For every marketing professional, Brand Building has always been the responsibility, role or subtle essence of marketing. Nowadays in the age of social media such as Facebook and Twitter for that matter, more and more companies use and leverage social media to their advantage with fewer results than expected. Some may disagree but if has to look closely, reality is will speak for itself.
Most practitioners would say that their company now has a voice and they can get the work out to people (like advertising isn’t enough) but in reality the immediate market responds back with even a greater voice.
How many times do we see local companies use the phrases, “like us in Facebook and follow us on twitter”. Others may use incentives as “get the chance to win the latest iPhone or iPad just visit our Facebook page at”. Although these catch phrases are meant to increase brand awareness thru engagement but only a fraction of those who actually do the labor are already loyal followers of your brand. The rest are a myriad of trollers and unstable customers just in for the opportunity. Likewise, how many times would be see that the majority of comments from the online community would say “great promo but your customer service sucks!” comments like these are are hitting on a deeper more essential issue that goes beyond social media.
Getting personal, connecting individually is all great but in today’s unsympathetic online environment a company’s brand value is derived from its product and service value not from basic marketing and advertising.
Some 4 Point to consider:
- Fulfill your Promises – what is your company’s brand promise? For whatever it is have all those working for the company share one voice and work on delivering its promise to its customers.
- Excellence and not perfection – having a perfect system never works. From the get go, everyone including your customers perfection is in the state of utopia. Excellence persuades and moves people in your company to be the best they can be with efficiency.
- Back of the House – in the restaurant industry the term back of the house refers to what happening in the kitchen and often regarding with the same importance of the front of the house where the dinners are. Having your operations in tip to condition gives a glimpse of the what the customer may be expecting. How many times do we need to see a dirty toilette and immediately think how management tolerates this?
- Build before broadcast – opening up your doors on Social media with hopes of building a community to gain loyalists, fans and engage customers may not be a good idea unless you have actual communities and followers in the real world. Having someone to forcibly like your page and group does not make sense and the possibility of re-visting your page again may not come as planned.
Conclusion
Get the basics done first before stepping into the world of Social Media despite all the seminars and so-called online guru’s would tell you to. The real essence of business success is keeping your promises to your customers. Social Media is great if used correctly, it is mere a communications tool and not a life vest to save your brand.



















