The Blog on Branding

Social Media: The Future of Branding

Branding, in essence, is developing a plan of action that will make your product or company the ONLY solution to its targeted problems. Instead of making you stand out among the crowd of other products and having your product being chosen over the competitors as the best product, branding wants to promote the product as the only product. Like Kleenex.

“Totally like Kleenex.”






If you’re a human being, then you have more than likely heard about the social networking giants Facebook and MySpace – unless, of course, you have been living in the jungles eating bugs for food without access to the Internet for the past 5 or 6 years. These sites connect people with long-lost friends, relatives and random, interesting (read: creepy) people. Marketers and branders alike have taken complete advantage of these social networks and have begun building brands and promoting their product or business through blog posts, profiles and events on these websites.

Thus, social media has become the future of branding. Yeah, I said it. Future. In the competitive field of branding and online marketing, you must always be one step ahead of the competition, looking for the new way to reach customers and build your brand. Social media has become that new tool that will help you build your brand and promote your company. But there are some problems with social networking…Einstein wasn’t kidding when he said that for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.

Here’s a quick breakdown of some positives and negatives about social media and using it to market your business.

No Cost?

POSITIVE- No cost.
Yeah, it’s free. You make a profile, and in a few minutes you can begin the process of adding friends. Watch your ROI skyrocket because you’re not spending a thing! NOTHING! Amazing.

NEGATIVE – Cost(?)
Time is money, pal. With the mass of social networking sites on the Internet, (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc.), being on all of them and regularly posting updates can be quite time consuming, taking away valuable time from other focuses of marketing your business.

Reach your Audience

POSITIVE – Quickly reach your audience.
Do you have a new product, or want to inform your customers of an event sponsored by your company? Heck, maybe you just want to write a blog post about a new product or the company in general. Go ahead and do it.

If you followed the path of more traditional online marketing, you would have to have people sign up for a newsletter (which would necessitate them visiting your website first) that would be sent to their email (which, more than likely, was a fake email or one they never use [We've all done it.]).

With social media networks like Facebook, all you need to do now is send out a little message about your new product, or write up a new blog, and then it’s automatically seen by all of your online friends (whom you’ve never met face to face [and you probably don't want to...they're creepy.]) and it’s seen as soon as they log on.

“Trust us, they can be weird.”





It’s a simple and effective way to inform your customers and build your brand from “The Little Company That Could” to “I Don’t Know Where To Put All This Money. Seriously.”

NEGATIVE – Who the heck is your audience?
You need to know your audience before you can reach them. Are you opting primarily for young adults? Try Facebook. Are you a musical instrument company trying to sell some instruments? MySpace and their 9 gazillion bands are the way to go. Adults above 35? Gather.com. There are niche markets out there – you just have to know how to tap into them.

NEGATIVE PART 2 – Quickly reach your audience (?)
There’s reaching your audience….then there’s “reaching” your audience.

The thing about social networking users – they really hate to be bothered. Take Facebook, for example. In 2006, they revealed the “News Feed”, a tool that allowed a user to see what all the friends in their network were doing constantly, being bombarded with Wall Posts, Notes and who became friends with so-and-so. They hated it.

There’s a fine line between informing your audience and bugging the heck out of them. With some networking sites, you can get banned for constantly spamming them. To be successful, you need to find that balance between being annoying and doing business.

Get Fans

POSITIVE – Customers come to you…
It’s a proven fact that people spend more time on Facebook looking at their online friends than spending time with their real life friends. Don’t worry where I got that statistic, it’s totally true (because you read it on the Internet). Fine…people spend about an average of 19 minutes on Facebook.

Facebook has created specialized “Fan pages” for companies, products, and people. These Fan Pages show up in the profiles of those who have become fans of yours, and (if all goes as planned) will eventually be seen by their friends, who may join, and will be seen by those friends, and the cycle continues forever until you are friends with everyone ever. With profiles on Facebook and MySpace, people will eventually come to you…

“Wait, there are fans on Facebook?”





NEGATIVE – …Only after you add them as Friends.
There’s always a catch-22. You must find that target audience, and then add them as your friends, invite them to be your fans on your fan pages, etc. As with any marketing or branding strategy, you must get your name out there first before people come to you.

Add Friends (but not too many because they can ban you for that, too), and build a relationship with those customers. Begin to branch out and add more and more friends.

Then word-of-mouth will spread and people will begin looking for you. The beginning of branding on social networks can be compared to grassroots marketing campaigns – you must be the one to tell them about yourself. Once established as a strong brand, word-of-mouth will bring in potential customers.

Brand Your Image

POSITIVE – Raise brand awareness and image.
This is a BIG positive. With profiles on major social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, numerous blogs, comments and articles, the amount of exposure you will get will increase your brand image and awareness in a big way. Your brand name will get out to the public and to those who use social media, and with positive reviews of products and services from the consumers who will use them, people will begin to know your brand name and the quality it provides.

For more established brands, using these social media networks will help keep the brand fresh in people’s minds, breathing new life into some brands that may have fallen by the way side.

Tracking Made Easy

POSITIVE – Easily track progress.
If you do anything on the Internet, there’s a way to track it (scary huh?). From Google Analytics to tickers on websites, you are able to see how many people have viewed your page. The same applies for social media marketing.

You are able to easily track the progress of your blogs and profiles on these networks to see how many people have:

• Viewed your page
• Offered positive reviews
• Commented and so on

This, in turn, is automatic feedback to how your product or service is doing straight from the customers mouth.

It may take a few years before social networking and social media sites can be fully realized as a way to brand and market your company. But by outlining the various positives and negatives associated with them, you can develop a plan to begin building your brand through these websites.

Chris Levkulich Want content written for your Brand that shows up #1 on Search Engines and brings you new customers? Contact us.