It’s Your Brand Too
Social strategy and branding – it’s like ham and eggs, peanut butter and jam, or insert your favorite combo here. The point being, marketing your product or service needs to include some form of social media component.
The web is listenening, and so are your customers. If you don’t join the conversation the blanks will be filled. Wouldn’t you rather be part of that conversation than allowing others to monopolize it? Afterall, if you’re not fully engaged with the conversation of your brand, you’re missing out on marketing opportunities.
It’s easy to understand that social media might be overwhelming, but you don’t have to do it all. When it comes to social media and brand management, you want to monitor the conversation. It would be virtually impossible to include yourself in every social media tool available, but monitoring your brand is a very important part of managing its perception. It’s like a form of proactive customer service.
The Social Media Conversation Prism is about enhancing a community, preferably centered around you and/or your brand. This is where it becomes important to monitor and manage. But its not really something that you “manage” per se, it’s more about being woven into the fabric of the conversation as opposed to arriving later. The conversation is going to happen regardless. You can be part of it and build relations, or ignore it and hope for the best. Which do you think is going to work for you?
As you can see from the above sample, which doesn’t represent the entire social media spectrum, there are a number of places your brand’s voice can be. While each voice is different, there’s a need to be selective in where you’re active.
Your audience will tend to communicate in a variey of different places. Social media isn’t just about user-generated content, it’s much more than that. Marketers now have a unique opportunity to talk to, not at consumers. That’s what advertising was about, and we know how well that works these days.
Look forward to an upcoming post about tools for social media soon.
