What are the parts of building a brand Online or with Social Media?
Posted by Naylla Kassam on Fri, Feb 19, 2010
I just read an article regarding best practices of building your brand online written by a company who offers CMS solutions. Their recommendation for building your brand online comprise of 5 components:
1. Build a strategic plan
2. Engage in the world of pull marketing
3. Build trust and engagement
4. Target Influencers
5. Create conversations
My question first off is how successful is this company to offer up these suggestions without any credibility or proof that what they are recommending works? My second question is who is their audience?
From my experience, I've come to the conclusion that most SME's are very new to the online way of marketing, they aren't familiar with the concept of pull marketing vs. push marketing, they don't understand what social media has to do with their business or how it can help, and they do feel they have a solid plan of how they will generate business whether or not it is in line with this new age marketing.
In my opinion, I'd take it a few steps back. My first recommendation is to first take the time to understand the difference between inbound and outbound marketing. Without understanding the way people learn and shop today, it's difficult to just start promoting your business online. Once this concept is understood, only then can you learn to comprehend the way in which a company should market their brand.
Once an organization has understood the way in which the marketing world has changed, the first and most important thing is to shift the way in which the company is organized. Traditionally, companies operated from a top down approach. To embrace online marketing and online brand building, companies need to structure their organization to be more flat and transparent. Trust needs to be put back into the employees from the bottom up. With this approach, you have ability to build trust not only externally but within the organization itself.
Trust is crucial and without it, it's difficult to build your brand. But trust all begins with a great product or service and without a great product or service you can't build the trust of your customers or potential buyers.
Understand the way people buy today, creating an organization that is flat and transparent, and building trust are the key components to building a strategic plan around marketing your brand online.
To learn more about this and how to get started once you have this foundation, join us on our next webinar - How to Build your Brand with Social Media.
What do you feel are the key components to building your brand online or what has worked for your organization?