Social Media can have a tremendous impact on your brand. Brand Managers, Marketing Managers, CMOs have chief responsibility to ensure the brand is consistently represented everywhere. But with the inherent transparency of social media, managing your brand becomes much more difficult. Every employee, former employee, disgruntled customer, competitor can make comments about your brand for the whole world to see. Those comments can outrank your intended branding message. Whether that impact is positive or negative will depend greatly on if you have outlined a plan to manage your brand the the social media space.
- Assess before you Start. Does your company have a culture that will allow social media success? Will you be able to manage, evaluate and act on suggestions that may arise? Also, determine the landscape for your industry. Find out what is currently being communicated about your company, the industry, products and competitors. Where are the comments coming from and what are the themes? Has a rogue blog been established in using your brand? Before you make your plan, outline the current social media landscape.
- Determine Your Goals. Social media goals vary from managing customer service issues, communicating good will, education, entertainment, or driving sales. Some of the big brands tend not to focus on sales, but more entertainment, education and good will that can enhance the brand vs. a direct sales goal. They go big on flashy interactive strategies that they hope will eventually turn into increased sales.
- Outline Your Plan. The assessment and goals will drive the messaging strategy. Your competitors may already be servicing customers via Facebook and appear to be adding value therefore enhancing their brand. You may decide to get up to speed and do the same. Whatever your plan, it should include a detailed plan on how to manage an execute
- Designate Responsibility. Clarity on roles in the social media space is critical to success. Mayhem can ensure when messages on social media platforms come from different sources within your organization. Unless you have clearly outlined messaging goals for your employees and have a process for monitoring posts, most companies should centralize the function to ensure consistency for the brand.
- Listen to Your Customer. It is called “Social” Networking for a reason – it is an open exchange between parties. This space must be monitored and evaluated regularly to understand how customers are responding or not responding to you messaging.
- Be flexible. Speed is essential in this space. The team managing must have the flexibility to quickly respond to competitive landscape. The approval process must be streamline. Help your legal team understand how the space works how the importance of speed.
- Know Your Capabilities. Do not over promise. Great damage can be done to the brand if customers determine that you cannot provide them what you promised.
Smart marketers know that protection of the brand is just as critical if not more-so as creating the brand itself.
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