Companies have been pushing hard to get into the social sharing game in hopes of generating new customers, leads, sales, boosting profit – everything that keeps a business going. The dollar signs flashing across their eyes are unfortunately blinding far too many business owners because they’re missing the core concept of marketing.
To brand yourself.
Before I go further you need to buy cialis ask yourself: Is my social media activity branding my business properly? Likewise, is the social sharing that takes place among my audience helping with my brand?
Think about all the various applications and plugins that get your content shared on the web. Think about the ways people pass information along. Can you guarantee that your brand is attached and visible every time someone shares something about your business? In some cases, the content gets passed along like it’s in a blank envelope. Only after investigating the content deeper will people find that your company is behind it.
The Need for Branding
There are a lot of competitors out there that want your customers, and if you’re not properly branding yourself then you’re making it extremely easy for customers to wander. Imagine if someone stripped away your company information so that customers couldn’t see your brand name, logo, etc. Would they still be able to identify you based on other branding factors or are you just limited to association by name? Branding helps set you apart from other competitors.
So what does that have to do with social sharing?
Some social networks let you and your audience type in all the information you want to make sure the source of the content is easily identified. Others, like Twitter, only give you a limited amount of space. When you start using third party plugins and applications to make social sharing easier then you set yourself up for missed branding opportunities if you’re not careful.
Consider the social sharing application “addthis”. When you share using default settings, you get “via @addthis” tacked on to your retweet. Unless you modify these settings you don’t get your own brand name added.
Whenever your audience shares content with their social circles you should be taking the opportunity to get your own social media profiles, handles and brand names in where you can. This can help others share your content if they’re familiar with your brand. If they’re not familiar with your brand, the name alone might spark interest and lead them to investigate your social profiles a bit deeper.
Set up all of your plugins and social sharing options to maintain a consistent brand identity across all of your content marketing campaigns. This will help transform every one of your followers into a broadcasting platform as they repeat your brand identity when sharing your content.
