Branding Tactics, Truths and Turn-offs for Business

It’s enticing and consuming. Dreaded and feared. It’s the key initiative of 2011 marketing plans. Reality TV of the internet. It’s social media, and it’s here to stay.

While its potential impact can’t be denied, brands everywhere are grasping to find their place in this new world. What may be in today can easily fall out tomorrow, and the only precedent is to set new precedents. What works for one industry can be detrimental to another. But one thing is certain: if you’re going to “go social,” you must do it with a purpose and be willing to invest the time and resources to do it right.

Facts: The world’s number one online destination is Facebook. Of its 500 million global users (which includes a whopping 41% of all Americans), at least half log on to the site every day. Over 1.5 million businesses have active Facebook pages and retailer fan page activity has doubled in the past year.

Today on Facebook, you’ll find pages for Lady Gaga, Manolo Blahnik, The Louvre, Disneyland, Conan O’Brien, Harry Potter, the state of Maine, and Barack Obama. And on those pages hundreds of thousands, even millions, of fans. Pages for every television show, sports team, celebrity, restaurant, product, politician, musician, brand, place or cause you can think of. Even the Dalai Lama has a Facebook page. And he currently has 1,083,793 fans.

For shorter attention spans there’s Twitter. The mammoth microblog’s draw is concise, immediate dissemination of information, and it’s growing at hyper-speed. American Twitter awareness jumped from 8% in 2008 to 87% in 2010, and it acquires over 300,000 new users per day worldwide. Although headlined by celebrity über-Twitterers like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah, Twitter users are three times more likely to follow brands than anything else.

YouTube, the world’s second Google, is searched by over 2 billion visitors each day. The multimedia hub has nearly tripled online video watching in the past two years. The professional network LinkedIn has garnished over 67 million members in 150 industries across the globe, and continues to grow exponentially. Wikipedia has more than 85,0000 content authors and has become the internet’s premier source of information. SlideShare, Flickr, Bebo, Digg, Blogger, StumbleUpon…blogging, microblogging, photo sharing, video sharing, presentation sharing, comment communities, niche communities, podcast communities, social news, social measuring, social bookmarking—social media is taking over, and it’s overwhelming.

So, how do you successfully market a brand in this complex universe? For B2C and B2B brands alike, go back to what makes social media so powerful: legitimate, immediate relevancy.

Legitimate because it’s uncensored, not marketed (think Google search results vs. Google sponsored links).

Immediate because it’s happening in real time, updated to the second.

Relevant because each user has a unique experience centered on what matters most to him or her.

1. MAKE IT LEGITIMATE

Don’t sell—just make friends.
When it comes to marketing a business, stop trying to market the business. Respect the authentic nature of social media. Being “legitimate” builds brand authenticity and credibility that will ultimately translate into business.

Before releasing it anywhere else, Nike posted its most recent World Cup video ad on Facebook. In one weekend, the “Write the Future” video ad was passed around virally between friends over 9 million times, and, in the process, doubled Nike’s Facebook friends from 1.6 to 3.2 million. The ad placement was paid for but the worldwide distribution—totally free. If you receive something forwarded by a friend, you are likely to pay attention. Friends make this process legitimate.

Be transparent.
Intervene in online discussions only as you have to; allowing the negative to co-exist with the positive makes you real.

In an effort to compete with a successful Target back-to-school campaign on Facebook, WalMart launched its own competitive campaign. Unwisely, they chose to disallow comments on their page’s wall posts. This decision caused a backlash against WalMart, of all places, on Target’s Facebook’s page! Users, rightly or wrongly, felt that WalMart didn’t care about their opinions and attacked the retail giant for pretending to be their “friend.” Not exactly authentic.

Power to the people.
People trust other people—even people they don’t know. A recent Nielsen survey showed that 90% of internet users trust friends’ opinions, but 70% trust those of virtual strangers. This means that anyone discussing your brand has the power to influence your customer.

The homepage of HSBC’s online bank, First Direct, is a giant dashboard of six social media widgets displaying real-time customer opinions and company facts. The headlining animation invites customers to comment “if you like us” or “if you don’t.” First Direct is extending its pioneering customer service through social media which is, according to Mark Mullen, Head of Marketing, “…particularly [important] in peer to peer recommendation and word of mouth.” By empowering people to share opinions, they foster believable brand conversations.

2. MAKE IT IMMEDIATE

Time to update
The lure of social media is also its crux: to be up-to-date, you must keep updating. The worst strategic social mistake is silence.

Zappos, the top online shoe and clothing retailer, developed an ingenious, holistic strategy for keeping their content current: engaging their employees. By creating a Twitter aggregate page, they track and feature employee activity anywhere in the Twittersphere. The high-personality CEO himself has a huge Twitter following due to his frequent tweets. A large percentage of the company’s 28,000 Facebook friends actively comment, and their YouTube channel remains alive with activity. Zappos embraced social media internally, and as a result have over 500 socially active employees driving their social forums and keeping it updated, constantly.

The share effect
‘Share Links’ are the most effective use of pixel space on the internet, capitalizing on the human impulse to share in order to propel information instantly and exponentially.

Volkswagen launched a brilliant video campaign called The Fun Theory (thefuntheory.com), proving that people will make eco-friendly choices if they are “fun.” The first video in the series asks “Can we get more people to use the stairs by making it fun to do?” By converting a staircase into piano keys, 66% more people than usual chose it over the adjacent escalator. The site virally spread through sharing, reaching over 2 million views in the week it debuted. It subsequently inspired over 700 user-generated, home-grown videos of making change for the better, and continues to virally promote their environmentally friendly engine technology in the spirit of fun. No commercials, no ads…just viral sharing that keeps going.

Give the scoop
Much like getting “the exclusive” with Barbara Walters, revealing firsts and insider information will intrigue and build trust with customers.

Ford decided to reveal its 2011 Explorer solely with social media. After a hyped online countdown, Launch Day 1 brought Ford 50,000 “likes” on their Facebook page, the top trending topic on Twitter, the 2nd ranked search topic on Google, 11,000 YouTube hits and, most beneficially, over 25,000 potential buyers building and pricing cars on their “Build your own Explorer” site. Ford gave the scoop on their flagship product to the social community, building relationships that will give back.

3. MAKE IT RELEVANT

Know your audience
Who are they? Where are they? What do they want? The better you understand and target your potential buyers, the more effective your efforts will be.

Starbucks knows their audience. They know that mostly, their audience fiercely loves Starbucks. So why not ask them to help shape the company’s future? My Starbucks Idea (mystarbucksidea.com) engaged their extremely web-savvy customers who, coincidentally, are extremely into customizing their coffee. So when asked to share their coffeehouse-improving ideas, the responses came flooding in. “Ideas in Action” was later added, showing actual customer ideas being implemented. They affected their audience by knowing how to reach them.

Become a resource
Being a reliable source of information builds trust. Link to the latest news and intriguing topics related to your business. If you are the industry thought-leader, you’re perceived as the industry leader.

Leading global marketing consulting firm, Accenture, has nine corporate blogs covering issues from Green IT to Trading Systems. They post free business advice in a presentation format that businesses can download and use, thus establishing this leading consultancy as a premier resource that keeps potential clients resurfacing (not to mention sharing).

Make people care
People care about things that affect them personally. If there’s a clear return, they’ll engage. Whether it’s reading, sharing, or buying, you must make them care to make them act.

In an effort to hype the 2009 opening of a new store in Malmö, Sweden, IKEA created a new type of advertising that could only exist in Facebook. Promoting a page specifically created for the new store manager, they posted a dozen pictures of IKEA showrooms to his profile. Users were invited to tag themselves on products within the photos, and the first tagger won the product. Users demanded more pictures, and personal tagging spread IKEA showrooms all over the world via Facebook profile pages. They cared enough to act, and that action advertised the brand’s products to hundreds of thousands of buyers.

IN CONCLUSION

The biggest challenge in social media is its ever-evolving landscape. There’s no published books or standard practices, and the paths of other successes can’t be taken; new ones must be forged. While being legitimate, immediate and relevant won’t make a social media strategy, it will establish a solid foundation to build on. Most critically though, your brand must remember this: Even in a game where the rules keep changing, you’ve got to play to win.

Gina Bleedorn
Creative Director, ADRENALINE
A NewGround Company