Creating Brand Identity through Social Media

By Mike Hart, Managing Editor, ViaMetric

A brand identity created around ideas, language, logos, etc. is an absolute necessity in marketing. It creates more than just a sales vehicle for a product; it creates a sort of virtual environment in the audience’s mind. In that environment, the brand identity becomes a catalyst able to call to mind advertising messages, personal experiences, and situations in which the audience has experienced the product. If, as I recently argued, marketing is reverting (in a good way) to word-of-mouth again through the growth of Web 2.0, and the idea of branding is suddenly rich with potential for marketers who can position social media.

Although the focus of her post is about luxury goods, Andrea Learned suggests that her arguments about branding are probably true for much of B2C direct marketing. She quotes an Echelon Marketing Group study which says that “85% of luxury goods marketers want to engage in more one-on-one marketing, but that only half of them actually do.” She argues that leveraging “existing customer stories as your marketing department” is a great way to create brand identity, better even than direct email. Of course, as I’ve posted before, one of the best ways to leverage customer stories and recommendations is through blogging and other forms of social media.

Social media is great for branding because it’s centered around the idea of community (see how “social” is right there in the title?). Community, in turn, is great for creating word-of-mouth messages. However, “social” doesn’t mean that a blog – for instance – is marketing chaos where anyone can come in and potentially alter your brand identity. As Tony Hung points out, “the ecosystem of new media is self regulating in many ways, as it ignores things that are without use to it, and promotes the things that are” (from Deep Jive Interests). In other words, if your branding identity is worthwhile, customers want to participate in spreading it. In itself, that’s not a new idea, but corporate blogging offer an especially effective means of leveraging it.

It’s not called viral marketing for nothing, you know. It spreads quickly throughout a large audience because of the interest it creates in a small audience. If that small audience has special credibility, or what bloggers often refer to as “influence,” that viral message spreads even more quickly. An established blog (and its bloggers) create a credible brand identity, and that credibility influences others. Thus, as a social-media message spreads virally, it carries with it the “brand identity” of the source, and an unspoken invitation for other bloggers to further promote the brand.

 

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