Is Your Brand Disconnecting on Social Media?

by | Sep 7, 2011

Hopefully everyone has jumped onto the social media bandwagon in some sort or fashion. But lot’s of B-to-B companies are struggling with how they approach this new media.

A recent article in AdAge by Noah Brier sums it up,“In a nutshell, they need to act less like brands and more like people.” You need to teach your brand to speak. Brands are not people, although their companies are made up of them. Most companies are driven by the traditional results orientated model of ultimately doing something that results in a sale.

A recent article in Social Media Explorer by Mark Ivey titled, Why Brands Can’t Connect, brings home issues that companies must address to insure the brand’s success in the social media arena. Here are some highlights:

  • Don’t be concerned with the mechanics of doing 10 tweets a week or 3 posts a day to your Facebook account.
  • Traditional marketing doesn’t work in the social setting.
  • Stop thinking like marketers and start thinking like creative humans.
  • Think about “What keeps your audience up at night”
  • You need to understand that social means your ability to engage your reader, not preach to him on the features and benefits  of doing business with you
  • Brands typically have a narrow focus while people tend to look at the bigger picture

Noah Brier sums it up very well:

“So what’s a brand to do? For starters, brands can learn from the best publishers on the web, like Huffington Post or Gawker/Gizmodo. These outlets combine small amounts of stock content with large amounts of flow content. The former is used to attract new audience and the latter to keep them engaged. To achieve this, brands need to start thinking about their inputs, or who they pay attention to, as much as their outputs, how they look, act and talk. They have to think of their channels less as CRM and more as owned media.”

The big question is how are you doing?

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