Using social media for business branding
Date: 02 Nov 2009 Author: Ivana Bozinovska
We use social media in our everyday life and since it is a big part of our everyday activities, as a marketer you must find a way to exploit it in order to find your target audience.
Based on my personal experience and what many blogs and posts from relevant sources are saying, is that the social media campaigns are all about being new and innovative.
You need to stand out of the sea of other companies and offer an added value to your social media campaign thus being transparent, honest and a great listener.
Things to consider when creating a social media campaign:
Blog
It is a very commonly used tool to express your opinion as a writer – but for the businesses, the blog is a way of giving an inside of the company, sharing news and projects, expressing opinions etc. However there is a whole lot more opportunities further – it can act as a customer support blog, for solving issues, for gathering ideas, for informing the customers and for gaining industry credibility as a valuable info source.
Also the numerous blog directories, RSS sharing, comments and feedback are the valuable output for the trouble of writing a corporate blog.
Facebook, Twitter and Linked In
The use of Facebook page and Twitter allows to post information and content to the target audience, share links, gather comments, post photos and videos. Twitter is especially useful for geo locations, interactions and common people’s opinion.
See the example of Kogi BBQ with its Twitter profile and how the community is reacting – the people in LA are offered exclusive mixed cultural food – Korean taco – with different tastes. The exclusivity is in going to the trucks’ location and ordering food that is really delicious. The website and all other social media profiles used are open for comments and suggestions and people are being listned to.
Linked In – it is more used for B2B companies and for building an online reputation and recruiting future employees. Each company can have its own profile, open groups for opinions, information, blog RSS, potential employments, finding partners.
The main points are: transparency and humanity, showing personality and care for the audience
Videos, podcasts and photos
Create videos related to your products and services but make them fun and worthy of sharing. It is useful not only to post them on your website but also on Youtube and the like video websites. The same goes for photos with Flickr and Picasa communities, Twitpic for pictures on Twitter etc.
Some examples for using rich media tools can be seen at Hubspot (marketing software provider and social media and inbound marketing service provider) – they use videos in everyday blog posts and have own Youtube channel.
Excellent video streaming example is the Wine Library TV of Gary Vaynerchuk and his Youtube channel as well as Vimeo channel – a wine tasting blog with interesting comments and fun to watch. It is made as an online TV channel.
Get feedback and give answers
Act as customer support. Allow comments on most of the things you post and engage your community in a way so they can give you feedback. It is very interesting to see what your target audience has to say and respect their wishes afterwards.
A very interesting example of this is the Starbucks campaign for expressing opinions and giving ideas. Starbucks committed themselves to put some of the ideas into practice. They have created a multiplatform subdomain where the customers can express their opinions and wishes regarding the coffee and the stores.
Use social media inside the company
The social media phenomenon can be used inside the company as well for engaging the employees into sharing information and faster information reach. ex. T-systems Deutschland – they have used a ready-made intranet solution with social media features for inside company collaboration and sharing. Every employee has its own profile with blog, status message, comments and other collaboration tools in order to create content on a corporate level.
Create your own social media cross platform mix
Since all these different types of social media tools are used, whether being text, links, photos or videos – it is useful to connect them in one website and by that you will have information in different forms and the audience will choose which form is the most appealing for them. Example of this is Dell’s community page with its cross platform mix using video, blog posts, threads, groups etc.
Conclusion
Everything is connected in social media – the important thing is to create a buzz for your products and services on multiple platforms – using Facebook, Twitter, blogs, websites, video and picture sharing communities etc.
Be honest and give a little to try engage with your target audience. People like to be heard and appreciate direct communication with company representative.