THE HOLY GRAIL FOR SMEs – SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BRAND BUILDING

The legend goes that if you drink from the Holy Grail, you will gain immortality. Translate that into the SME brand world, where organizations compete with each other to find their place in the mind of the consumer. What could be such a game-changer that would rise above the rest and become a brand that everyone remembers? Social Media.

What is it about social media that can become indispensible for SME organizations to build their brand constructively? First off, social media is where social interactions take place in the virtual world, specifically the internet through mobile and desktop platforms. Some social media sites include Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Quora, etc. SME’s using social media can avail of the following advantages.

1. Directly connecting with your audience: Social Media is ALWAYS interactive. When you post something on social media, you will get responses to it directly from your target audience. You will be always connected with them.
2. Reputation Building: Sustained presence on social media and relevant material posted online will improve your reputation both as a brand and as people in the know.
3. Great Value for Money: If you have a limited budget, social media is for you. As opposed to any media, the pay per click concept is unique to social media. The investment that you put in social media is minimal and surgically targeted towards your audience. While traditional media is not easily quantifiable, social media content can be quantified accurately through efficient tools such as Google Analytics, Google Trends and several others. With this treasure trove of information, you can redesign your content to get better traffic into your content and make real-time conversions more regular.

THE SEARCH FOR THE HOLY GRAIL – SPADEWORK FOR YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

Indiana Jones didn’t just know where to find it. Finding your Social Media Holy Grail will require some spadework. Here are some pointers.

Know your audience: You have to first understand who exactly your target audience is. The first step to create an effective Social Media strategy is to have a clear picture of your end consumer. Chalk out the following details:

• Understand Demographics: Whether targeted towards male/female, their age group, they can probably a specific ethnicity, anything that will narrow down your target from the masses. Ideally, it should be ONE CHARACTER that exactly signifies your target audience. Let’s call him/her Alpha.
• Gather Topics of Interest: Now, Alpha will have specific topic of interest. It is in your interest to find out what are their likes and dislike. With this information you can choose your tone of communication and your overall strategy.
• Assimilate Response Behaviour: How do they respond with content that they like and things that they don’t like? Do they share with their friends? Ignore it? Go on and purchase? You can adapt your strategy according to these inputs.
• Use available resources: Google Analytics and Google Trends are great tools that will help you bottleneck your audience into a tight, concentrated group, who WANT your communication.

Perception Management in Corporate Branding

To begin with, Perception management is a term originated by the US military.
Another term used for perception management is impression management subtly defined as an attempt to control the perceptions or impressions of others. Targets are likely to use impression management tactics when interacting with perceivers who have power over them. Several impression management tactics include behavioral matching between the target of perception and the perceiver.

As we know, brands always evoke emotions. From these emotions, form perceptions. Hence in corporate branding, perceptions become an integral part of brand management. Overall, perception management therefore becomes a science to deal with.
Perception management cannot be managed individually without it being a part of the overall brand management process.

Now the question is- where do we find such perceptions happening and possibly capture them?
Social Media is a possible platform wherein different perceptions can be captured.
In the corporate world, perceptions are important and mapping them is equally important as it adds to the overall dynamics existing in the corporate world. To showcase this to the external as well internal audience, the same has to be capsulated via the branding route. Brand perceptions are much more often created by the product or service experience itself than from brand communications or any such campaigns. Brand campaigns are much more effective in building brand awareness than it is in creating or changing brand perceptions. It doesn’t mean that branding cannot be used to help change perceptions, but it can’t do it unless the perception management in the entire gamut of branding is captured.

Technology, Jargon and Branding

India is a very social country. People love talking, about everything under the sun from rocket science to global economy to what time the neighbour’s daughter returned home the previous night. We love to talk, gossip, discuss and debate with an authority that seems formidable on the subject but rarely has enough substance if tested. Just for example, last evening as I was returning home by the local I overheard two co-passengers discussing the about-to-start FIFA World Cup and how Real Madrid are the favourites having won the Champions Trophy! I did not bother pointing out the several flaws in each of his statements; he was just another brick in the wall.

But as we have evolved, so has our ability to consume data and information from everywhere around us, grasp the finer points and then make our conversation more relevant. We consume at an immense pace, keeping track of not only ours but pretty much the world’s activities through the virtual world that is wrapping us. Whether it be stalking a friend’s FB wall or following their thoughts via Twitter, we are everywhere consuming all kinds of information, and then happily spreading it around. Social collaboration is at its all-time high without an end in sight.

 

We just love being social!

Source:http://thinkmarketingmagazine.com/

Driving User Engagement For E-Commerce

The surge of digital & social media has changed the way consumers behave and interact with brands. Today consumers connect and engage with multiple brands through multiple channels. But the influencing power no longer falls with the marketers. By reviewing the brands, consumers are increasingly shaping and reshaping these brands themselves.

Owing to continued years of great credentials, owners Runit Shah and Kapil Hetamsaria reached out to DY Works with a new challenge: To create a jewellery brand that unites best independent designers from across the world, experiential online shopping and social media marketing.

As this concept was unprecedented, the goal for DY Works was not only to reach out the right target group but also educate them about the brand. The task was to build a corporate brand strategy through its website and employ various social media platforms.

The interactive and informative website www.velvetcase.com - the core brand touch point – is an intelligent and contemporary 2-way communicative interface that bridges accessibility of the Internet and the charm of culling through unique designs created by global designers.

Following our recommendations, Velvetcase designed gift boxes as one of the brand’s hallmark: a Velvet Case. Beautiful and elegant it carries forward the brand essence to the hilt. This was followed by an intensive e-mail marketing campaign to promote this unusual brand.

DY Works also helped the brand capitalize its website by deploying the new in-thing - User generated content.  On International Women’s Day, a contest was launched that allowed consumers to design and create their own jewelry. Which was promoted extensively through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Blogs to create a buzz to drive traffic back to the website. Over 600 participants and 8800+user interactions were logged during the 3 week long contest that included Indian television celebrity, Drashti Dhami. The facebook page hit a whopping 40,000+ likes. 

          
 

Besides this, the V Blog talks about to-dos/don’ts, product polls and every latest trend possible in the jewelry world. A lookbook, youtube channel are other activities being explored.

 The extensive online marketing was put to effective use to witness incredible results: new trends in consumer buying behavior and identifying new target markets by mapping existing and new visitors at all brand touch-points. The bounce rate dropped to a steady 6.6 %, a remarkable upside from 38%. This sure speaks volumes.  

Currently another Instagram contest is running which lets users upload and vote for their ‘Selfies’. And thus, DY Works continues to leverage onto user generated content with social media interactions. With the way digital world continues to evolve and expand every second the brand can only stand out and sparkle.

By
Prabha Kadam
Brand Partner
Integrated Corporate Practice
DY Works