Tips for branding your business, products and services online using Social Media

Nowadays, with such demanding consumers, when you think about starting a business you must think about branding it as well. But what is branding?

Branding is creating a whole experience and a strong idea around your products or services. The colors, the logo, the bags, the employees  uniforms, the stores: everything is part of what you are selling. Back in the days, a few visionaries started to create and identity to their companies, and that is what makes a Mc Donald’s burger different than any other burger in the world. Whether you like the Mc Donald’s burgers or not, you still are well familiar with their brand and you know it is a single experience.

We asked this question to Duncan Alney, at the last edition of the Search Engine Strategies New York 2009. In the video below he is giving a couple advices about how-to brand using Social Media and Web 2.0.

Branding using Social Media is something that everybody is talking about. New Media such as Blogs, Social Networks, Bookmarks, Podcasting, Video and Photo Sharing made branding something much more cheaper than it use to be. The fact of being more accessible doesn’t mean it is low quality or unprofessional. You can actually find and reach possible costumer in a more precise way, according to what they are looking for. You are also able to listen better and find a bigger number of small audiences that are looking for you and what your company has to offer.

Here are a few tips about how you can use Social Media tools and websites to promote your business online:

1. Create accounts in Social Networks and sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious and Digg. Use always the same user name and share your logo with the world. The more complete your profiles are the better, so everybody can learn more about your business. Don’t forget to manage your account often and interact to people related to your interests;
2. Take pictures and make movies about your business, services, products, employees, stores, costumer service, EVERYTHING, and upload them to your page on you YouTube or any other site where you can share videos and photos. You will be actually creating commercials about your brand and developing a Marketing campaigns online;
3. Create a RSS (Real Simple Sindication) feed and incentive your visitors to subscribe to your content. This way they will receive your content in their reader everytime you uptade your blog. It is much nicer way than send invasive e-mails everytime you post, and it’s also a good termomether to know how much people are wiling to commit to your company;
4. Visit, read and comment in sites related to your business blog. That is a good way to understand your marketing, know about what costumers are looking for and also become part of the community. You can also create quality links posting discussions, joining forums and getting envolved in the conversation;
5. Be a real person! When it comes to Social Media, it’s not about creating a bunch of accounts and being on the top of all new tools or techologies. It’s about the way you use all those tools to build your brand reputation. If in the past companies had to spend millons of dollars in Marketing to actually hide and fake their weeknesses, the Marketing of the future is all about truthfully, autenticy and exposing. Puting your brand into Social Media is also a good way to deal with crisis reputation and problems with your services. On the other hand, if you don’t CARE about people or just can’t see your business as part of a context, probably Social Media is not a good place for you!