Archive for the ‘Branding’ Category

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Aligning the Brand Personality with the Personality of the Individual Representing the Brand

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

The new rules of PR 2.0, something this week’s moderator Brian Solis spends a lot of time with.  Public Relations pros have built their careers being the voice BEHIND the Brand.  Then comes the sociPR20al web.  With the social web, a new age of public relations “faces” are appearing from all over within companies.  Starting their own blogs, taking to Twitter to streamline customer help issues or using Facebook to sell product, these social pioneers are re-defining “Public Relations” in its traditional sense.  They are coming from customer service, product management, research, operations and even the cleaning crew.  This new age of PR pros are taking a different approach from their brethren of past, they are now out in FRONT of the Brand. 

Being in front of the Brand is changing the dynamics of what PR is and does.  Think about this:

  • When you are pushing your message to the public, it creates a sense of trust.  “I don’t have any reason not to believe your soup is now lower in sodium and therefore better for my health, Right?” 
  • It’s not until you engage with that consumer and create a cycle of communication that you begin to get a sense of ownership. “Hey girlfriends, Joe from Soup Co tweeted me with about a new recipe and asked if they should use grilled chicken or roasted for their New & Improved soup coming out next month. We all need to try it”

The difference between old PR and marketing and the new age of PR is significant.  It’s taking the broad messaging back to micro-messaging looking to build their following one happy customer at a time.  So what’s the downside to the new rules of PR 2.0?  Do you gain trust if Susie from marketing is talking to you about the recent drug interactions of your new Pharmaceutical instead of the research PR messaging?  It probably depends where the message is coming from and the sincerity of it that helps to align your feelings of the Brand and where you trust that Brand in the perspective of your family.

So that’s the topic this week, aligning the personalities of your brand and your new breed of “PR” pros.  Carrying the discussion this week is Brian Solis who has been at the head of this discussion since the mid 1990′s.  He is one of the leading voices in this field and will certainly add his share of nuggets into this conversation. 

Aligning the Brand Personality with the Personality of the Individual Representing the Brand

Q1: Who do you trust more? How do you know when the brand is talking or when the person behind the brand is?

Q2:  What happens when the personal Brands become larger than the Brand they represent? How does that affect your loyalty in the brand?

Q3:  Are you more apt to engage in a relationship with the brand, based on the person behind the brand? If that person leaves, do you leave to?

Be sure to join us this Tuesday 9/29 at 12 noon EST for the last #socialmedia event of September.  Either follow #socialmedia on your favorite Twitter client or follow our Live page for a filtered feed of the conversation.

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Social Media Fame-Does anyone outside the bubble even care?

Monday, July 13th, 2009

spotlightWe’ve talked so much over the past few months about personal brands versus corporate brands and what is more important to a company. We railed on who is the social media expert, who is the snake oil salesman, who is a star and who is a must follow on Twitter etc etc… But what does it all really mean? Are we the only one’s that actually care about this? Are we all just living and operating in such a closed, cloistered bubble that we just have no clue? Does the outside world or corporate America, even know or care about what we are doing in our circles that surround the periphery that is social media?

Join our host this week, Jennifer Leggio from ZDNet as we dig into what social media fame really translates into with the following 3 questions. Hopefully one hour will be sufficient, but with such a hot topic we doubt it.

Fame in social media:

1) What’s SM fame worth to you or your company? Is there ROI? Do you care?

2) What do you see the value of having a recognizable personal brand is? Does THAT translate into $?

3) What drives you? visibility or accomplishment?

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Branding with social media and the impact it has on corporate and personal brands

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Branding-IronBranding is the creation and development of your company’s brand: the logo, images, slogans, ideas and other information connected to your company or product. Branding is what makes your company recognizable and unique and is also the element that causes companies the most difficulty. 

Then consider what social media has done.  With the ubiquity of content and people on the web, developing a personal brand has become important in differentiating your skills and your content that is present on the web. 

On top of developing your corporate brand across the new social media landscape and creating your personal brand as a result, there is an interesting question that is coming up with marrying your personal brand along with your company. 

What if you change jobs? What happens to either Brand if they are attached.  What happens if your personal brand becomes stronger than the brand of your employer? 

Richard Binhammer (aka @RichardatDell) will take on this topic and lead the discussion which promises to be fast-paced and passionate.  Richard is part of arguably one of the most successful social media teams across any of the Fortune class companies and will share his insight on both corporate and personal branding strategies.  We invite you to join in the conversation and add your POV on this topic Tuesday 6/23 at noon EST.  Use #socialmedia in your tweets and follow along on the LIVE page. 

This week’s topic and questions are:

Question 1:   How do you leverage your corporate brand using social media?

Question 2 :  How should one develop their personal brand using social media?

Question 3 :  How do you keep the 2 separate…or do you?

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Follow up to best practices for companies to build their audiences using Social Media

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

Strong opinions and passion. Those would be the underlying themes of the last Unpanel hosted by Scott Stratten. Why those two themes? Well the topic was what are the best practices for companies to build their audiences using Social Media and indeed there were some stong opinions and points of views.

The first question of  what was the process for companies to start creating an audience digitally got things started right away with opinions and comments that ranged from, “get right in front of them in their preferred channels”, to using personal social networks and to work out or expand from there. However, the trick might be to try and determine what channels or networks your audience prefers. The bottom line,  the consensus seemed to be that everyone had to listen first to find and locate the audience that you want to convert. But once they are located, listen passively then participate actively! Give them value above and beyond anything else!

The next question was  should companies automate some, all or none of the process probably generated the most heated and passionate responses. Some said no, need to keep it personal, while others said that if you grow quickly then you might need to automate. Though some were of the mindset that automation kills the process or purpose of connecting with people-which in a sense is the essence of social media. but…

What can large companies do to retain the essence of social media on an enterprise level? Perhaps that is worthy of it’s own blog post?

At the end of the day there needs to be a balance of quantity and quality but with a certain level of engagement. Large or small, you still need to engage, this isn’t about collecting names. Some may treat it like “name” farming but it’s the companies that develop relationships that will win. Suffice it with this, “auto anything on Twitter” for example defeats the purpose of social media and a company thats buying followers, isn’t gaining a sale.

Methods seemed to have been as much at issue here as was the type of engagement but it segued to the last question of the session which was where should a corporation build followers of current and potential customers, and why? a checklist was what were looking for. However the convo lingered on Q2 for a bit longer and that was because of the strong opinions that everyone had on the auto follow debate.

Right out of the blocks came this comment: Sometimes brands create their audience and don’t necessarily find them. Interesting point/observation. This comment came rolling in which someone said, “Define the key themes that resonate with the  brand and then use Social media search tools to discover where & who is discussing them. A great point! Followed by you  can’t be everywhere at one so,”fish where the  fish are swimming”, but have a ‘social home’, create action that drives people to you.

Scott though asked a great follow up in which he poses, If your market isn’t fully on Twitter (or FB), should you build a home on it before they and your competition come? I venture to say yes.

But if companies are going to engage consumers in Social Media, should they request your social media info? Twitter name, etc? Great follow up question by Scott. The answers ranged from; If they have it yes, why not? To,” there has to be a level of trust”.

Bottom line to this very engaging and frantic discussion is this…

As a company you have to be proactive in social media not reactive.

Next week’s host; David Alston of Radian 6

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What are the best practices for companies to build their audiences using Social Media?

Monday, May 11th, 2009

empty-crowd1So what happens if you have a party and no one shows?  Companies of all shapes and sizes have a difficult time imagining themselves being social for a number of reasons.  “Our customers are not teenagers”, “Our customers don’t want to know when our CEO uses the bathroom”,  “We have a call center and actually talk to our customers”, etc.  Ever hear any of that from a company or worse yet your boss in trying to justify not getting involved with social media or wanting to develop digital audiences.

Scott Stratten, the president of Un-Marketing.com, is an industry recognized expert in developing social currency for his corporate clients.  Helping those clients develop strategies for building audiences online and actually executing those strategies with significant results.  You could say he even “eats his own dog food” with one of the largest Twitter audiences out there. 

This week’s event is sure to spur much debate and raise the awareness on real strategies for companies to build their digital audiences.

Topic:  What are the best practices for companies to build their audiences using Social Media?

Q1:  What’s the process for companies to start creating an audience digitally?  

Q2:  Should companies automate some, all or none of the process?

Q3:  Where should a corp build followers of current and potential customers, and why? a checklist

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Follow up to UnPanel #6: How to Win When Your Competitors are Losing, an advanced social media approach

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

A great turnout for this event led by Jason Falls from full service brand agency, Doe-Anderson.  Can’t decide whether to attribute the passionate dialogue to the topic or Jason for challenging the standard response posts.  As a result, this UnPanel created a solid dialogue around the topic of how some companies can grow their businesses even when competitors and their industry is even or declining.  A summary is below:

Customer’s perception: is that companies care more about profits than customers.

How can you overcome this perception?  Assign someone or some people to interact with customers throughout the day/night.  Be free to answer questions whether related directly to selling more stuff initially or not.  Create a personal “face” that customers can relate to.  A theme that came up was that of ” living amongst them” or showing customers that the people of the brand face the same challenges and experiences as the customers.  Create familiarity and relate to your customers at an individual level.

You can’t outsource relationships whether online or in real-life.

One point to this is that you have to humanize that which is inanimate.  Brands are things, people want to interact with humans, not things.   There was some talk about trusting agencies but at the end of the day, the consensus agreed that agencies have a place with developing strategy, guidance, focus, etc but the dialogue needs to come from people inside the company.  Agencies are best when they try to avoid dependency relationships with clients.  Managing their work by not getting noticed.

How do you know as a brand that you have been “accepted” or become in-network?

First, this is not a destination, becoming accepted social as a brand by your customers is a continuous journey.  Certainly when your customers are recommending you to their friends is a good indicator (Apple may win this battle).  That is a much deeper commitment that simply purchasing something and being done.  Make it easy for customers to become advocates.  A great post said when customers start wearing your tattoo, then you know you are operating in-network.  That is a great concept both literally and figuratively.

Once you have arrived, how do you keep your Cred with you customers?

In list format in order of how they came in:

  • Invite interactions offline, meet-ups, invites to parties, events, etc.
  • Consider Mobile interactions as a more intimate way to connect with customers
  • Invite them to help develop new products, innovations for the company
  • Keep evaluating feedback, adapting, changing to the needs of customers. No stagnation.
  • Social CRM as a method to stay engaged and relevant.
  • Buy your own products as your customers would. Discuss your experience with them and improve it with input.

Want to thank Jason Falls again for moderating this topic!

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How to Win When Your Competitors are Losing, an advanced social media approach

Monday, May 4th, 2009

 1st-place-medalIt’s time for companies to begin to think differently, very differently about how they market to and interact with consumers, prospects, partners, shareholders and employees.   Zealots and detractors alike are taking matters into their own hands on things they like and dislike about your company and your Brand.  You can’t hide from your audience.  Consumers have a louder voice, a much larger organizing hand and more access to their friends than you can imagine. 

Along with the complexities brought about by this new consumer, they are, in some ways very loyal too.  The Brands that have made the digital transition and embrace their consumers’ networks are having success in a time that is unforgiving at best.  Consider this recent article by Adweek.

Consumers are still making purchases, how can you make sure they are making your purchases?  Brands that live in-network understand that being on the consumer’s mind is not enough…they must be in their lives.  Companies are attempting to re-formulize how they develop products,  market, engage, build share, etc.  Simply, they want to move from the role of an outsider (making generic pitches at a network of consumers) to the concept of being in-network.

This week’s UnPanel event will spearheaded by Jason Falls who, in his own right, has figured out how to win in this very crowded space to emerge as one of the strongest leaders in the social media industry.  Jason brings a wealth of personal and agency experience to the table in this discussion and will organize around the following questions:

Q1: Assuming you are already listening, How do you get “in-network” as a Brand?

Q2: How do you know when you are “in-network”?

Q3: Thinking outside of our bubble, what are some ways that Brands can stay “in-network”?

Please join us in this discussion and help create some direction for companies to embrace and use.  This event promises to be our best ever, so come ready jump in quickly.  A big thanks to Mr. Falls and we look forward to seeing you Tuesday 12 noon EST.

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Event #2 Summary – Cultural Changes in Businesses that are Needed to Embrace Social Media

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

To recap Event #2 led by Mack Collier we were beginning to look at the organization and the cultural changes needed to embrace and engage in Social Media in general.  We began to identify the barriers.  Some of the barriers mentioned included:

  • Legal / compliance
  • Perceived lack of measurement leading to ROI – this translates into reluctance to fund initiatives until proven.
  • Lack of trained resources – employees, in general, are not well versed in communicating socially including how they represent themselves, the company, how they relate to consumers and interested buyers.
  • Requires a culture that enables innovation, experimentation, says “failure is an option”
  • Multiple levels throughout the company need to be empowered to take initiative.

And there was a resounding agreement around Fear in general then more focused in fear of the unknown.  What if people say bad things, what if our actions spark a backlash, etc.

Regardless of the barriers, there was mutual agreement in the need for better education and social media specific training.  This was beginning to lead into broader discussions of an overall roadmap to help companies adapt their cultures to better fit the always on, always connected markets where people expect more ways to interact than simply a call center.  We did not have time to get into specifics so will attempt to carry this over to next week. 

Stay Tuned every Tuesday Noon EST.

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Mack Collier Leads Unpanel #2

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

smm-logos

Mack Collier helps advise, teach and consult with businesses of all shapes and sizes on how they can better connect with their customers via social media’s amazing tools and sites.

While being passionate about the social media space, what truly excites Mack is the human connections that can result from the proper use of these social tools, or to quote Mack:

Don’t focus on the tools, focus on the connections that the tools help facilitate.”

With that being said, we’re honored to have Mack host our next UnPanel. The topic we’ll dig into, is the following.

Topic:  What are the organizational changes that need to happen in companies to support Social Media?

This is the #1 issue that practitioners deal with in managing through the organizational change that is needed to support Social Media in a business; and because of this, it raises the following questions:

Q:1  What are the barriers that companies face today?

Q2:  Who needs to be responsible / accountable for lifting these barriers?

Q3:  Let’s create a high-level road map to affect the cultural changes needed to adopt social media practices for companies.

Join us on April 7th at 12noon est. for the next #socialmedia Unpanel!

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