Be Your Brand

by Regan Hillyer

  The Internet has changed the traditional way of the business part of the globe. Buyers can easily develop a relationship with you online and this is ideal. Prioritize getting the buyer’s attention and building customers for every online business. Market fragmentation for the mass market is going into extinction and is being segmented further and further into smaller fragments, PR marketers creating products and services that communicate more specifically to smaller groups. A very dedicated community is Multiply.com which is an eCircle for people who are very active in posting pictures, blogs and music videos. In this community, a group of entrepreneurs are having a small businesses boom. Buying and selling just by displaying their products in their photo albums and offering courier services are part of their business. Members of this network are part of a growing market mostly composed of students to young professionals who have an active lifestyle and are very keen on the latest in fashion, technology, and the like. Multiply is being used by start-up entrepreneurs to market their products or services. The wide network of Multiply enables them to tap their target market in a very cost-efficient way—it is basically free of charge! Death of distant geographical boundaries are no more than technicalities when it comes to the Internet. There are no barriers to conducting business across nations and has made the factor of location less important which allows both buyers and marketers to circumvent several processes that could add cost and time in completing a business transaction. It is the same with geography, time is also not a factor here a communication between businesses or individuals or both can be done in real time. Online stores never close and people can access them anytime they want regardless of their time zones. Knowledge Management (KM) sales reports, demographics, customers daily account information, and other valuable knowledge can be had, which can greatly help any business in their research.

  Extensive customer service is important as well. This can include sending cards and greetings to develop a more personal relationship with their patrons. Also, newsletters and birthday greetings can be used for sending occasional promo announcements. An example under this category site is BirthdayAlarm. Sign up and the site will then send reminders to you via e-mail whenever a contact’s birthday is near. Along with these reminders, there are free postcards which the user can send as a form of greeting. The site is not only limited to birthday greetings, it also sends greeting reminders and animated greetings for almost all occasions. The coordination Supply Chain Management (SCM) simply put, is to the customers. Having an established distribution center also works. This allows to lower the costs of these processes and reduce the paper trail that sometimes causes delay and a lot of space. An example of this is the system being offered by a telecommunications company. This is an example of a business owner readily accessing different online inventory systems that can be installed in their company database to ease the function of inventory and order taking.

  “I can blog, I can market” is what you need to tell yourself repeatedly as you get going marketing your brand. The Internet gives its users an immeasurable avenue to express themselves wherein the user can freely write his views toward a product or service. This gives the consumer an opportunity to liberally promote or go against a product which in a way is giving the user the power to market it. Comments? Suggestions? Anyone? Most sites enable the user to post comments in a window that can either be displayed to the public or sometimes sent only to the administrator of the website. The consumer still has the power to immediately give his views on the products, which enables the company to address it. This works in many ways, quickly establishing the marketing, since it gives the company an opportunity to CRM by tackling the concerns of the consumers. A site which does have this feature for its registered user can sell products and advertise these for free. Not only that, but other people visiting the site may openly ask questions, write comments, and other sentiments about the product on the same pie for everyone to see. A virtual store only in e-marketing. All the functions of a physical store such as inventory, display, and delivery are performed by online technology which is intangible. Hence, it is virtual, for it exists in a space that the user cannot see, yet the purpose of its tangible equivalent is still fulfilled. Aside from Amazon.com, another online marketplace is also seen in the form of eBay.com. At present, eBay is one of the top online shopping/selling sites wherein anyone who registers can sell or bid for almost anything, anywhere in the world. The different benefits of being on the Internet offer unique opportunities to businesses that are online. On the flipside, since the competition is also amplified to a global scale, businesses have to work multitudes of times harder to get the attention of the consumer. The e-world is not just like the TV world wherein the marketer is fighting for the audience’s attention through numerous ads and from different channels. The Internet is a much harder arena to fight for the user’s attention, since here the user can just click the “x” on the window and the ad will be gone and there will be a very large possibility that the user won’t see it again.

  HAVING CONVERTING LANDING PAGES

  When creating a landing page for products, use a separate website purely designed to pre-sell your first product (maybe a service, book, course, event, etc.). Make sure you have a high-converting video, about 3-4 minutes max. Ensure that each page is easy to navigate and that this takes them to payment page easily and quickly. Most of all, ensure that you have a high-converting copy that speaks to your target market. Promote one thing at a time - don’t confuse people! Use a pop up box to grab their details if they go to click away from the site.

  If you do not have landing pages that convert and take payments, then you are not a business, you are just a personality showing up online…

  A WORD ON SOCIAL MEDIA

  For social media, start with a Facebook-like page for your brand. This needs to be credible and needs to capture leads. Offer something for free in exchange for their email address. You can run Facebook-like campaigns to build up the list. I don’t recommend buying a bunch of likes that are fake as they will not be your target and you won’t have any luck marketing to them.

  On Instagram, keep in mind that branded images are good, along with creative images about your brand / industry / product / service — make sure to be consistent to build followers.

  On Twitter, start using periscope, if you don’t already. Tweeting credible tweets about your product / brand / industry 2-3 times a day will get your brand far.

  On LinkedIn - make sure your profile is up to date, professional and aligned with your new brand. Start networking with other people in your industry on here.

  There are MANY other social media platforms out there and you should be showing up on a minimum of 4. So ask yourself, where does my ideal tribe hang out online? And then make sure you have a strong presence there.

  The social media revolution has given consumers around the world the most powerful voice they’ve ever had. It’s also forced companies to think about how they can be more transparent and responsive. Social media, along with a global recession, has led companies, organizations, and governments to figure out how to accomplish more with less money, to get their messages out there and talked about, without spending as many dollars on declining media like television, radio, and print. Word-of-mouth marketing has always been considered the purest and best form of marketing, and social media has continued to prove this fact in many ways. People like to share with and feel connected to each other, brands, organizations, and even governments they like and trust.

  Because of Facebook’s 600 million users worldwide and more than 250 million mobile users, Facebook’s Deals brings instant scale and credibility to the location check-in rewards business introduced by Foursquare and others. But there is no doubt that Facebook Deals will be a major force to be reckoned with. The potential impact of mobile and location-based social media cannot be overstated. For years, people have advocated the use of social media and a strong presence on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter as excellent br
and-building and reputation-building tools. But the sales funnel through social networks is much longer. Instead of acquiring customers by acquiring likes, fans, and followers, engaging with them, and waiting to be there for them when they’re ready to buy Facebook Deals, allow yourself to create a compelling offer and have it spread quickly through Facebook’s powerful social graph with the virality of the News Feed. Facebook Deals allows you, to acquire new customers quickly through social networks. LINKEDIN: FROM ONE PROFESSIONAL TO ANOTHER, TO 100 MILLION MORE, BEST USES: Recruitment, Retention, Industry Collaboration. You may not be the most organized professional on the planet. And I’ll be the first to admit it, people have looked at my business card holder before and cringed. It’s stuffed to the brim with cards, exploding out of every angle. This mess used to be my bible, one of the things I’d grab first if my office was on fire. Although you may always keep your business card book, it’s quickly becoming irrelevant thanks to LinkedIn.

  Facebook’s Like button, introduced in April 2010, has already been added by more than 2 million distinct websites. The Like button allows Facebook’s more than 600 million users, with one click, to express approval of companies, organizations, articles, or ideas. Whether it’s a friend’s picture of her baby you like, an article shared from the New York Times, a video from a local organization, or a contest from a global brand, the Like button gets more than one billion clicks per day. Yet as astounding as these numbers are, it’s the new personalization of the Web that matters most in the social media revolution, both to companies and consumers. It’s Facebook’s ability to show you exactly what your friends and friends of friends like that makes the like function such a powerful tool. If you have a new baby, for example, you don’t care what stroller is advertised on television, and, in fact, you probably don’t care if 50, 500 or 5,000 people like a new stroller on Facebook. But if a friend of yours likes that stroller, you are more likely to feel that you can trust the company that made the item and are comfortable buying it. Facebook isn’t the only social network to adopt a “like” feature, either. YouTube, LinkedIn, and Foursquare have all added their own functionality that allows users to express approval of content, and Twitter has a Favorite button that allows users to approve of specific tweets. Content, companies, products, and ideas judged likeable by people you know and trust can be easily found throughout today’s Internet. Companies and professionals who are worthy of people clicking their Like button will, in the short term, build trust and, in the long term, win the new Web in their respective categories.

  Why don’t you join the social media? Social media is like the world’s largest cocktail party, where anyone can listen to others talking and join the conversation with anyone else about any topic of their choice. There are two main distinctions, though, between a real cocktail party and an online one: First, there’s no drinking online, of course.

  There are great stories and people who may bore you to death. Who do you want to see again or maybe even do business with at a cocktail party: the sales guy who talks incessantly about how great his company and products are or the person who listens to the problems you face, has an open discussion with you, and maybe even makes you laugh? We all intuitively know what makes some people at cocktail parties interesting and enjoyable to interact with. Yet most companies have not figured out how to be likeable in the cocktail party known as social media. Many companies still act like the sales guy who won’t shut up about his products, or someone who tries too hard to dazzle people, or the person who bores everybody to death, talking without listening and not asking other people what they want to have a conversation about. The good news is, you, as a company, have an opportunity to do better, to be the organization that isn’t that guy at the cocktail party. By applying the same set of rules you’d apply to be the person everyone wants to be involved with at the party, you can become the most likeable company or organization in your category—and end up the most profitable as well. Listen carefully, be transparent, be responsive, be authentic, tell great stories—the qualities that would make you the hotshot at the party—and they’ll make your organization a likeable one on social networks.

  But do you really want to trust your throbbing back to a complete stranger in an emergency? Then you think of another idea, and you head to Facebook and again search “back.” At the top of the results is a doctor’s listing with a sidebar telling you that three of your friends like this doctor. Beneath the top listing is a chiropractor, next to which you see two friends who like him. “Sweet,” you think. “Someone I can trust, because my friends like him.” You make a quick call, and you’re off to get your backache taken care of by a recommended doctor, a professional your friends like. This scenario and scenarios such as this aren’t happening en masse quite yet, but use of Facebook and the social graph (global mapping of people and how they’re connected) for search and commerce isn’t far off. Think about it—why would you possibly make a decision about a doctor, an attorney, a mechanic, or any important product or service for that matter, based on advertising or Google placement when you can make this decision based on the preference and recommendations of trusted friends? Facebook and social media have made it infinitely easier to do the latter. It’s nothing short of a game changer for marketers and businesses of all sizes. The great news about the new world of communications we live in today is that everybody has a shot. Build a great product, get the word out to a few people, make it easy for people to share with their friends, and you can win without spending a boatload. Just five years ago, for instance, if you went to a new restaurant that you loved, you might have shared the experience with a few of your friends, family, or neighbors. Perhaps if you really loved the restaurant, you raved about it for a week to as many as 10 or 15 friends. Today, you can share these thoughts with 200 Facebook friends, 300 Twitter followers, or 150 LinkedIn connections, all with one click on your computer or phone. No matter what the size of your business, organization, or client’s business, you too have the ability to follow the simple rules of social media outlined in this book to reap the rewards. Senior management, and anyone in a communications position for that matter, needs to know about social media marketing and how powerful or detrimental it can be.

  Before we move on, I’d like to share three key points about social media to dispel any myths you may have heard and make sure I manage your expectations from the start: 1. Social media cannot make up for a bad product, company, or organization. If you’re marketing a bad service or widget, not only will social media not help you, but it will actually hurt your cause, as word will spread quickly. The good news is, if you’re using social media well, you’ll quickly know when you have bad products, employees, or processes. As a good businessperson or marketer, you can fix these problems before they cause any serious damage. 2. Social media won’t lead to overnight sales success. We’re talking about building relationships with people, and that invariably takes time 3. Social media is not free. It will take time and/or money to achieve sustained growth. Since it’s free to join Facebook and any social network worth talking about, many marketers think social media is free, or at least cheap. Well, the good news is, no matter how large your company is, it’s nearly impossible to spend the kind of money on social media that large companies regularly have spent on network television in the last twenty years. But building and executing a likeable social media plan will take lots of time and work. Ultimately, such a plan can’t be the sole effort of any one marketing or public relations department but instead must be integrated across your entire company, its agencies, and vendors. BOOKS CAN BE SOCIAL, TOO. I write a lot in this book about the two-way interactive nature of social media and the importance of leveraging that potential. Of course, a book is typically as one-directional as a medium can be: author writes, and reader reads and digests. As a social media author, I simply won’t allow that to be the case—so here’s my promise to you: as you read this book, if you have any questions, need clarification, are uncertain about content, or want
to challenge me on the points or strategies within, please do let me know, using social media.

  INVITE YOUR TRIBE TO BE YOUR FIRST FANS

  You’ve started a Facebook page and a Twitter account for your company. You’ve put up a YouTube channel, started a blog, and even added a button on your website promoting your Facebook page. You’re doing everything you’re supposed to do to “join the conversation” with social media. Yet up until now, the results have been dismal. You have a ridiculously low number of fans, considering the size of your business, and the only person you’re having a conversation with is yourself. (OK, maybe the guy in the cubicle next to you has joined in, too). But the promise of social media that you’ve heard so much about is far from being fulfilled. You don’t know what you’ve done wrong or what you need to do to get on the right track to social network success. Where are all of your Facebook fans? Why isn’t everyone giving you the “like” stamp of approval? There’s no reason to worry. No matter the size of your organization, gaining lots of fans on Facebook, followers on Twitter, and subscribers on your blog and YouTube is far from automatic. The bad news is that you’re going to have to work for fans, friends, and followers, but the good news is that everyone else has to as well.