Building a brand is a challenge posed to every organization. In today’s largely digital market, social media platforms have established a well deserved spot in the marketing mix. This fusion is the alignment of your brand in its entirety: what you are, why you are, who you are, and what you represent. Are you one of the many who are still averse to creating a social media presence for your company? Well, hopefully you have no aversion to cold hard statistics because the following will unquestionably sway your opinion. There are currently more than 800 million active Facebook users. Pile on top of that over 100 million monthly active Twitter users. Still not convinced that social media is a true platform to build a brand? Here are a few more figures. LinkedIn boasts more than 90 million users. Now for the icing on the cake, roughly 17 million people have connected their YouTube account to at least once social service (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). Brand construction is no simple task; it takes hard work from your company’s interior personnel to solidify a place in the market. Take advantage of social media’s ability to propel brands forward, increase exposure, and shape a positive brand reputation.
ROI’s Position in the Social Media Mix
Measure metrics, analyze, re-strategize, and repeat. Neglecting to implement some form of this kind of method creates a recipe for disaster. While social media ROI is extremely attainable (and measurable), its stigma stems from the lack of tracking metrics. Beyond Google Analytics giving us the ability to measure metrics through dashboard evaluation, there are a few interesting techniques to taking raw data and converting it to a brand story. For instance, have you ever tried to calculate the cost of acquiring a new customer prospect through social media? Try allocating a comparable value to the connections made in any of your social platforms. Then, attempt to convert these connections to email addresses, phone numbers, or your preferred method of contact. This process will garner useful lead generation, and thus, real business value. The same system can be executed to measure mentions, likes, shares, etc. The key is to benchmark activity to convert quantifiable data.
Creating a Message
If your clients were engaging in a word association activity, what word would be correlated with your brand? Keeping this question in the forefront of all marketing initiatives is fundamental to building a positive brand reputation. The value in brand reputation is harnessed by your organization’s overall strategy. While business performance and delivery are essential aspects of branding, social media is a priceless vehicle to augment your brand and propel its reputation forward. Do you engage with your customers? Are you posting relevant, useful information on your Twitter accounts and Facebook pages? Do you address product issues cited on your social media platforms? If the answer to these questions is not an immediate “yes”, you may be severely hindering your brand’s reputation. Social services provide a real-time value unlike any other channel. This immediacy provides an opportunity to not only mitigate negative remarks quickly, but to solve problems, and in turn, boost your brand’s image.
The Social-Advertising Blend
Brand giveaways, promotions, sweepstakes, and live Q&A sessions are all devices of advertising. Those reluctant to conduct these campaigns across social channels have a legitimate concern: advertising control is now in the hands of, dare I say it, the consumer. Advertisers have grown accustom to controlling their messaging, but recently, social media has pushed our backs up against the wall screaming, “let go, you have to let go!” While traditional advertising control is reduced, advertising control is still very much achievable. Social services push advertisers to control in a slightly different manner. The things that advertisers can control, however, relate to engaging and building relationships with the consumer. The days of creating a television commercial and then kicking up our feet until results ensue are over. Regardless of the medium, advertising must be supplemented with social initiative. It is not enough to put out an advertisement. Is it being shared? Are people talking about it? Are friends recommending it to other friends? Unlike before, social media provides us with the answers to these questions. Being present is not enough anymore. Brands must engage. Social media provides us with that opportunity.
New Epic Media has the recipe for the most effective social media mix. Call us today to discover how to build your brand through social channels.
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