Your Brand is Different in Social Media- Stamats Higher Education Marketing Blog

Aug 3rd 09 Posted by Fritz McDonald in Featured Articles, Strategic Creative

Your Brand is Different in Social Media

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how social media marketing differs from traditional brand building. For a long time, I’ve been preaching the strategy message and shouting out how we all need to start building our social media programs from a clearly defined plan, not an impulse. But in focusing on strategy, we often fall back on traditional marketing strategy and apply that to the social Web. While there is some merit in this—your social strategy has to align with your larger integrated marketing strategy in order for it to be able to help accomplish your goals—there are some key differences in the way a brand campaign works in the social world.

In marketing’s recent past, marketers controlled brand content through messaging and taglines and unified brand concepts. In this sense, content was scarce. Brand campaigns were designed to raise awareness and did so through a single controlling idea. That idea was conveyed through a core set of messages that were often communicated through catchy taglines, headlines, and logos at the leading edge of the campaign and a range of collateral with a unified look. Typically, these were one-way campaigns that worked like monologues—the marketer talking at the audience, repeating the same message over and over again in the hopes it would stick.

On the social Web, this approach alienates users. Social communities favor conversation and dialogue over being talked at, and marketers are no longer sole proprietors of content. In this world, your job has changed from being a creator and sender of messages to a facilitator of conversation and communities. Building a brand works differently in this environment. Instead of a single author broadcasting the brand through a big idea, think of your brand as a larger, ongoing narrative that you co-create with your community members. This narrative will change and grow over time, becoming enriched by user perspectives. Instead of pushing a singular message out, you are building a community whose content will pull other users in. In this way, your community members share ownership of your brand.

The idea of ceding control of a brand to key audiences is worrisome to many institutions—and understandably so. For years, marketing gurus have been evangelizing for integrated marketing—and they’re still right. Now is not the time to discard traditional marketing strategies and tactics. Social media is simply another tool to add to the tool box. It is an important tool, however, and one that can have a significant impact. In today’s marketing environment, it’s no longer enough to simply raise awareness. Social media can amplify integrated marketing by taking it to the next level and start building relationships that lead to conversion.

The first and most important relationship key audiences have is with your brand. In this sense, social media can act as a built-in litmus test for how people experience your brand. Are you really who you say you are? You’ll learn quickly in the social world, and this knowledge can help you shore up deficiencies and improve your service. Above all, sharing the task of building and communicating your brand with the audiences on your social platforms will help you earn their trust and significantly multiply your pool of brand ambassadors.

What kinds of challenges are you experiencing in trying to weave your institutional brand into your social media?

Photo by Daneel Ariantho

http://www.ggbts.edu tom jones

Can you provide illustrations or examples from recent experiences of institutions?
Erik

Indeed. Trying to shoehorn traditional marketing techniques into this Web environment will almost always fall flat. The unfortunate thing is that some marketers trying to adapt to this new environment focus only on the technology side, and not so much on the social side.

Instead of jumping on the Twitter or Facebook bandwagon just to try and seem relevant without understanding the intricacies of each tool and what specific outcomes you can achieve, we need step back and understand what kind of culture exists within each of these tools and how people are interacting, sharing content, and what they see as valuable.

The brands succeeding in the social media sphere so far are the ones that understand what their customers really want and are providing real value, not just repeating meticulously crafted messages with no real content.

For example, JetBlue on Twitter: http://go-digital.net/blog/2009/05/reaching-half-a-million-customers-daily-with-no-media-cost/
Patty

How or should you respond to a negative comment on your website, Facebook, Twitter, etc.? What about to a negative comment on external sites like Yelp?
Eric Sickler

If your school is a learning organization, which it most certainly is to one degree or another, you should EMBRACE negative comments. Jud Davis at Freed-Hardeman University loves negative comments about his school on the social Web. He looks at them as an opportunity to (1) identify things that may well be “broken” at the school so he can fix them, (2) identify the specific naysayers among his multiple constituencies so he can address their concerns directly rather than let them simply fuel the flames of discontent under the school’s radar screen, and (3)leverage change on campus by offering evidence–in the form of the negative comment–that something is out of whack.

If your campus community is inclined to pretend that your school is beyond improving itself, I’d suggest you turn off all access to the Web. Trying to control all social media conversation about your college or university is about as likely as filling Madison Square Garden with innocent passers-by and managing every conversation those folks have with one another. Forever.

Not gonna happen.
http://www.stamats.com Fritz McDonald

First, thank you all for participating and sorry for the long silence–I was on vacation for a bit. But now that I’m back, let me try and address your comments: Tom, I would look at what Colgate has done in terms of combining a traditional brand tool such as a tagline with a socially enhanced website. I would also take a gander at the Stanford and Duke Facebook pages and at the institutional site for Ohio State. Erik, that’s a great example and thanks for your insight–you’re dead on. Finally, Patty, I would focus on how you can influence the conversation instead of controlling it.
http://www.stamats.com Fritz McDonald

Patty…part II. While it’s not possible to prevent negative comments, you can influence their impact by how you respond…as Jud amply demonstrates. Keep in mind that you will get fewer negative comments than you think…in general, something like 1% of all members. You have the right to bar nuts from your community; for the other 1%, why let them dominate? The community can also come to your aid in this by reinforcing positive messages you use in responding. Generally, they will be on your side. The trick is to have someone who monitors the comments so you can stay on top of them–and then, like a good PR department, figure out strategic and positive responses.
Does that help?