Branding Yourself Through Social Networking

In the age where everyone lives on a grid of technology blips, it is imperative for anyone who is serious about their business, service or personal networking circle to participate in the newest perform of connecting with the masses: social networking. To be oblivious or combative towards this perpetually growing field is to shoot one’s self in the foot, so to speak. The key to gaining quality clients and/or an audience in most career fields is to create a brand that will be recognizable after sparkling marketing efforts, including the new media channels. Mastering social networking will nearly ensure a person’s success in marketing their business or more importantly, themselves.

Maki (2007) stresses the best of the newest tactics for those wanting to promote themselves via web tools in “The Importance of Social Media Marketing: Why You Should Learn and Master It.” Social Media Marketing is presented as a low cost draw to expose a person’s marketing message to the rest of the world, elevating revenue as well. Strategies, such as blogging and ad revenues are included in the article, in addition to how the best bloggers and internet marketers generate traffic to their sites via outside links on other pages. Most of the information is valid in the sense that the methods presented have been tested and work for many internet marketers, some of which leave feedback at the end of the article. Overall, the article by Maki shows that mastering this growing marketing strategy can bring one revenue and online-wide recognition if done correctly.

A person wanting to gain online recognition for their brand or service quickly has a choice of either Facebook or Twitter, where most consumers view ads on the internet now. MediaPost (www.mediapost.com) has charted the growing trend. According to Jordan McCollum (2009), the trends say that if a marketer would like to stay in the eyes of their consumers, social networking plus optimizing their search engine results will bring them great imprint interest.

Out of a 3.000 sampling of active networkers, there is a mountainous sampling that would either recommend a product to their friends or research a brand presented to them on their choice of social network. From the Media Post statistics, one can see that Facebook holds more weight in the consumer-branding category. The findings also emphasize that if one would like to bewitch the attention of active social networkers, the two top venues would be Facebook and Twitter.

Besides gaining online recognition and using social media as a means to get there, a business or person marketing their products and/or services must develop a strong brand. To simply market a product or service is not enough – the mark identity ensures that customers will subconsciously acquire a loyalty (Jansen, n.d.). To put together a tag prototyping process is essential to the success of repeat customers. Recognizable brand identities mentioned in Jansen’s article are IKEA, Apple and Nike, great examples of brands that obviously have international customer loyalty. This proves that the author’s idea of a strong brand prototyping idea is much needed when marketing, whether offline or online in media marketing.

Being a master of social networking and online marketing is not complete without being a master of search engine optimization (SEO). “Four Fundamental Principles of SEO” introduces four distinguished contributing factors to the success of having one’s brand at the top of search engine results (Martinez, 2006). Visibility, organizing site content, using meaningful keywords and uncluttered links are touted as the keys to a competitive edge when it comes to search engine optimization. Consistently practicing the fundamentals should ensure the leverage of one’s online marketing campaign versus one without a clue.

As stated in other articles, one cannot truly set up an online marketing campaign without mapping out effective heed identity and optimizing search engine recognition. Another segment not to be ignored is the growing population of consumers that exercise their mobile devices to access the information on social networks (“Mobile Plus,” 2009). Although infantile, mobile marketing is posthaste evolving as a broad portion of internet consumers. eMarketer.com predicts that nearly half of all consumers will be mobile content viewers by the year 2013, according to the data quiet from years 2008 and 2009.

Social networking has always been frowned upon when it comes to business settings simply because the medium is misunderstood as a recreational tool rather than a marketing resource. Once one learns the importance of social networking, online branding, search engine optimization and mobile marketing as outlined in the articles, social network marketing should be a welcome tool to enhance business and consumer traffic.

References

Maki (2007). The importance of social media marketing: Why you should learn and master it. Retrieved November 6, 2009, from http://www.doshdosh.com/the-importance-of-social-media-marketing/

McCollum, J. (2009). Consumers sharing brand opinions on social networks. Retrieved November 6, 2009, from http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/11/consumers-sharing-brand-opinions-on-social-networks.html

Jansen, M. (n.d.). Brand prototyping: developing meaningful brands. Retrieved November 6, 2009 from http://www.brandchannel.com/papers_review.asp? sp_id=1291

Martinez, M. (2006). Four fundamental principles of SEO. Retrieved November 15, 2009 from http://www.seomoz.org/blog/four-fundamental-principles-of-seo

Mobile plus social equals opportunity. (2009, November 12). eMarketer. Retrieved November 15, 2009 from http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx? R=1007373