DBE Fast Focus
Social Media & Managing Your Message
Getting Started Finding Your Audience Communicating Your Message Your presence and participation alone will win fans for your brand, and good content moves across social media platforms at lightning speed, reaching your potential customers wherever they are. Managing Your Brand Reputation Social Media Management 
Social media marketing is all about conversation. It doesn’t fit neatly into the traditional marketing mold because it’s more interactive and transparent than anything that’s been done before. Marketers tend to either jump in head first, or balk at the idea altogether. Who would we talk to? What would we talk about? How do we manage what gets said? Good questions, but what’s important to remember is that with or without you, the conversation is already going on.
Just as companies scrambled to lock up domain names related to their brands 10 years ago, the most important first step for social media involvement is claiming branded usernames on each digital outpost. There are plenty of companies who missed this boat and have been victims of brandjacking on various social media sites. Even if you never intend to use the site again, make sure that you claim your brand name as a username on all highly popular sites and any niche sites relevant to your business.
Once you’ve got your brand’s usernames claimed, it’s time to strategize. You need to identify who your target audience is and find the social media properties they are using. There are hundreds of social media sites out there, and the list grows every day, so no matter how unique your product or service is, there is probably an online community out there already that will be the perfect audience for your message.
Social media content is not an appropriate venue for advertising; once you find your community, resist the urge to hit them with your sales pitch. It will never work. Instead, listen to the conversation and then slowly ease your way in. Introduce yourself, being careful to remain transparent about your brand affiliations (i.e., “I’m Kathy from Widget World”). Offer resources, advice, suggestions and information. Ask questions. Tell a story. Any of these things can be done in multiple formats – video, audio, 140-character microblogs, forums, etc.
While social media management plays heavily into a search engine reputation management strategy, it’s also necessary to pay close attention to your reputation within the social media space. There are many tools out there that can help to monitor social media sites for mentions of a company name, brand name, and industry buzzwords. It’s important to know when someone is talking about your brand so that you can engage fans, offer support to unhappy customers and provide corrections to misinformation when necessary. Monitor what’s being said about your competitors as well – this can provide valuable insights into the competitive environment for your brand.
Once the initial strategy is crystallized, the prospect of monitoring, providing content to and interacting with multiple online communities can be daunting for even the most agile marketers. In a future issue of DBE Fast Focus, we’ll cover some of the popular widgets, tools and services that help make social media more manageable. For most brands, however, the best solution is to bring on a social media management partner, like DBE, to implement social media strategy and ensure that your brand is making the most of the opportunities that exist out there in the Web 2.0 landscape.
5 Useful Social Media Definitions:
- Astroturfing: Artificial buzz created to stimulate interest in a product, service, or idea. Designed to give the impression of grassroots support. The dishonest nature of this tactic can result in negative brand attention.
- Brandjacking: The term used to describe the hijacking of a brand name on any digital outpost, whether it’s used or not.
- Digg It: When someone thinks online content is particularly interesting, useful or entertaining, they can “Digg” it, bringing it to the attention of those who look to Digg.com for recommended reading.
- Microblogging: The sending of frequent, short messages (140 characters or less) that are published to a website/service.
- Wiki:a collaborative Web platform that lets users easily add, edit and delete content.
DBE
Thoughts
- Michelle Brusyo
Manager, Business Development
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Digital Brand Expressions
4499 Route 27
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