Brief Description of Online Brand Management
In today’s marketing world, good online promotion of your brand is critical. It quickly spreads word of your latest marketing push or promotional activity and can rapidly obtain subscriptions. Using social media can give you a real time picture of how your brand is viewed by your customers, what they think of the latest product and give pointers as to the best way to mitigate should something go wrong.
Companies who are media savvy employ ‘online community managers’ or ‘social media managers’ who monitor online comments and chat to find out what is really going on with their products or services in the world outside the boardroom. They engage with customers, answering questions, addressing issues or simply chatting about a topic relevant to their business. They often follow a marketing calendar, usually set by consultants, which helps their social media contributions tie in nicely with key marketing activity over the year.
Online community managers are usually employed on the basis of their knowledge and interests as well as for their expertise in IT or social media. The reason for this is simple: the users of social media sites can smell an online rat a mile off. A good online manager knows his onions; he is knowledgeable about the business he is in and related topics of interest, so when he engages with customers, he seen as someone credible, someone speaking with authority and – more importantly – someone who can be trusted.
Poor online brand management can be, at its worst, no better than receiving spam email messages promising a huge inheritance pay out. Exhibit A: a couple of years ago, a large UK furniture company set about a massive Twitter marketing push. To do this they decided to use twitter #hashtags to draw attention to their new Spring collection and special offer. Instead of hashtagging related topics (e.g. furniture, decorating, design), they tagged every trending topic available, including those related to TV shows and political events. In other words: spam. The effect on the online brand profile was devastating. Yes, their message was seen by many people, but most of those would disregard it as exactly what it was: a misguided marketing fumble by a company not fully conversant with the rules of social media engagement.
The lesson to be learned: social media marketing has almost immeasurable benefits when used well and potentially catastrophic consequences when not.
