Does your #branding need some work?

How would you describe your #Brand presence? Unknown or #viral? Inconsistent or strategic? As a new business owner, I can personally attest that building a brand takes some time and strategic thought. My long-term goal is to have a national presence in the communities that I serve. While every business’ goals are different, we all share something in common- we want to expand our customer/client reach to grow or maintain our business. Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith’s “The Dragonfly Effect” provides excellent tactics to leverage social media to drive your brand’s message and influence positive change in the community. They also have a blog with useful articles. If you don’t have time to read the book (it’s an easy read and not very long), I recommend downloading it in audio form and listening to it on the way to work or while cleaning the house on the weekend. I’ll quickly break it down so you can see for yourself just how valuable the information can be to your business. Aaker and Smith divided the book into 4 core sections which are essential to any business model, whether it be a small to medium sized business or a non-profit organization:

Focus- How to hatch a goal that will make an impact

Grab Attention- How to stick out in an overcrowded, overmessaged, noisy world

Engage- How to make people connect with your goal

Take Action- How to empower others, enable them- and cultivate a movement

What I enjoyed about “The Dragonfly Effect” in particular was that they broke down each step, gave examples, AND provided actionable ways to achieve them. Another one of my favorite digital strategy books is Brito’s “Your Brand: The Next Media Company.” Brito provides a lot of great insight on which digital platforms to capitalize on and which tools and resources are most useful. While Brito does go over digital strategies, “The Dragonfly Effect” delves much deeper under the surface and explains the psychology behind why specific digital strategies work.  By combining the tools, words of wisdom, and strategies from both these books, non-profit organizations like Many Hopes, entrepreneurs, and small businesses can truly take their brand presence to the next level.

Imagine You Can: The Future Starts with Hope

“All successful brands have an amazing story to tell. From the brand identity, to the website and blog, to the Facebook page, and the content you share on it, each piece of content needs to contribute a chapter to that story.” If you’re someone like me, a small to midsized business owner or leader, you probably found yourself nodding, yes, my company or brand does have an amazing story to tell. And if you’re someone like me, you probably have an idea of how you want to share that story…but maybe aren’t sure where to start or how to revitalize your current plan. Well, I have the answer for you. Michael Brito’s Your Brand: The Next Media Company explains in a conversational, step-by-step manner on how to take your brand to the next level.  

The book is broken up into three main sections. Background information on social media and the marketing space are covered in section 1. My favorite sections are 2 and 3, which cover how to create a social business strategy, tools and resources that are available, and how to write and incorporate great content across various social media platforms.

For organizations like Many Hopes that want to strengthen their brand presence, I would start with putting together a 90 day plan. I would begin by defining what their brand story will be. For example, “Red Bull’s holistic approach to storytelling ensures that every brand expression, conversation, tweet, status update, and video- from product announcements to corporate culture- is a part of its content narrative.” Check out Red Bull's blog- their messaging is consistent across all channels and its consumers all understand what it stands for—that it “‘gives you wings…’ which means that it provides skills, abilities, and power to achieve whatever you want to.”

Next, I would consider my resources, time, staff, and money that I have to invest in paid, earned, and owned media. Like many organizations, Many Hopes has a budget to keep in mind. Depending on the time and resources that that staff of Many Hopes is able to provide, I would recommend leveraging resources from the vendor spotlight sections of Brito’s book to reduce time, improve efficiency, and save on labor costs. For example, I would leverage such resources as HootSuite or SocialFlow to breakdown who my core audience is and what they are drawn to. This will help streamline the topics that my audience wants to hear about when I blog, tweet, or post. Additionally, it will help me provide my audience with more relevant content.  From there, I would take the data from a platform like HootSuite and plan out the next 90 days of my content narrative to social channels. For example, if the core audience of Many Hopes wants to see more pictures of the work the organization is doing (customer stories), I would plan to spotlight one outstanding scholar a week from a boys or girls home on the Many Hopes Blog, Facebook, and Twitter account. We could call it Spotlight Tuesday. I would recommend providing a picture (visual) of a student holding an award, holding up their report card, or smiling next to their favorite teacher. What’s great about platforms such as SocialFlow is that you can control your social media content from one program versus having to log into each social media site to post your stories.

Aside from improving Many Hope’s social media relevancy and brand presence, I would also devise a plan to improve their search engine visibility. “…The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not your content is actually surfacing in the search results when customers are looking for you or something you can offer to them.” I would recommend Google AdWords to start. I would also plan out my long-form content topics for the next 90 days and use platforms like Outbrain and Contently to help me increase engagement among my audience by pinpointing the right content.