There is no need repeating the obvious. Humans thrive when there is interaction, bonding and not when in isolation. Humans are not wired to live in isolation. To be successful human/brand needs solid relationships, engagement with others. since the world has become a global village, building engagement withy locals only deprive brands the benefits that are available to all.

 As many professionals know, productive, profitable engagement in the midst of noise level today is not a child’s play. It is real work. What I have noticed is that many give up so soon when their efforts are not yielding immediate result. The pressure from management that has invested much in online branding is not helping matter. Community manager must educate the management on the time lag it will take to make meaningful impact. There is no overnight success.

Whether there is instant success or not, we must be able to see clearly like DNA13 suggests ‘joining conversation and shaping public opinion holds promise of reducing cost of communication’. Strong community engagement thrives where there is strong collaboration among the major actors which includes the community manager, the community members and other stakeholders. Conscious effort must also be made to recognize, value active promoters of community well being. The community leader, manager must be a bundle of inspiration. He/she must not be lazy or tired of maintaining the conversation so well with relevant content. The community leader must also learn to build quality relationship with the community stakeholder and be willing promptly attend to community concerns.

Any brand that wants to maintain solo, one man squad approach to managing, promoting, positioning itself will end with lots of regret.

The marketing plateau is changing. The marketing war zone is also changing. The last two decades have witnessed such a tremendous change that every professional in the field of Marketing, Branding, Public relations has to relearn what they were taught in school. Buyers, clients have turned  the internet to another market place where they make enquiries. Internet now encourages dialogue, feedbacks. The search engine has turned people into independent product and services researchers. They do also consult their friends, associates before making buying decision. It is obvious therefore  that any brand that helps the buyer make decision in their favor will earn more credits than the one that stands aloof, waiting for a call that may never come to them.

The above has necessitated the birth of content marketing as a way to educate, entertain, court the attention of buyers to brand’s services and products. It appears to me that every new buzzword always attracts attention of both the qualified and quacks. Doing it well is now a major concern for many brands as they are now faced with several acclaimed consultants who know nothing to jack about it.  Great content marketing and management offers several opportunities to brand who have qualified hands to do it well. Content can be used to educate potential industry consumers, provide possible solutions or choices available to clients, exposing sound practices and to initiate a process in relationship building. Content marketing helps the customers start a relationship with you before they eventually decide to buy from you.

As good as this may sound, delivering great content is not a joke. No one brings the gift from heaven, they are learnt.The basic ingredient is passion.This should be helped with great creative writing skill to make a great headway. Content marketing has been defined as the art of understanding exactly what your target want to know and delivering that to them in a relevant and compelling way to grow business. The content must only be relevant but must be compelling to sustain attention. Great content establishes the brand a resource centre, guide in buying decision. When a brand can successfully do this, it credibility and chances in the market will skyrocket than those who wait for something to happen.  Great, relevant and compelling contents that adequately informed the buyer will make the brand to first position in the minds of the prospective and real buyers.

One of the best ways to increase visibility, awareness, relevance and gain more market in this recession is to give away free, reliable information that can assist potentials to buy from your brand is through content marketing. Before you ask them to buy, be a source of helpful information without an attached string. It positions your brand as a thought leader, caring and proactive. In conclusion for now, remember that with great content and no promotion, you will remain in darkness. Adequate content promotion through right channel is important. But the content must offer value, solution to make required effect.

Most times what leads to crisis is often subtle, careless approach to issues. Though there are clear cases of crises that are product of act beyond human control. Every crisis begins with issue that is not properly identified or managed before it generates into a major crisis. Crisis like strange disease or epidemic often begins with a small infection. Infection not properly managed often leads to epidemic. To manage crisis, brands need to be proactive. Waiting for crisis to happen before strategies are put in place is a bad policy that does not help anyone. Strategy that will help prevent, manage, recover/reconvert negative to positive is really important if a brand must escape total extinction after a major crisis. Brand’s ability, capacity to recognize volatile issues and nib them at the bud will help much than to wait so long for issues to have gained front burner both at the online and offline-traditional media. Every assumption that any issue will die a natural death must be erased. There is need for a prepared team that is versed in necessary skills, software that can handle pre-crisis as well as post crisis/recovery stages. Without all these, the brand in crisis will suffer untold condemnation. For pre-crisis preparation and planning, the old method of reliance on traditional media is no longer enough. The rate at which the crisis can spread online is now viral. So a comprehensive crisis plan that covers online and offline is really important. The team must know how to monitor forums, blogs, facebook, twitter. They must also keep a keen eye on traditional media guys, owners, editors etc. The team that will handle brand crisis must also have ready made contact lists of those who holds the anvil in continuous message dissemination. We will discuss at length the topic in our subsequent write ups. But let us conclude this piece by considering the following points when a brand needs to extinguish the fire of a crisis.

 1. Identify the crisis source

2. Identify the affected audience

3. Pull out your communication tools.

4. Select the right tools to use based on circumstances, situation

5. Keep an eye on the effect of your brand communication on all targets (online, offline)

6. Evaluate results, strategy effectiveness and work hard on lapses

There is nothing good that does not has a cost attached. Everything that worth it will always make a demand from you. Today social media has become the buzz word. Many marketing communicators, public Relations experts and brand drivers are rushing into learning how to take advantage of the new trend. Trends as it is known do not last eternally. No one knows whether this will be applicable to social media though we seem to have come to the  logical conclusion-by our actions that it has come to stay for good. Social media is reputed to create awareness, build relationships, encourages conversation, increase personal, brand visibility among others. But with every great idea comes with a responsibility, certain demands and fears.

Authority counts in social media. To become an authority, you must establish trust, engage the community, sacrifice personal and corporate time. Maintaining control is becoming increasingly difficult. What we say and hear more today is ‘lose control’, brand democratization and voice of the stakeholders. Getting attention in the sea of noise is also a great challenge. The need to go for more knowledge is now  popularized as no novice can play the game. Online reputation demands knowledge of adequate software. Web 2.0 is what we are playing with now and web 3.0 is already around the corner. It means that in order to be relevant, we must up our knowledge to stay in control. Today, we are emphasizing words of mouth. Getting customers to buy in and voluntarily communicate the brand to relatives, friends and colleagues. The challenge here is daunting. There is also the issue of measurement of results. Yet many top executives are not even persuaded that social media holds some magic wands to bring new and improved ways of doing business. Developing contents, marketing it is a huge task.

I read an article by Mike Herman recently where he counseled that we should not carry issues to the extreme when it comes to social media. According to him, a research conducted showed that we still have huge percentage of customers who are not hooked with the juice of social media because they do not have access to personal computer nor internet. He also claimed that social media has not been widely trusted. The fact that everyone can blog does not make their opinions valid. Mike conclusion was that it is too early to place faith in it.

Given that social media will take away personal freedom with regards to openness, place a demand for a frequent and consistent content update among others, do you think it worth the coins? This is what I am thinking about today. I am an addict of social media if I must acknowledge that.

There is no denying the fact that the recession effect is still on. The marketing communication industry is actually feeling the effect as budgets are now low to go round. Expenditure on frivolity is now reduced to zero. The market indicators are clear to every one and it will take long term strategy to remain relevant without engaging in a short time maneuvers that will permanently hurt the brand. It is now clear that the conclusion we can draw is that brand must embrace definitive and integrate all workable strategies to remain afloat, visible to the necessary audience despite low budget. Consistently manage relationship with audience whether they are buying from you or not today will go a long way in keeping your brand in their hearts. It is also good to occasionally supply necessary information that can help them out. Today let me help out with what I think can help your brand to remain relevant during and after the recession and if you like you may say factors that can help recession-proof  your brand.

1. Hone your differentiation: it is becoming a hard job to actually own a place now as others are jumping around to survive and are by the way polluting every differentiation stream. You need to work as hard as you can to let the target see what you are good at in terms of your expertise and how you offer your services differently.

2. Do a ‘collabo’ or partnership: if it is possible, think of partnership that can enhance your visibility and strengthen position in the market.  You may need to carefully assess the route before you enter into it as some may mar your brand. The damage may take years to erase. So watch closely the other brand’s value whether it will tally with yours before any partnership

3. Be a resource brand: Every brand that is at the top of the industry has relevant, current information about the industry that is not just confined to local news but seasoned with international flavor.

4. Share the knowledge: help your clients out with valuable knowledge that can help them out of their present challenges without charges.

5. Forget totalitarianism:  we are now in the age of brand democratization. If your brand will still continue to be a despot, dictator to its audience, it will not be around for long. We are now in the age of dialogue and conversation and there is now way your brand will have all the answers, ideas that will work. Remember that everyone, brand that remains relevant since last century is always looking around for what works and not what used to work. Take initiative, be willing to change, embrace innovation

As the battle ground begins to shift from traditional mainstream mass media to digital media, the fierceness of the battle will soon be felt more on the cyberspace because customers now have a say. It is wise for brands to develop a strategy on how to play the game according to the rule. I must admit as I commented on a forum recently that in our environment here, the battle is more pronounced in the mass media broadcast advertisement than in the digital media. But soon, as we have in advanced countries, the scope of the marketing channel will change for good.

Brand engagement marketing will become the answer to the above. It will create avenues, privileges, rights to enhance marketing effectiveness to a new elevated level. Brand engagement marketing will mop up the merits in online social phenomenon available through dialogues, forums, blogs, vblogging, podcast, YouTube. This requires adequate training and know-how though.

As a form of digression, I want to point out that the re-branding of Nigeria project can annex this opportunity. There are a whole lot of opportunities to gain here. Brand marketers who are not versed in this new phenomenon will not be able to offer much value to the brand. I do think every employee should be brand’s marketer at a various degree. A guru has noted  ‘a brand has two major functions: innovation and marketing- every other activity is cost’.  For Brands- personal, corporate, service, product, national- to be successful brand engagement marketing should be the backbone of the brand’s savvy marketing activities. This is because brand engagement marketing permits the marketers to establish a virile, vibrant brand and create loyal users, fans with upward revenue drive for ROI on marketing.

In a recent research publication by Silverpop, they define “Engagement Marketing” as ‘a marketing approach which -is in contrast to traditional brand and direct marketing strategies- allows a brand customers and prospects to shape the company’s marketing…this start when someone takes an action and initiates a dialogue in requesting information about the brand’.

The foundation as I want to believe is brand’s internal brands, personal brands and by extension visuals like websites, emails, product packaging which through their activities affect point of contacts perception. My submission is that brand engagement begins with every internal brand though the responsibilities may be heavier on marketing, brand management, corporate communication department.