Lead your brand, in the world of social media

Lot of people might argue, but I feel that we are currently on the verge of a major paradigm shift. With the help of the Internet and new communication tools like - Facebook, Twitter, blogs and LinkedIn – we are changing the way, how we communicate with each other. Social media is completely changing the way we used to interact with each other. Maybe that’s the only reason why, we trust product’s reviews on - Facebook, Twitter and Yelp - more than on an advertisement seen on TV.

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One might ask - What if our communication ways are changing? What does that have to do with Leadership? In fact that has to do with only - Leadership. After all, what is Leadership? Isn’t Leadership – leading changes? Isn’t leadership about envisioning the future? If you are not yet convinced, then let me ask you one question – “Do you think that your customers are not talking about your products on these social media platforms?” In fact, YouTube became the second largest search engine after Google, and approximately 25% of YouTube videos contain product reviews.

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So, the question is – how can we lead this change? How can we use social media as a tool to improve our business? The answer is very simple. Just do what you would do in a normal situation. You just need to expand your horizon. I agree that social media is the fastest growing communication platform out there, but it’s just a platform. You still need to stick to your basics, and if your basics are strong enough then you can leverage this platform in favor of your business. Following are few tactics that will help you create “positive brand awareness” through social media:

1.       Be Present: For monitoring any kind of customer feedback through social media, you need to be on social media. So, create your account on few biggest social media platforms like - LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

2.       Be vigilant: Continuously monitor social media. And find out what people are talking about your company/organization. With lot of free tools available out there like – “Google Alert”, it is not that difficult to be vigilant.

3.       Be quick in your response: In platforms like Twitter and Facebook, information is growing faster than ever. Thus, you need to be quick in responding to your customer’s positive/negative feedback. I would recommend you to have dedicated resources for this.

4.       Have your blog: This is the key element. Most of the times, your customers don’t find ways to tell about your products to the world. And that’s why they talk about your products on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. If you would have given them some kind of platform to raise their voice, then they would rather blog on that website. The beauty of this idea is – you can control your feedback.

I hope this information proves to be helpful in some way. I am always eager to know your ideas too. So, feel free to comment on my blog.

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi