We have established that brand needs to establish conversation with its audience. This ensures that brand can remain above the murky water of economy today. Besides this, the continuous existence of brand in today’s economy is dependent on this. When a brand is engaged in conversation, the customers, audience do the talking on behalf of the brand. That sounds great as well as produce greater result than any campaign the brand is engaged in.
We must know that when a brand engages in conversation with its audience it often enjoys an increase in bottom-line as cost of advertisement is reduced considerably while there is increase in brand patronage. But joining the conversation requires that an individual brand considers how open the culture of the brand is. The brand needs also to determine what kind of relationship it wants to have with the audience. As we can have relationships that range from transactional, passionate, occasional, constant, impersonal, intimate , short time or a loyal one.
To get the best in conversation, brand must consider the following factors.
1. Focus on relationship: Any conversations that will last must not be focused on campaign or me too approach. This means you do not care about the other person. Build relationship first as the campaign will become an addition.
2. Understand Social media platforms: To use social media effectively, brand owner must understand each platform very well. This in term of what works and what does not. Start small listening and experiment each platform.
3. Commit resources: There is need to commit resources to this if brand desires success in this endeavor. This begins with creation of the post of brand community manager or use internal audience with strong knowledge of social media. This must be an individual who can inspire the lead and is best suited for the the project. In the other alternative, hire an external consultant who is well versed to train an in-house person. You may need to commit resource to learning and training too. Contact us if you need help.
4. Respect the medium: know and observe rules of each platform so that you can learn to respect what the ground rules say.
5. Develop mitigation and contingency plans: sometimes brand may get it wrong. This is preventable though. But it is always good to prepare for unforeseen consequences.
6. Prepare for failure/learn from mistakes: in addition to the above, learn from any mistakes or failure efforts. Realize that we are never in full control of all facts before decisions are made
