Social media has changed the game entirely for entrepreneurial organizations eager to build their reputations, expand their brand communities, and attract new customers. Today the size and current reach of your organization are no longer limiting factors on how vigorously your brand can grow.
We all know that the relationship potential of your website and social media assets is a critical success factor today. Even the smallest organizations are using social media to engage audiences with stimulating commentary, discussions, contests, and solicitations of user-created content. Even so, this core of "mutuality" can be reinforced and enriched by imaginative content strategies that touch on the human-interest and shared value implications of your business.
Here are four proven content-anchored approaches that can boost your brand's reach and appeal when you implement them with style, authenticity and a creative touch.
1) Energizing your online presence with real-world stories and case studies.
You should certainly anchor your online self-presentation in factually descriptive information about your enterprise and what it can do to answer customers' needs or challenges. But you paint yourself into a very conventional corner by limiting your online pitch to this cast-in-concrete value proposition. Blend in real-people testimonials and customer narratives, and use photos and illustrations amply to propel your value proposition beyond the predictable left-brain orbit. As I pointed out in a June post on Social Media Today, if you manage the narrative aspects of your branding skillfully, you're well on your way to inspiring not just human interest, but the stirrings of felt community, the secret sauce in 21st century branding.
2) Allowing your enterprise's values to speak to your online community.
This is the social common ground where members of your brand community will develop connections, real or imaginary, with other like-minded individuals. Old-school types don't really get this softer side of branding, particularly as a tool for smaller enterprises. But emphasizing the values-not just the commercial value-- behind your can jump-start its viral spread in a big way, no matter how large or how small you are. Healthy brands attract vibrant social communities--and not all members of these self-organizing communities are customers, nor are they necessarily the highly-vocal contributors who may populate your Facebook page and YouTube channel.
The social gravity that holds these ad hoc affinity networks together originates in the strongly felt values that individual members of the community share--or like to think they share--with their fellow members. Among the most obvious examples of these brand communities: Apple, Nike, Starbucks, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Dwell on this proposition for a moment and you'll likely come up with many more exemplars from your personal or corporate sphere of interests and values. Bringing your core values forward can make a difference in your brand community.
3) Associating your brand with a global theme or cause that aligns with your core business.
Smaller organizations may wonder how they can possibly stand out in the noisy universe of social media. One approach is to reframe your brand in the context of a big idea, using your content outreach to link your brand with a theme that's more expansive or public-service-oriented than market-centered value propositions. In effect you're borrowing prestige and viral energy by this linkage-if there's an authentic business-related foundation for linking your brand to the bigger theme.
Many brands today have stepped up into this realm: Cisco's Human Network, IBM's Smarter Planet, GE's ecomagination, and UPS' self-identification with logistics typify this approach among the big players. A smaller non-global brand can both embrace and reach beyond corporate social responsibility by establishing a visible Web- or Facebook-anchored affinity partnership with a non-profit or charitable organization. Several commentators have begun to call this approach "shared-value" branding because of its parallels with Harvard guru Michael Porter's theory of business strategy in an increasingly co-dependent global environment.
4) Fueling your brand's viral energy with emotional and inspirational momentum.
Positioning your brand as a values-based touchpoint can mean engaging on the level of the creative, the emotional and/or the inspirational. If you're hesitant to cross this line because you think your potential community may be too sophisticated for what you think is an over-sentimental approach, consider what many of the major players are up to with video content in both social and mass media. Here are just a few recent examples, although the approach is anything but new as a brand-booster. The take-away here: all these brands go for the heartstrings first, the product-sell second.
- VW's pint-sized Darth Vader
- Nike "I would run to you"
- Procter & Gamble: "Thank you, Mom"
- Chrysler: Clint Eastwood's "Halftime in America" spot (SuperBowl)
- Tree Top Apple Juice: "A sense of wonder"
You don't have to be a major player to apply or adapt these four branding best practices in your own market. Cultivate your online brand with creativity, polish and an eye for the authentic and the heartfelt, and you can achieve new levels of awareness, fellow feeling and esteem in an expanding brand community.