Social Media For Brands: The New Branding Tool

Facebook and Twitter have changed the nature of interaction enjoyed between brands and their consumers. Through usage of social media for brands and several marketing activities, there has been a considerable change in how companies introduce and promote their products to the consumer, and also respond to their needs. To this end, brands from all segments of the spectrum are present across both these prominent media platforms. Detergents, soft drinks and personal durables are vying with each other to engage users, cutting across geographies and segments like never before.

With establishing presence on the social media platforms, there comes an entirely different set of problems to what brands had encountered before in the absence of the Internet revolution. By putting their brand out there, the power of shaping experience for the end-user shifts considerably from the brand to the consumer of the brand content. Putting out a brand page on a social media website is the easy part but ensuring consistent quality interaction and content favourable to the brand positioning is what makes the job difficult. Losing power over content, opening feedback and allowing users to shape not only their own but their peers' experiences as well; brands are faced with unknown quantities, outside the traditional risks associated with marketing plans.

For instance, prominent consumer brands are faced with the risk of accelerated feedback mechanisms that were erstwhile limited to word-of-mouth. Negative backlash from consumers can cause the premature death of a brand's promises sooner than it takes to execute an entire marketing plan! Brand extensions, campaigns and choices being made are now dissected, presented and discussed threadbare by end users and this is just the first level. Being present on social platforms opens the portals for invaluable feedback but it is also a double-edged sword that needs to be handled with some care and dexterity.

Companies should first decide whether they want to promote their brand through social media platforms or do they just prefer taking the conventional marketing route. Having been forced in part by their peers and the competition, and also partly by the exuberant brand managers looking to solve the social media puzzle, the returns on simply being available to the consumers are negligible. This is because the sheer volume of content on the web has outgrown the concentration spans of its users. This is why brands are moving on from a 'communication only' to a 'loyalty-based' online presence, when looking to utilise social media for brands. While stage one of such communique was shaped towards communicating offers, news etc., now it is built towards identification and employing a true 360-degree involvement with the loyalists. The Internet is a foolproof data mining tool and more reliable than conventional media spending; it helps keep track of every dime spent on marketing activities.

While the be-or-not-to-be question is a big one, merely establishing presence is not going to benefit any brand. Indeed, it is infinitely better not to be present at all without a holistic social network-based strategy in place. Secondly, relevant content to engage users is the next piece of the puzzle. While trends as fickle as the next blockbuster cannot be predicted, relevant and consistent content online is a good step forward to ensuring engagement with the end user. However, that remains still a door to be unlocked in the future.

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