Yesterday’s post dealt with using social media to increase brand loyalty. But how do you know if what you’re doing is working? It can be challenging to measure brand loyalty since it often hides amongst other activities like engagement and plain old interest in your content. Unfortunately, there’s not a metric that points completely to brand loyalty, but there are a few indicators that you’re on the right path.
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Dec
15
2010
Using Social Media to Increase Brand Loyalty
Every company wishes for brand loyalists like Apple attracts. Airlines use frequent flier programs to try to increase loyalty. Local restaurants and coffee shops use stamp cards (buy 10 and get one free). Social media can also be used to increase brand loyalty if we first identify what makes someone loyal to a brand.
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Dec
07
2010
The Importance of Consistent Brand Identity
Logos and brand names can be fun to create, but having too many may be confusing to your customers. Logos and brands help create associations with certain attributes or features within customers’ minds. Using different names or images for the same brand can make it difficult for customers to know what associations they should have. The same may be true if you’re using different profile names and identities with social media.
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Nov
11
2010
Storytelling for Brand Loyalty
Think about the really successful brands. Apple. Coca-Cola. Harley Davidson. Nike. These brands are more than a set of products or a marketing campaign. They connect with customers on an emotional level because they’ve been weaving a compelling story. People want to be apart of those stories. They want to incorporate the brand story into their own personal story (and vice versa). Irresistible storytelling by these companies has lead to amazing brand loyalty.
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Oct
14
2010
Choosing a Personal Brand vs. a Business Brand
How to brand yourself is a question vital to any business. Branding drives marketing, product development and everything customer-facing. As a small business, branding takes on more personal meaning — should you brand your business as your name (personal brand) or as a business name? It’s a big decision since it really can affect the future growth of your company. But it’s also not a clear cut decision since there are advantages and disadvantages either way.
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Jun
15
2010
Making Your Brand Stand for More than Just Your Company
One of the nice things about social media is that it provides the opportunity to make your brand more than a logo. As you communicate, listen and converse with people you humanize your brand and add some personality and reputation too. Your brand starts to actually take on all those attributes in your mission statement in the minds of your customers. But what if your brand is more than just your company? What if your brand stands for a whole new revolution? What then? Cree is doing just that with their LED revolution.
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Apr
06
2010
Using Negative Feedback to Improve Your Business
Yelp has been in a world of trouble lately. Several small businesses have filed lawsuits against them claiming that Yelp has unfair business practices – namely, soliciting paid accounts for favorable reviews and removing favorable reviews when a business declines. True or not, these allegations have tarnished the reputation of Yelp, whose entire business is built on the trustworthiness of its review system. They could have continued to play the PR war, but instead they decided to use the negative feedback to improve their business.
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Apr
01
2010
Is a Sense of Humor Good for Business?
It’s April 1st – April Fools Day. If you work in an office, keep an eye out for pranks. And if you browse the web, you’ll need to take everything with a huge grain of salt today. Many tech businesses (notably Google) jump right into the April Fools fun with sometimes subtle jokes across their online properties. While all in good fun, is having a sense of humor also good for business?
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Mar
11
2010
Vanity Searches Should Be an Important Part of Your Routine
Wondering what people are saying about you or your brand? One of the most powerful tools to keep up what people think is to do a vanity search from time to time. A vanity search is a search (usually on Google) for your name, company name or brand name (really should be doing all of them). Ideally you should own the first page of results – meaning you’ve written or posted everything there. But when a results from someone else shows up, it’s an opportunity for you to take action.
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Dec
22
2009
Best of 2009: Advantages & Disadvantages of Different Branding Strategies
It’s the end of another year and we’re highlighting the best posts of 2009…(originally posted March 25, 2009)
On Monday, we talked a bit about various branding strategies and why you should consider picking one to help your business and marketing strategies. With each branding strategy comes both advantages and disadvantages that you should be aware of.
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