Branding Your Company through Social Media
Social media is not a phenomenon that can be ignored. Millions of users every day access various social media platforms, and they tweet or post or share information freely. Companies who are working to thrive in the information age cannot pass these platforms by if they expect to be successful.
A single television advertisement or newspaper page can cost a company a tremendous amount of money, and it still only reaches a limited market. A profile on Facebook or humorous videos on YouTube are free and grant you world-wide exposure. The ability to reach so many people at so little cost has never existed before. The interaction and brand-building that can go on through social networking can gain a great deal of revenue for your company. With so little expenditure, it would be foolish to miss this chance to build rapport and relationships with potential customers.
Where else can you go to reach thousands of people with a single tweet, and thousands more with a single shared video? Social media is where your customers go for information, entertainment, and connections with friends. If your brand is also there, you are getting the kind of incredible exposure that can make your business a success. A simple, memorable branding strategy can take on a life of its own as it is shared through the networks from person to person. In addition, this sharing from peers increases your brand’s credibility – people are much more likely to take something seriously if it comes from a friend, rather than the company itself.
Will Google Plus be Big for Marketing?
Are you on Google Plus (Google+)? If so, what do you think so far? Will Google+, with its Circles, Sparks and Hangouts, make Facebook yesterday’s news (remember MySpace?), or does Facebook have the ability to take on Google+?
Will you be able to use Google+ as an effective audience development tool? I’ve seen several companies add the Google+1 button to their pages, but that’s not the same as Google+. Google+1 is for link-building, and you can compare that to the Facebook “Like” button.
But it seems to me that Google+ users will be able to ignore marketing messages easier than they can on Facebook. The consumer could create several circles, and use one of them specifically for commercial content and choose to ignore it.
On the other hand, marketers could take advantage of the Google+ segmenting capabilities. Merchants already know the power of Google Ads, and it seems like that’s where their Google+ wins will be.
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