subject: Branding Your Business in the Age of Social Media [print this page] Branding Your Business in the Age of Social Media
Your brand lets people know who you are and what you do, but the way we interact with brands in changing in the face of social media. Social media makes it impossible to pass off a mediocre product with even the best marketing efforts. People are connected to each other worldwide, and they're talking. They're discussing, tweeting, and reviewing. In the beginning, branding was used by marketers looking to differentiate relatively similar commodity products. By linking our emotions to products through marketing, brands were born. We had feelings about brands and connections to them, and it caused us to buy one product over another.But then along came the internet, and with it the ability to connect with the consumer masses. Suddenly we gained the ability to review and rate not just products, but businesses as well. And we've learned to rely on the experiences of others as social proof.
Meanwhile, savvy businesses realized that they could enter the conversation and connect directly with their customers. Utilizing the tools of social media, companies are monitoring the conversation, engaging when appropriate, and putting a human face on their company. Consumers are, maybe for the first time, seeing beyond the corporate entity to the people, much like themselves, who make up the entity.
This humanizing of brands is a key shift brought about by the tools of social media, and one that needs to be taken seriously.
The alternatives are:
Don't enter the conversation, which will be comparable to stopping the answering of your phones. You'll become irrelevant.
Don't take this shift seriously, which will result in dehumanizing your brand, effectively turning customers AGAINST you.
How you can engage your customers online?
Make sure they have plenty of ways to contact you, preferably without long hold times, pushy salespeople, or surly customer service representatives.
Make sure you're using the same communication tools they are. Do you have commenting and contact options on your website? Do you have a Facebook page and a Twitter account? These are the tools of social media, and you should support at least some of them if not all.
Make sure they're not talking to a wall. Just as people expect a return phone call or email response, if they comment or contact you via social media, they should get a response in a reasonable amount of time. You need to monitor these channels just as you do your phones. Many times these conversations will be public, and the public will see how you interact with your customers and judge you based on those interactions.
To err is human. Customers don't expect us to be perfect. They can actually be quite understanding. What matters is how we handle those situations. When potential customers see that you made a mistake, then made it right for the customer, you win. You win a brand ambassador in the customer you made it up to, and you win the minds of those watching the situation unfold.
