Can You Compete With The Big Brands?
Big brands seem to be at a distinct advantage when it comes to social media marketing. They have the money and resources to man dedicated social media marketing departments while smaller businesses struggle to find time to engage with users through the same channels. However, it would be a mistake to think that you can’t be successful with a social media marketing campaign.
Often, the real error in thinking is in the word compete. Competing with the big brands is tough. However, there is room for everyone. Sure, the big brands may have followers that number in the tens or even hundreds of thousands. But one of the big advantages that the internet brings is that individuals can, and do, follow more than one brand – if the second (or third or fourth) brand is seen as offering something of value.
Internet users have become quite smart in their shopping habits. They will follow more than one brand in order to keep up with the latest offerings, comparing one against another before making a purchase. So rather than competing with those big brands, you need to participate in their conversations and work to attract some of their followers to your cause.
Naturally, you don’t want all your followers to come from the big brands. You need to be active in order to attract your own followers, particularly when it comes to local or regional marketing. Residents in your area will often prefer you over the bigger brands, simply because you are a part of their community. You don’t have to compete with the big brands – social media is big enough for both of you.
Branding A Concept Through The Work Of Others
Social media is taking online marketing to a new level, especially with sites like Twitter where your marketing efforts have an instant effect. Branding a business is not necessarily a difficult task, unless of course there isn’t a huge demand for the core concept of your business.
The best way to look at this is through an example. Let’s say your an accommodation provider here in Ayrshire. You can promote your business to the world at large, but if tourists are not interested in coming to Ayrshire, you are, to borrow a phrase, ‘blowing in the wind’. No one is listening. Sure, there are local tourism authorities that will promote the area, but you can too.
This is where social media marketing can take a little twist – and it can also help to build your credibility. Rather than spending time creating content, or spending money to advertise the area, do a little research and find what others have written. For example, a quick search on Helium (a knowledge based article site), revealed some 50 plus articles on Ayrshire. A good number of these were on tourism aspects as well.
By promoting these articles, for example, you are helping to promote Ayrshire as a tourism destination. You are also helping to build your own credibility since you are not promoting yourself, your business or your own products; you are promoting the work of others.
When promoting the work of others like this, be careful how you tag each page. Think about how people are going to search. For example, tagging any pages with Ayrshire is pointless since those using this phrase are already ‘brand aware’. By all means, use it as a secondary tag, but your primary tag should be focused on the target market. In this example, the target market may well be ‘holidays in Scotland’ for example. We want take the traffic using this term and introduce them to Ayrshire.
You can use the same principle in a wide range of niches. If you’re promoting 3D TV, then target the TV market and direct them to pages on 3D TV. By promoting a concept, you are creating demand for a product. If you can attach your brand to the concept, so much the better. I can imagine a Twitter handle (or Facebook or any other social media) of AyrshireB&B promoting pages on Ayrshire as a holiday destination. Hopefully, when users read one of these articles, they will spark an interest and come back to you for more information.
Branding and social media go hand in hand. Promote yourself all the time and users will lose interest. Spend some time promoting a concept and the work others and you may find you can increase interest in your niche, and with it increase interest in your business. And what makes this so special is that it’s free, and generally only takes five minutes of your time.
If you are looking for sites where you can find articles, check out Helium, Hub Pages, Ezine Articles, Squidoo and perhaps even Facebook and Twitter themselves. With Twitter, all you have to do is reTweet – it couldn’t be easier.
Branding Your Business Through Video
Videos have become an important aspect of online marketing and used effectively, they can do wonders for your branding program. Users are still somewhat wary of doing a lot of business online and for local business, there is nothing like seeing and hearing a familiar face on a web site. It can certainly increase the trust factor considerably thus leading to more customers and more sales.
For many businesses, the thought of producing videos is somewhat daunting. There is also the perception that videos need to be professionally produced. In fact, nothing can be further from the truth. I do agree that videos should be of good quality, but that doesn’t mean you cannot do it yourself. Most home video cameras are more than adequate to do the job, especially if mounted on a tripod.
When it comes to video content, the ideas are endless. Even a short video introducing the business owner can be effective. How to videos or videos with your products in action can also help. While the content is important, I have also seen videos go viral very quickly when they involve things that have gone wrong. We all love to laugh at others making mistakes.
Of course, to help brand your business you need to have that brand prominent. Whether it’s a backdrop that shows your brand, or products clearly on show, you do need to have that brand in as many shots as possible. Where professionally created videos differ from self made videos is in their integration of text and images.
Videos are important to the modern web site. Users like to see them, in fact many prefer to see a video of a product in action before they will make a purchase. If you don’t have videos on your site, consider creating a few to see what sort of feedback and effect they have. You may be surprised.
Blogging, Branding And Image Links
Julie Joyce has written an interesting article that looks at using more in the way of image links to help increase your inbound link numbers. It is certainly a good idea for many niches and if you include blogging in your SEO program, it can be a great place to start. Affiliates are another area worth investigating. You could also take the concept to a different level and use it to help build your brand as well.
Review sites are fairly popular at present – this is born out by the statistics we presented yesterday that showed 97% of shoppers started with an online search. Since 42% visited comparison sites, it would be interesting to see how many visited review sites. Blogs make ideal review sites. They are relatively easy to set up and maintain; posting is a breeze, and this includes images and, if well planned, can help deliver both links and visitors to your website.
Blogging has been around for a long time. Smart businesses are using them and this includes developing an off site blog. An off site (hosted on another domain) review blog is the next logical step for businesses that have a range of products. It is only natural for a review site to include images, particularly if they are stored on the main website’s server. As Julie Joyce points out in her post, image links may not carry the same ‘link juice’ as a well optimized text link. However, they may carry additional weight in helping to have your images indexed and included in search results.
For those who feel that time is an issue, it shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be. There are several services running at present that will maintain your blog, provide the content (including images) and optimise it all for maximum search engine exposure – and the prices are fairly good too.
Review blogs can also help with branding, product releases, product updates or recalls, and with handy tips to use and maintain the product. Using the ‘F’ shaped eye tracking for graphic layout is also a handy tip for getting the most out of your images. Do you link images back to your web pages? Have you considered blogging to build your exposure? If you are interested in more information then contact ASM Development’s IT support services – we’re only to happy to help.