Building brands via social media

Shh...listen...your customers and prospects are talking about your brand. Can you hear them?

They don’t care whether you like it or not; they are saying exactly what they think of your brand.

And if you are not paying attention, they could be battering it ruthlessly.

The opinion of a happy or irate customer holds more water than any number of marketing or public relations campaigns.

That’s the interesting thing about the social media — it redefines the rules of brand engagement.

It’s shocking how many venerable East African brands are being discussed on popular Internet destinations including blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

The traditional routes of market research, public relations and marketing are no longer sufficient in maintaining brand leadership.

Because it encourages dialogue, the social media is an extremely powerful marketing and customer service tool, that can be used to grow brands efficiently and improve service delivery.

This is known as inbound marketing.

Careful listening will help firms better understand the tone and character of ongoing conversations and formulate a relevant strategy for engagement.

Global brands that are successfully using social media include Coca Cola, Starbucks and Dell.

Coca Cola has reduced its focus on building its website to using the social media more intensively.

Starbucks is using it to improve its restaurant menu offerings; Dell is using the social media to generate sales by running special offers that are earning them millions of dollars every month.

In East Africa, brands using the social media include Kenya Airways and Bata Shoes, who regularly update their Facebook Fan page and are highly interactive on their Twitter communications.

Many more brands in East Africa need to follow this path to grow their brands.