Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. I key component of your business is your brand. There is also engagement with your brand. The following contributed post is entitled, How To Innovate Brand Engagement.
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It’s all about branding. The jury has been out on this topic for quite some time. If you’re not actively creating opportunities for your consumers to engage with your brand in active and meaningful ways, you will likely find yourself courting irrelevance very quickly. It can sound particularly nerve-wracking, especially for smaller businesses that may not have the big budget spend of their conglomerate and corporate cousins.
But the truth is far more settling than you’d think because creating innovative, fresh, and engaging brand interactions is a lot easier than you might think – and it doesn’t have to ruin your bottom line either.
INITIATE THE CONVERSATION
There’s an adage from street-hardened salespeople: those who ask the questions control the conversation.
We believe this to be true to the extent that if you’re not initiating conversations about your brand, whether through commercials or social media campaigns – someone else will likely and make no mistake, we live in a highly competitive age where not all the players in the game mean to do so with integrity.
So take the lead and develop meaningful conversations around your products or services within the marketplaces you’re serving.
“The more you engage with customers, the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing.” — John Russell, President of Harley Davidson.
DEVELOP A CLEAR AND CONCISE CONTENT STRATEGY
The content that you post online and across your various social media platforms should never be posted for the sake of having something “up there.” You want to ensure that content is dynamic, stimulating, relevant, and has a specific call to action hardwired in the message.
In other words, you want your content to inspire action, a movement that will give you access to the people interacting with your posts and content, access that can lead to a conversation, that can lead to a sale.
Many sportswear companies have been particularly successful at doing this by inviting consumers to post workout tips, diet advice and share conversations across platforms that guide newbies and experts alike.
Agencies like Traffik can offer highly specialized solutions that can elevate your brand engagement credentials exponentially.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou.
CREATING EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS
Take a look at this Volkswagen commercial from South Africa. From an age long before social media, when the web itself was in its infancy. It is an excellent example of the kind of emotional connections you want to create for your brand. To establish a legacy, a follow-through from generation to generation, and to appeal to the sentiment of your consumer and customer.
SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVATIONS
This should almost go without saying, but many companies and businesses still don’t understand just how valuable a resource social medial can be. Of course, it needs to be done right. You have to learn how to actively grow your base on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more.
When you can get to the point where your customers are taking selfies and then posting images and video footage of themselves using or enjoying your product or service, that image will likely be reshared and shared again. Gold, absolute gold.
