer
proclivities. Like talk radio the content is a mixed bag ranging
from the immediately forgettable to the sublime. Using Twitter
starts with deciding how much you are willing to talk (or how much
you have to say) versus how much you can learn from
listening-in.
YouTube. Video and search are the twin
attractions. YouTube is the second ranked search engine; preferred
heavily by younger people. Americans expect that almost anything
that happens will be up on YouTube within hours and millions upload
their own videos each day. A window on the collective consciousness
and psyche, YouTube can be a bully pulpit for brands seeking to
influence the conversation and attract new customers.
By understanding who uses them and what users do or expect,
brands can orchestrate campaigns and parse messaging to fully
leverage the platforms and the SEO benefits that accrue from
linking with the most semantically effective sites on the
web. Consider these social sites as the generic baseline. In
many cases vertical communities, even gated communities, will offer
important access to key markets and customers. They too need to be
analyzed and placed into a brand's context and marketing
strategy.
