Building brand equity online can take enormous amounts of time, money, and energy. A culmination of online advertising, social media, SEO, and even online PR, big brands want to listen with social media tools to guard their online reputation management.

In this video of Dan Colbey entitled “What physics taught me about marketing” he discusses positioning brands and how one incident can erode much of the brand equity built.

What’s your game plan? Do you have a strategy that takes you past the next year?

How about a social media crisis plan should your brand come under attack?

Positioning and protecting your sweat equity with proper planning can help retain the strength of your brand should it ever find itself in the crosshairs. And if you haven’t come up with one yet, now is the time to start thinking about online branding strategies so that you have a path to follow and measure down the road.

Online branding is a bit different that it’s offline counterpart. The channels (advertising, social media, search) are different and the tools offer more opportunity through interactivity. And whatever channels you use, the real kicker is you can track your successes in near real time and adjust your campaign accordingly.

Remember the days when you might do direct mail or some other offline advertising and would have to wait weeks to tally the results? Tracking your Internet advertising and social media marketing campaigns allow you to see what’s working within hours. But you’re hear asking Why Online Branding?

Using the tools within the channels, not only can you have farther reaching and more targeted campaigns, you can capture better data and do multivariate split testing on your landing pages, copy, design, and creative. Again, in near real-time.

But beyond the control and monitoring potential, you also have lower production costs and better ROI for your campaigns. With most campaigns, you can’t even measure that with offline advertising!

You run your ad in print or outdoors, and unless your call to action includes a special offer with a unique landing page URL or 800 number to call, all you know is what the potential reach is. Like a newspaper or magazine have x readers, or a radio station have x listeners. Even though branding isn’t always about taking action at the time of mention, having the ability to track your campaigns allows you to maximize your spend so you can funnel your budget where online branding will be most effective.

While advertising online let’s you put your brand in front of potential customers on websites with traffic, and social media provides new opportunities, search marketing (both SEO and SEM) can get your brand in front of those customers when they’re in buying mode and searching for a specific topic. Being in the top search results helps create that synergy between your brand and a phrase, and contributes to top of mind awareness. SEO has also proven to provide the best ROI of all online marketing channels.

So when you’re thinking to yourself ‘Why Online Branding’, its hopefully more clear. Better tracking provides improved spending, the changes in advertising can be on the fly to account for improving your campaigns, and a higher level of interactivity also provides more bang for your buck. Marketers keep shifting their budget to online for this reason, and the growth in this channel has outperformed offline marketing options for the last few years. Television advertising might still be king, but the cost to produce and place the ads, along with poor tracking options makes it questionable which is the best choice.

I don’t think you can expect one to replace another, as they reach different segments, but keep in mind that Pepsi skipped their annual mutli million dollar Super Bowl TV ad last year, and put it in online advertising and social media.

Seth Godin on social networking for business – is it valuable?

@Seth

Gary Vaynerchuk on building a personal brand in social media

@garyvee

Note: language warning

Brian Solis on how we’re all connected by ideas

@BrianSolis

Clay Shirky on social media shifts and making history

@cshirky

Valeria Maltoni from Fast Company on people connecting and conversation

@ConversationAge

Mitch Joel discusses the power of social media

@mitchjoel

Chris Brogan on listening in social media

Sarah Evans discusses crowd sourcing and connecting with social media

@prsarahevans

Jeremiah Owyang on the Future of the Social Web

@jowyang

Scott Monty interviewed by David Meerman Scott on social media

@scottmonty @dmscott

Joseph Jaffe interviewed by David Armano

@jaffejuice @armano

And if the “social media thing” is still new for you…

Do you want to smell the success of a social media campaign that will engage your audience to no end? Swan dive, into the best social media strategy of your life.

But first, let’s have a look behind the scenes with the most recent social media success story.

Old Spice and advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy, along with actor Isaiah Mustafa, partnered to create a campaign that took the web by storm. After introducing the Old Spice Man character (played by Mustafa) the team proceeded to seed various social networks with an invitation to ask the dashing shirtless man any questions they may have.

Using reddit and twitter, the responses were tracked carefully and those that contributed interesting questions or were submitted by high profile individuals on social networks received a video reply that was posted on Youtube.

A team of creative’s, marketers, and writers made about 87 short video replies in the first 11 hours. That works out to about 7 minutes per reply, including writing and filming. And an astonishing 180 videos in total were made during the entire campaign. The entire campaign was tweeted, retweeted, emailed, and shared on Facebook multiple times. Mashable provides a look at the Old Spice campaign by the numbers.

So what was it about the campaign that made it the success it was? One interesting point to note is once the original ad (above) was released, there was no brand mentions with the 100+ video responses. It was simply entertaining to watch and most already knew it was the Old Spice man.

The big take away to this success story is how the integration of several social media options were used together. It allowed the marketers to seed, engage, respond, and viewers to submit, view, and share.

While this was one helluva marketing and production feat, its easy to see how combining the social media options helped. But like many viral or social campaigns, the big idea and the seeding will likely determine the results.

Keep in mind that it doesn’t always have to include amazing video production. Take a look at successful social media campaigns like Will It Blend. A great idea can go a long way.

Social media is much more than creating a Facebook fan page or Twitter account. You have to think about how to engage with your network. If you simply broadcast, you want to do so with value, such as promotional offers or news of new products or sales. But for most that don’t have legions of fans like Apple or similar, you want to share and engage. Offer info of value.

Social media contributes to online branding, reputation management, awareness, word of mouth, and more. It creates a huge opportunity, but as Seth Godin says; it’s a process, not an event.

Edit: Check this parody entitled ‘New Spice’

Microsoft will donate $100,000 to Stephen Colbert’s new charity fund to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Colbert and Bing

Pepsi created the Refresh Everything and skipped advertising during superbowl (some saying it was a mistake) to give millions of dollars to fund ideas that will refresh the world to non-profits in six categories. Health, Arts & Culture, Food & Shelter, The Planet, Neighborhoods, and Education.

IKEA‘s Facebook campaign was a stroke of genius. Using the photo tagging feature, a bunch of showroom images were uploaded to the account of a store manager at their Malmo store. The first person to tag an object got to take it home.

Ford bet on social media to generate buzz to promote the new Fiesta ( story ) and head of social media Scott Monty has been hard at work and winning.

Dell stands out as one of social media’s best examples and have created success through a network of blogs, sale alerts on twitter, and listening to their customers via their community IdeaStorm.

Intuit created a community for it’s Quickbooks software users while being active on Twitter and Facebook.

Starbucks used crowdsourcing to create MyStarbucksIdea so customers share suggestions which others vote on, with the best being implemented.

Blendtec used video for its series Will It Blend and purees everything from the iphone and more for millions of views.

Zappos has an unparalleled commitment to customer service, and social media has allowed  them to form more personal connections with customers.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, had the following to say…

“Brand building today is so different than what it was 50 years ago. 50 years ago you could get a few marketing people in a small room and decide, ‘this is what our brand will be’, and then spend a lot of money on TV advertising — and that was your brand. If you as a consumer only had your neighbors to talk to, you had to believe what the TV was telling you. Today anyone, whether it is an employee or a customer, if they have a good or bad experience with your company they can blog about it or Twitter about it and it can be seen by millions of people. It’s what they say now that is your brand.”

Or you could say that your relationships are your brand.

Other info of potential interest include this list of corporate blogs,

Did you know that 70% of bloggers write about brands organically? And almost half of that is product reviews?

According to Jupiter Research, 52% of readers say blogs factored into the critical moment they decided to buy. And over 40% of online moms use social media for prodict recommendations.

About 65% of blog readers access blogs specifically to get an opinion, and over 90% trust user reviews over an in-store clerk.

Online branding tools for social media monitoring and reputation management are key to tracking and engaging with existing conversations.

Reputation Management

Alerts are a great way to stay informed and are delivered to your inbox. It isn’t a perfect system but effective in combination with many of the others mentioned. Set to comprehensive so you’re informed as they happen. Link

Comments on blogs can provide insight to your brand, and now you can monitor them with backtype and co.mments.

Blogs are easy to watch over with tools like google’s blog search, blogpulse, technorati,

Social Media Monitoring

Radian6 is a popular paid social media monitoring tool

dna13 provides real-time access to TV, print, online and social media content

Brandwatch is a comprehensive social media monitoring service

Brandtology is an online branding intelligence tool

Cision offers another robust monitoring tool

Spiral16 can help visualize the presence of a brand online

ScoutLabs looks very promising

BuzzLogic is used by many large brands

Twazzup gives a look at real time results on twitter

Trackur is a social media monitoring tool that can export results

SocialMention searches the web for any mention of your keyword/brand

Addictomatic provides mentions of your keyword or brand from multiple sources

monitter and twitterfall are great ways to keep an eye on twitter brand mentions

Topsy is a tweet search engine worth trying

Keotag is easy to use and gives  a glimspe across several popular platforms

boardreader helps monitor forum conversations

There are countless social media and public relations monitoring tools to be found online and this list is far from complete, but it gives you a starting point for some of the better options for online branding tools and social media monitoring.

First place to start would be setting up a google alert as it takes less than a minute and its free. You might also create a list of your brand name on twitter for an easy one click reference. The paid tools are far more advanced and often provide a dashboard for social media monitoring, but it might be more than some will need. Try out some of the suggestions to see which works for you.

Another area not really touched on but worth mentioning is online video. Using video marketing through sites like Youtube can be very effective, and your clips can also be embedded in your blog and easily shared.

Last but not least, keep an eye on Facebook. It has over 40% of social media traffic (comScore) and still shows steady growth. Understand that Facebook might not be a fit for everyone, but it’s worth exploring the idea and experimenting.

Social media accounts for almost 20% of online activity.

“When I was growing up in the industry, let me entertain you, let me make you smile, I’m very versatile, it was one way.”

Advertising was this way for decades, and what may have worked for the last 40 years clearly isn’t as effective these days. A shift like this comes as no surprise. Whether its advertising or just about anything, things change.
Reinhard goes on to describe the way things work now by suggesting…

“Now it’s we’re better together”.

This is a great point as the emergence of social media has had such an impact on brands, possibly one of the largest in recent times. Consumers are tired of being told and now look within their networks or trusted resources or contacts for more impartial views and recommendations.

An interesting point also brought up in the video mentions how when a CEO is really involved with the brand, the brand endures, has integrity, and can sustain the revolving doors of marketing directors.  A great point as with each change in marketing leadership comes someone that scraps direction and previously built equity.

One of the best definitions of a brand I’ve heard was provided during this interview…

A brand is who you are, what you do, why you do it, and how you do it.
One person that has maintained these types of values is Steve jobs of Apple. Over the course of the last 20 years Apple as a brand has probably never strayed far. But one example of branding confusion that comes to mind is McDonald’s. It seems with each new agency they hire (every 2-3 years) there is a different direction in the messaging. For example, they make burgers, they make them fast, and their affordable. But over the years they’ve introduced pizza, ribs, and even salads.

Online branding will take marketing to new heights with the speed at which you can connect with consumers. With social media, search marketing, and Internet advertising a brand can literally grow at sonic speeds compared with the past.

Marketers still seem to overlook the potential of SEO and how it can drive measureable revenue to their online business, yet have adopted to the virtues of social media rather quickly.

Perhaps it’s the inability of the average marketer to truly understand the benefits of how SEO and online branding belong together and how it can help their bottom line.

With paid search marketing results (PPC) accounting for roughly 20% of the clicks in typical search results, that leaves a lot of cash on the table in terms of customer acquisition.

For SEO’s, the following isn’t new information, but it might be of interest to marketers which are less familiar with the practice.
If you try the Google Keyword Tool you can get some insight to the potential of SEO and appearing in natural search results. Depending on the phrase, you can increase your visibility by thousands and more with a properly executed SEO strategy that pushes your site into the top 10 results.

It’s important to note that SEO is similar to branding in one sense. It’s a process and requires a fair amount of time to achieve those top ranking results. Realistic expectations depending on your industry to rise to the top can range from 6 months to several years. One of the keys to increased success in this venture is the quality of your content or offering. By focusing on this aspect, marketers stand to gain advocates, which will assist in the link building process by blogging, tweeting, or linking to your site for you.

You might be thinking tweeting falls under social media, but it’s the content they tweet that should be part of your SEO strategy. Sometimes referred to as link bait, it’s about the creation of quality content that will help to get those links.

Content creation and planning sometimes falls on the shoulders of an SEO, as does PR and many other tasks.  It’s always wise to have an SEO involved in the process but not necessarily depend solely on them to create this sort of material.

The role of SEO is about optimizing a site (for starters), but more important, is to improve the online visibility of said website so that it will rank for phrases that you’re targeting for your business.

When you think about it, there isn’t anything much better than your site showing up in the top listings when a potential customer is in the buying mode and looking for a product or service like one you might offer.


There is more likelihood of them inquiring or purchasing versus presenting banner ads all over. Most web users have banner blindness. Can you recall 3 banners you’ve seen in the last week? Most are lucky to be able to name one they had seen.

There probably isn’t a better way to position your brand online than showing up in the top search results. In the long run, your brand will become synonymous with the phrases you’ve targeted and displaying in those results also provides credibility to your brand’s product or service.

You should note that when you appear in those results, the url in first position will get about 42% of the clicks, while second gets 12%, third gets 9%, and it starts to drop sharply with each position after. And being on page two is like not being found at all.

You can see the entire interview mentioned above here.

Borrowing the triplet concept from Dharmesh, I was inspired to come up with 25 triplets that are like social media proverbs which master Kane might even be proud of.

1. Learn from customers
2. Listen to conversation
3. Build more relationships
4. Track your efforts
5. Exercise your voice
6. Share your knowledge
7. Embrace idea innovation
8. Support a charity
9. Use social bookmarking
10. Ask for feedback
11. Participate in communities
12. Share good ideas
13. Commit to process
14. Try helping others
15. Always be true
16. Motivate with kindness
17. Create with passion
18. Do it now
19. Provide comments regularly
20. Make a habit
21. Explore the potential
22. Help others often
23. Upload something often
24. Tag when possible
25. Engage more often

There must be lots of other possibilities.
Feel free to leave a comment or post it to twitter with hashtag #Socialmediatriplets.

There’s an interesting article at BusinessWeek that talks about the self-proclaimed experts of Social Media. I’ve felt similar sentiments on occassion, and while I believe that social media is an important part to online branding, I’ve noticed that a lot of people have jumped on board the social media band wagon. And most of them seem to be saying the same things. There’s a lot of preaching about building a following for your community, reputation management, and online branding.

They’re often valid points and advisable for an online strategy, but like anything worthwhile it doesn’t come easy either. If you feel that social media is something you wish to do for your business, it’s not only essential to have the right person, they need to be invested in it full time.

Probably this newest label of hucksters is partly because of the endless hype and large influx of gurus. The amount of conferences on the topic, both local and beyond, has businesses drinking the kool aid. But without the right Internet marketing goals in place, many start slinging comments about snake oil salesmen.

There are numerous social media success stories, and even more failures. Probably similar to a business startup, without a good strategy I’d bet than close to 90% of the social media strategies flop. From my experiences, its like most cases involving strategy, even the best one fall short without proper implementation and follow through.

SEO has gone through the snake oil cycle, and depending who you talk to, its still stuck in that light. The main problem in either case is the business often doesn’t understand enough about how it works and what to expect, which can often lead to hiring the wrong individual and being soured on the entire experience.

In most cases, either are important to your business. Both can drive sales, and both can help with online branding. While I tend to favor SEO as I can justify why one might invest in it, there are are numerous examples of social media success as well.