Marketing always involves branding.
Whether you are sending out a brochure, running a paid ad, or using a social media tool, how you go about building a brand begins with one important foundational question:
What are you branding?
No matter what your product is, before you begin socializing it online you must determine if you are going to brand your business (or product), your blog, or yourself.
Let me explain.
Your Business, Your Blog, Yourself
Depending on your business, your current reach, your audience, and the personalities driving your business, your strategy may look different than the strategy of your competitors.
Before you begin to socialize, you must determine how you want to go about it. Below are three examples that illustrate the three ways to socialize mentioned above. I’ll provide the example along with a link to the business/ personality’s Twitter page for a reference point.
Branding Your Business
If you’ve determined that the best strategy is to socialize with your readers and followers as a business, then you’ll want to focus on providing relevant information through a few content categories.
The content that you might post on your website/blog and to your followers could include:
- Company updates,
- Links to press releases,
- Information on speaking engagements of key employees,
- Television spots related to areas of business,
- Store openings, etc.
Deloitte is a great example of an organization that is using social media as a tool for socializing itself specifically as a business. If you go to the Deloitte Twitter page, you will see that they aren’t represented by a personality. Instead, they use their social media tools in order to alert interested followers of company information.
If you were to research further, you’d find that there are Twitter pages for the Deloitte offices around the world with the same strategy for each region.
Branding Your Blog
Some companies choose to separate their website and blog into distinct entities and then devise strategies to develop synergy between the two. One example of a company that does this is American Button Machines, which has a main website selling button making supplies and then a blog that provides button making ideas, tips, and tutorials.
The ultimate goal of the blog is to further develop the American Button Machines brand in the marketplace and, of course, to provide another source of traffic that drives potential customers to the main website (where the ecommerce magic takes place).
In addition to examples like ABM, there are countless other examples of blogs that are the center of that company, product, or individual’s online presence. In cases such as these, social media integration is just as important.
Using online socialization tools to advertise your blog, whether it is your online hub or a complement to a “main” website, can be very effective. In fact, we have watched our blog views jump up significantly by the second as soon as we post a link on a Facebook page or to a Twitter feed.
Seth Godin is a popular blogger that blogs on marketing topics, and he has become a “must-read” for many marketers. His Twitter account is used for the sole purpose of alerting people on when his blogs have posted. That’s all he does on Twitter, but he has over 16,000 followers. Not bad… at all.
He said something in yesterday’s post that ties in perfectly to this topic: “Building a brand is a process.” It doesn’t matter if you are using social media tools or another avenue to build your brand. It will always take time.
Keep in mind: If you are blogging and using socialization as well, responding to comments that come to you through channels other than your blog are just as important. In addition, micro blog posts in between blog posts can also increase followers and reader loyalty.
Branding Yourself
There are businesses that, although they are selling a product or a service, are branding a personality. Suze Orman began in finance and is now an author and television personality. She is the brand for all that she sells and does, and the way she socializes reflects that. Her Twitter page for the Suze Orman Show is self-monitored. She is actively involved in connecting with those that are following her. She is branding herself as a person, and it is improving the traction of her business.
Stay tuned as we continue to discuss the ever-changing world of the social media. And get ready, we’ll be talking about ROI next.
As always feel free to post your comments, questions, additional thoughts below.
See Derick‘s recent post on Blogging with a Business Mindset for additional information on getting started.
