Like all new frontiers, social media is a lawless place where anything goes, especially when it comes to brand. Everyone seems to have moved into these boom towns with a population of more than 12 million people projected for Twitterville alone this year. It’s a on-line, communications gold-rush, a world of wonderful opportunity – but exactly what is social media? Is it a tool for social interaction or business commerce? At the moment it’s both.
So with a poorly defined and misunderstood purpose, how should businesses of one to a thousand employees build their brand image on-line? Like all brand building exercises, your social media presence should be consciously directed by a brand strategy; it should be strategic first and tactical second. Currently the vast majority of business presence in social media is driven by what we call ‘Scategy’, a tactically obsessive approach of trying to do a little bit of everything and trying to mean a little bit of something to everyone. The result – your brand ends-up meaning nothing to anyone.
Here are what I believe to be the crucial five steps to building your brand image on social media.
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