The New Rules of Branding
Your Business Online
Mastering branding
online takes a lot more than a cool logo and catchy slogan. Experts play by a
fresh new set of rules.
It's
no longer enough to have a sleek website, social-media presence, and
consistent brand aesthetic online. The new rules of branding your business on
the Web have a lot less to do with presentation, and a lot more to do with
interaction. In order to bring you up to speed, Inc.com has compiled nine of
the most innovative and ingenious tips from articles, guides, and interviews in Inc. and Inc.com over the past year. These are the new
rules of branding online.
1. Don't just start the conversation.
Be an integral and evolving part of it. "Social media has one very
important perspective to share with brand management—the conversation. Like
branding, social media is all about the conversation and building effective
relationships. They are perfectly suited to one another," says Ed Roach,
founder of The Brand Experts, a brand management consultancy in West
Leamington, Ontario, the author of The Reluctant Salesperson, a free e-book available at
www.thebrandingexperts.ca. The rules for brand messaging through new media
versus traditional channels haven't changed, but "the game sure got better
and more interesting," says Roach. It's not enough to have a Facebook page
or a Twitter account, you must participate in the conversation by making
regular posts and replying to direct messages from your customers. Ron Smith,
president and founder of S&A's Cherokee, a public relations and marketing
firm in Cary, North Carolina, agrees, adding that you'll want to stay on top of
what people are saying about you and your brand online. "Monitoring social
media is a must for all companies. Social media has shortened the time frame
for company responses to complaints or accusations. These days, companies need
to acknowledge any issues and control the messaging in a matter of minutes
instead of hours or days," says Smith.
2. Either keep your personal brand out of it…
So you have 10,000 Twitter followers. Does it matter to your customers? Tim
Ferriss, the entrepreneur behind the sports nutritional supplements company
BrainQUICKEN and author of The
4-Hour Workweek, told Inc.com contributor John
Warrillow: "Unless you're in one of a handful of businesses like public
speaking, I think managing and growing a personal brand can be a huge
distraction for company founders. I see all of these entrepreneurs trying to
collect Twitter followers, and it reminds me of a matador waving a red flag in
front of a bull. In this case, the founders are the bull. The bullfighter moves
the flag away, and the bull comes up with nothing but air. Steve Jobs has a
personal brand, but it is Apple's product design that makes it such a valuable
company. He isn't jumping on Foursquare to develop his 'personal brand.'
3. …or dive in and make all the headlines you can.
Appearing in the media as a source of expertise can go a long way toward building
your brand, Inc.'s April Joyner reports. To gain press, identify media outlets
that are most applicable to your particular areas of expertise and send them
targeted pitches. If you want to be a talking head on radio or television, it
also helps to give producers a preview of your personality by referring them to
video clips on your site. As with print, the Web has also democratized the
world of radio. Through venues such as BlogTalkRadio, anyone can host her or
his own broadcasts—or find a show on which to appear. After you have honed an
area of expertise, you will find that there are plenty of opportunities to take
your message on the road. Becoming active in professional organizations and
attending conferences offer valuable opportunities for networking. As you
become more familiar within a certain field, more and more people will call on
you to share your expertise. Making an appearance as a vendor at an event can
also offer long-term personal branding benefits.
4. Don't favor edge over consistency.
Chris Russo had a healthy business. The only thing holding it back, he thought,
was its name. Three years after its launch in 2006, Fantasy Sports Ventures's
revenue was increasing 40 percent to 50 percent a year, a pace that surprised
even Russo. But by the fall of 2009, he was uneasy. Despite the heady growth,
Russo felt the company's brand positioning was pigeonholing the business and
would soon limit further expansion. "Fantasy Sports Ventures was not a
long-term, sustainable, public-facing brand," Ed O'Hara, of the branding
firm SME, says. "It felt more like a holding company and was too heavily
weighted on the fantasy side." O'Hara and Russo tossed around lots of edgy
names, like Fanarchy, Fantology, and Gutcheck, but weren't sure. Rebranding was
on the table, but the company didn't want to alienate its huge readership and
large fan base. The solution? When the company acquired another brand, The Big
Lead, and was integrating it into the existing portfolio of sites, Russo
realized he struck gold. The name was consistent with the sites' goals, as well
as its existing image.
5. Be persistent in finding and targeting your niche.
Even if you're entering a flooded marketplace—and online is certainly a very
crowded forum—you always have a chance to make your brand and company stand
out. People used to think water was all the same; now stores carry half-a-dozen
brands or more. "Marketers struggle with differentiation because they give
up too soon," says Derrick Daye, managing partner of The Blake Project.
"They think that this can't be differentiated, it can't be unique."
Experts say the constantly shifting marketplace creates the need to be creative
with your approach. The toothpaste market is one that professionals cite as a
constantly changing product selection that requires vigilance on the part of
brand managers. Additives like baking soda, breath freshener, or whitening
strips are now taken for granted.
6. Excel at telling your customers "About Us."
You may not be paying much attention to your About Us page, but visitors to
your site are, writes Chana Garcia. And considering that your About Us page is
where the world first clicks to learn about your company and the services you
offer, it deserves a little more consideration and a lot more respect. Sure,
you need to include all the basics. But a few simple tactics can make your
About Us page a more exciting read and your company come across as more accessible,
says Lorrie Thomas, aka The Marketing Therapist, a marketing strategist,
educator, writer, web marketing expert and speaker. Avoid writing a soliloquy
(too much text can be a turnoff) and focus on connecting with your site
visitors. Thomas asked her employees to write their own bios for her company's
About Us page. Her only mandate was that in addition to providing a snapshot of
their professional history, they include personal information, such as hobbies
or their favorite activities. Some even set up links to their blogs and
personal websites. This might also be a good place to include e-mail addresses
for your staff. Readily available contact information shows customers that you
want to hear from them and that you have nothing to hide.
7. Fully integrate social media into your site.
You'll not only look savvy, but increase your connectivity, and gain traffic to
you site from elsewhere. You don't necessarily need to put out the next viral
marketing video or hire an expensive marketing agency (although both would
probably help) to achieve a high rate of traffic. All you need is a bit of
elbow grease, a few tricks up your sleeve, and a commitment to making your site
a quality destination for visitors. Add Facebook Like buttons, have a dynamic
blog section, utilize SEO, and build your site heavy with links, for starters.
More tips can be found in our guide to "How to Drive More Traffic to Your Website.
8. Monitor your brand's reputation, and be ready to respond.
Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp have become essential components of many companies'
online marketing strategies, but there are countless other sites on which
customers rant and rave about their experiences. A question or complaint left
unanswered on any of them has the potential to tarnish a company's brand and
scare away prospective customers. That's why companies like Beachbody are using
new tools to monitor what's been said about them online. The most basic
services, like Google Alerts, allow users to select keywords to track and to
receive e-mail updates whenever they appear on the Web. Others, like Social
Mention and HootSuite, specifically scour profiles on social networks such as
Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace for relevant comments. Nate Bagley, a social
media expert at Mindshare Technologies, a Salt Lake City company that makes
software that helps companies keep track of customer feedback, uses Google
Alerts and Social Mention to keep track of references to his company, as well
as news on its clients, competitors, and the industry at large. "It's a
good way to gather business intelligence," he says. Some of these
services, including Radian6 and Viralheat, detect whether a post is positive,
negative, or neutral, so businesses can easily determine which mentions require
the most attention. Those features have allowed companies to maintain greater
control of their brands.
9. Showcase your best work.
In this new environment, a sturdy brand is all about trust and relationships.
With that goal in mind, there's no better way to build both than by posting
testimonials or listing big-name clients you've partnered with. That will lend
your business a good amount of credibility. You might consider incorporating
your clients' logos somewhere on your page as an added visual element.
Mentioning awards and recognitions your company received, as well as community
service work, green initiatives, and interesting facts, will also make your
business more appealing. Additionally, timelines, company history, and major milestones are attention-grabbing.
Everyone is jumping into the social media bandwagon with just only one aim and that is to develop their business initiatives in the respective fields of expertise. The growth of social media platforms and the presence of new ones itself is a proof of the fact that social media is growing in an infinite speed. Well, how can your business benefit out of it?
