5 Social Media Sites for Increasing Brand Awareness
One of the best ways to take advantage of social media is to use it for increasing your brand awareness. Companies have found many creative ways to use social media and increase their reputation through leveraging the following five tools:
- Facebook If your company is not on Facebook, it’s time to step out of the dark-ages. The real point of Facebook is to engage already brand loyal customers. This is a great place to get feedback on new products or terrible logos (Ahem - the GAP fiasco). Consumers use brands as an extension of their identity. Facebook allows for rich content to be shared in a variety of ways. In turn, consumers are able to share your brand information with their friends. This is the ultimate outlet for Word Of Mouth (WOM) marketing. Also look into Facebook ads. They have an awareness selection that costs pennies to increase your following.
- Twitter I am assuming this one is already on the list of ‘got it’ but how exactly are you using it? The best way to build brand awareness is not through selling your product but through selling your brand’s philosophies. Below is an example from the American Red Cross. Their main goal is to get donations and volunteers but their cause is keeping America safe when in disaster mode. Here they are preventing the annual turkey fire on Thanksgiving. If valuable information is contributed the response will be more followers and higher brand awareness.
- Linkedin Your professional network is just as important as your customer network. Your team should be compiled of professionals with complete profiles. Once that is finished, build a group to maintain information between you and your associates. Content can be shared by all members and is a great way to show off the talent you have in house. Even the Whitehouse has a Linkedin group.
- YouTube People like rich media and it doesn’t get any better than YouTube. Every day people are driven to YouTube to learn visually or to simply be entertained. Create a channel that is brand centric and provide information relevant to your target audience in this medium. Below is an example of LevelTen's Drupal Labs.
- Digg When used correctly, Digg is a great way to boost traffic to your website or company blog. The key is to embed a Digg button on your blog to promote social bookmarking. Once you are discovered, your links will be shared with many others in the Digg network. Places like AdAge also use Digg to help determine the ranking of blogs and websites. Keep in mind you can also promote 3rd party news about your brand on Digg as well. Once you have the right combination of Diggs it leads to many other opportunities to have your brand spread across the digital spectrum.
