Social media is not only a useful tool for enhancing the visibility of your brand, but social media is also useful for enhancing your brand’s online reputation. Social media is an excellent and cost effective way to promote your brand. However, enhancing your brand’s visibility requires a strategy of interaction versus straight promotion.
Using Social Media to Build Brand Visibility
Though many businesses are aware that they need to utilize social media to build brand visibility, jumping into the fray may be a bit intimidating. Successful social media marketing requires more than simply creating a Facebook business page or a business Twitter account and hoping that potential customers will be drawn to your brand. Building brand visibility requires providing value to potential customers. Offering relevant content on a regular basis will increase your brand’s visibility. Providing potential customers with videos, articles and blog posts that generate interest and inform is a great way to enhance your brand’s visibility. One of the best features of social networking is the ability to share content. When you offer users valuable content, they will share the content with friends and family, further enhancing brand visibility.
Some of the most effective social media campaigns have created videos that have gone viral. When a video goes viral, this simply means that the video has been shared repeatedly both within and outside of the social network. One of the most effective viral video campaigns is the “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign by Old Spice. The company has created a series of creative and funny videos that raised awareness of the Old Spice brand. This campaign is rumored to have doubled the sales of Old Spice cologne in a short time. Note that brand promotion was secondary to providing humorous content in the video series.
Using Social Media to Enhance the Brand’s Online Reputation
Social networks are built upon the premise of interaction. Interaction enables you to enhance your brand’s reputation by providing customer service and developing relationships with customers and potential customers. When you build a Facebook business page, make sure to enable comments and allow visitors to the page to post questions and comments about the brand. Elicit suggestions about the brand from users. Offer surveys to take the temperature of the page visitors about the brand.
When visitors to the page ask questions, be sure to answer the questions promptly. You will demonstrate to visitors that you care about their perceptions of the brand. If a visitor posts a negative comment, deal with the comment quickly by addressing the concerns of the poster. Seek to convert a negative experience to a positive one. You can transform a brand critic to a brand evangelist with some care and consideration. Let visitors know that you will go to great lengths to right their concerns about the brand. You will develop a reputation for being a brand that is concerned with customer perception.
Developing relationships with visitors to your Facebook page and Twitter followers will enhance your brand’s online reputation. Eliciting input from your social media followers and fans shows visitors and potential customers that you integrate their suggestions into your marketing strategies.
Properly utilizing social media marketing to promote your brand will enhance your brand’s online reputation, too, when performed right. Stay engaged and let users know that their opinions matter. An agency experienced with social media marketing is a valuable resource when navigating the social media terrain. Enlist the services of a social media marketing firm to successfully create and execute your brand’s social media strategy.