Let’s face it; all the channels now available to communicate your small business brand make it easy to also confuse people about your brand. One errant move could cause your branding to get derailed. I’m not a branding pro, but I am seeing examples of branding faux pas, and I’d like to share several in the hopes of heading derailment off at the pass.
As a small business, it’s critical to maintain a consistent image and brand identity on every new social media channel that is also a customer communication touch point. This goes without saying for B-to-B and B-to-C companies.
When you register for yet another cool social media solution that also requires the building of a community such as Google+, Spotify, Triberr, Facebook, Foursquare, Stumble, Digg, Yelp, or Foursquare, etc. is your user name/brand consistent across each new medium? Are you branding your personal name or your business’s name? This may seem like a simple question, yet when you look across the spectrum, the small business name is often secondary to someone’s personal identity.
We’re People First, and Businesses Second
I have a hard time tweeting with a company name on Twitter. I wonder about “its” person, gender, location, or whether it’s just a bot. I suggest everyone use their name to tweet and establish their company’s brand during that process (more below on this).
There are other branding opportunities you may not have considered; here are a few:
LiveFyre and Disqus are blog comment systems, and you can register your profile with each. Run to register your name with a keyword (thank you Brankica at LiveUrLove! for that tip, and link your name back to your blog. Use your own name because you’re commenting as an individual. Don’t discount the importance of this; think of how frequently you comment on blogs (even if you don’t have a blog of your own; small businesses have websites).
Naming your blog is one of the most challenging titles to come up with. I struggled awhile and timidly selected “Soulati-‘TUDE!” It finally fits me after more than a year blogging, but there were weeks when I wasn’t sure. I knew the blog name had to be consistent with my business branding – the use of my name “Soulati” in everything I do to market my public relations services.
Selecting a domain name for your company website is also critical. Try not to have four urls associated with your company; it makes it terribly difficult for anyone to find you. A small business owner I know separates the blog from the company and uses four emails and several domain names – I rarely give link love because I can’t find the blog!
Setting up a new Gmail account to manage your new Google+ account may seem a simple task, but this is also a new opportunity to brand your name instead of using something cutesy.
Granted, people just registering now for Twitter, are going to have a horrid time finding their name still available, especially if it’s Nancy Smith or Jose Rivera. That requires a bit of creativity and thought to ensure your brand is represented without jeopardizing your identity.
Two Examples of Branding Confusion
To give you a better example of what I mean by branding confusion, here are two instances where these small business owners ought to rethink their marketing strategy (and perhaps they already are).
A woman represents a company in the travel sector. Her blog is called something other than the company name; I don’t recall the titles for either blog or company. She tweets with a fancy ID that has nothing to do with the company. She signs her comments with her personal name which is also different than her blog, her Twitter ID and her company.
What I suggest is that she launch another Twitter account and begin to migrate her current followers over to the new account. This will take time, yet it will also provide opportunity to clean house. She can tweet both accounts together and ask her followers to switch to her new ID.
When creating the new Twitter account, register her personal name to establish her reputation, or set up her company name and sign her name to the company tweets.
People tweet the same content for both personal and company names. I often get the same tweets back to back. Regardless of which account you’re using, it’s up to you to determine what to say with an understanding that you’re building brand and reputation for yourself and the company you’re marketing.
Another small business blogger writes for SEO purposes to drive traffic to his business. The service offering and brand of his business have nothing to do with his blog. In this business owner’s blog, he writes about personal topics (family, travel, sports) that are unrelated to his core business. This is a serious derailment of brand; if you’re a small business owner, your communication should be oriented directly to your business.
I suggest this person engage with a marketing consultant.
to redirect and strategize about his branding. Small business bloggers should make marketing and sales a goal, especially when there is product to sell! When a small business owner is not marketing his or her company via a blog, then why blog?
Over to you – what tips might you offer to infuse branding into a small business?
Jayme Soulati is president of Soulati Media, Inc., a public relations boutique blending marketing and social media. She blogs at Soulati-‘TUDE! and needs to re-energize her small-business blog, The SMB Collective. For more than 27 years, she’s practiced in her profession, and as a small business of one plus many contractors, she is well-versed in the tribulations of business marketing, operations, sales, and service delivery. Connect with her @Soulati, on Facebook and everywhere else.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
I run a small social media marketing and publicity company in Costa Rica and cannot agree more with your post. Nice! I’m sharing and tweeting it everywhere!
I run a small social media marketing and publicity business in Costa Rica. Slow adoptors and behind the times when you get outside of the central valley and San Jose. I could not agree more with your post! Shared and tweeted everywhere! http://paradisesocial.wordpress.com
You #RockHot, Mike! Thank you, and I’m excited to get introduced to you via this post! Thanks for the pushes “everywhere!”
Great post, Jayme. Thanks for the mention, by the way
People that don’t have websites but have some presence online, often don’t use the URL part of the comment form or don’t enter their URL in one of the commenting system profiles.
They should always do it, if not to link to a site (when they don’t have one) then they can link to one of their social profiles or a Fan page.
Excellent tips as usual, Bran. I love the counsel you offer and have heeded it more than once to improve my branding efforts via analytics (although I really suck at it!).
Great post, Jayme!
Perhaps I’ve been doing this wrong, but I consider my business name as being the primary one. That affects how I tweet and share information, and it also helps me to define what to write on my blog. Am I still personable? Of course. People want to know who’s behind the “curtain” of factotum llc. It’s for that reason that I recently updated my Twitter profile. I decided it made more sense to have my name tied to it than just my company’s name.
Great thoughts and adjustments, too! I think we’ve spoken before about Factotum and what it does/services it offers. To me, people align with people on Twitter and the business brand follows in step. I do see peeps tweeting the same content to a personal account and business account simultaneously. I don’t have insight on whether that works or not…do you?
To me, that would be the same thing as posting the same content to Facebook and Twitter. I don’t mind when some of that content is shared on the same channels, but I want followers and fans to experience a noticeable difference when interacting with a brand or person on Facebook and when conversing on Twitter. I don’t see much point in having two accounts if the same exact content is shared on them. The only value I see in having two accounts is using the brand account to share information – the danger in that is the “automation” factor – and using the personal one to converse with followers. I don’t do that because I don’t have the time to manage two accounts in addition to my other online properties.
Speaking of adjustments, I’ll be changing my Twitter avatar, too. It was suggested that I should use a photo rather than a logo. I think I’ll try it and see what happens. I’m waiting until tomorrow, though. I’m going to try to get a new photo taken.
Totally agree! I wrote this week “Your Avatar Had a Birthday” and it was all about we’re aging and our avatars are staying the same. The comments were all in favor of an avatar that’s a person and not a dog or image. Others have suggested logos don’t work, either (I agree) b/c I always want to visualize who’s tweeting with me. Just goes farther in the whole branding and personalization thing.
As for what you said…what you said! (re 2 accounts with same content!) Thanks, Erin!
Great post Jayme. I often find that we’re our own worst enemy when it comes to consistency – and where we get derailed. Its a constant challenge because of our creative spirit. Our interest in putting our best foot forward results in seeking improvements or new ideas which may lead us astray from our brand and message. Often we tend to think of small projects as isolated from the brand, when in fact they are ALL of the pieces that contribute to the whole.
Branding is such a beast, Patty. Small businesses (like mine) have to pay closer attention to it and it’s not instinctive. But, when you find all the channels you’re on having a different username, that’s one red flag. When your blog is oriented to something that has absolutely nothing to do with promotion of your business (unless it’s by design), then it may be time for a change. Thanks for comments here!
Did you know you can change your Twitter username without losing your followers? Kim Castleberry @AskKim:twitter wrote about that in How to Change Your Twitter UserName.
While I agree that being consistent is critical, I am not such a big fan of branding your name – especially if it is a really common name. When you search for me as GrowMap I am almost always the ONLY GrowMap even on Skype. If I search for your name how many are listed and which one is YOU?
On top of that many names are longer than ideal for Twitter or hard to remember or spell. When Donna Fontenot used DazzlinDonna I could always easily remember her blog and her name. It took me a really long time to remember Fontenot and don’t even ask me how many times I had to look up how to spell Rondeau.
While that may seem inconsequential, it can be VERY important to how often you get recommended. If I can remember you and I see someone looking for what you have to offer I can send a quick tweet. If I have to go searching to find you again I might do that – but most people just won’t. If I can remember your Twitter username it is going on that tweet when I mention you, but if I can’t….well… make it easy to find and I’ll add it. (You would be amazed how often FINDING it is NOT easy – even on marketing blogs!)
A short, catchy Twitter username is the easiest thing to commit to memory and through it I can find your site. It doesn’t hurt to have two Twitter accounts – one in your name and another for your blog or business. If you don’t want to use them both redirect people who arrive at one to the other in the bio and consider scheduling a tweet once a month or so to keep the less used site active.
Great points, Gail. Nowadays it’s more challenging to come up with a Twitter handle as many are taken. My name is uncommon; easier for me to use it. And, I struggle to “find” peeps, too, and need to leave them off a tweet b/c the handle is not populating.
And, I didn’t know you could adjust your username on Twitter w/o losing followers. Thanks for that tip!
Hi Jayme,
Nice to see you over here. I agree that branding can be a beast for the SMB. I’m a one-person marketing shop, and I set up all of my social media accounts, as well as my blog, using my name. I’m fortunate that the spelling makes it unusual, so I was able to get the .com domain. It’s tough to decide which course to follow when so many domains and user names are unavailable–and I’ve been in marketing communications my entire career!
Consistence is extremely important, but so is the research. We only have to look to Netflix to see how missing one step (checking if a Twitter name is available) can derail your branding efforts.
Very thought-provoking post, Jayme. It reminds me that I need to do more work on branding on my site!
Here’s another secret; lately I’ve been sharing them all over the blogosphere…I am terrible at self-branding, self-promotion, and the like. In fact, I shun it. My website always needs tweaking and try as I might with every good intention, I just let it sit on a back burner.
We in marketing/PR seem to have that disease, I know. My goal is to overcome it, though, and try to present a better frontline brand with a solid presence. (I, too, am an indie practitioner, and our time becomes so very limited.) Thanks, Marianne!
Oh yes, most people mistake branding for something else these days. They think any signature or a name on an update represents a brand. It does but not always. Unless one chooses the right brand for the right cause. Social media is a double edged sword LOL. You could easily get branded the other way too!
Now that’s an interesting blog post, Jane! Double-edged branding via social media! Care to take that on and invite us all to the party?
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