iskandarX Society SEO - Social Media: Building And Selling Your Corporate Brand

Social media has been around for a long time in the form of blogs, newsgroups, chat rooms, community forums etc. but never has there been such an opportunity to use social media as a method to improve corporate branding.

Since Google’s latest move to incorporate more social media in their organic search results, companies can and should take advantage of the free media streams generated through blogs, MySpace, FaceBook and other social networking sites.  These sites not only give your company a platform to talk about their products and services, you can also upload corporate profiles, logos, podcasts, product samples, whitepapers, etc., all of which help the customer to “test” what you have to offer but more importantly identify your products with your slogan or logo.




Doesn’t my website do this already?  Yes, if you have a decent design but remember, people have to find your website first; with social media you don’t have to rely on just your website to attract people, you can take advantage of streamed data feeds that will be seen by hundreds if not thousands of individuals.  In the case of MySpace, you have the power of friends to help get your information out.  By simply joining a few groups and creating a few friends, your message is shared out to hundreds of people within your target industry and those people are more likely to visit your site as the result of a referral from a mutual friend.

Remember, corporate branding is all about recognition and the more people that see your logo or read your slogan (assuming it’s catchy), the more people will think of you when they need to purchase products/services you sell.  A book I recently read gave an example of how an author used MySpace to promote a book he was self-publishing.  His basic strategy was to leak bits of his story to friends within MySpace, they in turn shared those with friends they had.  When it finally came time to actually sell the book, the author asked everyone that had read his story to go to Amazon and buy a copy of the book.  I don’t recall specific numbers but it pushed the book into the top most popular books on Amazon – before long he had requests for interviews from radio and TV.

Granted, you probably aren’t selling a book but you can use social media in a similar form for just about any product – all you need to do is give out a few samples or create some incentive for a few of your friends to buy your product.  Then, you get them to blog about you, include your logo or image of your product and before long, there is a buzz about your product.  Once the buzz starts, people will buy from you simply because someone else made the recommendation.

Does everything revolve around MySpace?  Of course not, in fact, programs such as LinkedIn, FaceBook and even Flickr give you similar abilities to upload profiles, corporate logos, etc. and then start networking with other individuals with common interests.  If you portray yourself as professional and knowledgeable, people will start to tell other people about you and before long, you have loyal clientele`.

Remember, website marketing is not just about a good website with top search engine listings, it is about networking and the more forms of social media you use to network, the more people will see and hopefully remember your company when it comes time to purchase.