June 3, 2009

Who is your brand?

Jun. 3, 2009 at 12:16 PM | By Dan Obregon | Comment Count

At its infancy, social media (as it relates to marketing) was simply a tool to help companies publish content online and perhaps solicit feedback from constituents. Now, as the medium has been evolving, marketers will have to start adjusting their content to fit the demands of social media.

As marketers began to post content in social media channels, it became apparent that the interactive nature of social media would not support certain types of campaigns. For example, Wal-Mart’s Facebook campaign that restricted open discussion alienated users who came for an open forum. Social media is simply a more hospitable place for certain types of content and brand personalities. A huge part of marketing through social media is to understand the medium and what messages it will best support.

Social media is starting to take over the functions that corporate websites once served and is giving consumers an outlet for more meaningful engagement with brands. Consumers no longer have a reason to go to company sponsored sites. Instead, it makes more sense for them to go to Facebook or Twitter so they can see what their friends are talking about and recommending. As a result, the success of brands is becoming increasingly linked with the success of the media related to them. A whole new dimension is added to a brand’s face. As the public face of corporations and institutions grows more complex, marketers need to acknowledge what is important to their target audience and adjust their content accordingly.

So what will attract and maintain your target audience? Looking at the ways in which people use social media, several themes stand out to me:

The marketplace – peer recommendations
Resistance to traditional marketing and other revenue-generating models – the difficulty that companies like Facebook and Twitter are facing in trying to translate wildly popular services into revenue
The conversation - interactions between company/institution and consumer/constituent

Incorporating each of these themes into your higher education marketing will help produce content that your constituents will want to engage with and share. One way to do this, which is suggested by the 15 Social Media Maxims is to let the personality of your brand show through. Contrary to intuition, the maxim states that you don’t want to look like a “well-rounded” company online. You want to draw the distinctions between yourself and your competition, which means highlighting the areas where your greatest strengths lie. I like how Eric Karjaluoto phrases it in his latest blog post, “Social media is only interesting when it’s social.” He encourages you to do what your mother always told you- be yourself. When you put your company on social media site, you should think of your brand as an individual and how you’d want that individual to be perceived online.

What type of personality is your brand? How would that person interact with their friends? What content would they share?