Maintaining a Brand in Social Media
As I touched on in my first post, “Social Media: Are You Using it for Conversation?“, many consumers are hesitant to accept the role of major brands in social media when it is used as a marketing medium. Tom Smith, founder of Trendstream, a social media research consultancy, took to his blog, “Mashable: The Social Media Guide,” to explain that the brands that utilize social media to it fullest can prosper in customer relations, authenticity and transparency, and many of other avenues. Most of all, says Smith, social media puts the control in the hands of the consumer, instead of the company and gives more personal attention.
One huge issue in creating more personal contact with consumers is the question of who should be controlling the interaction: should a Twitter or Facebook account feature only the company, or should it feature a company employee representing the brand (also known as a”brandividual”)?
While consumers may find an individual face and name easier to relate to, how much pressure and obligation to stay at a company should be placed on one person? Advertising Age featured the article “For Online Brand Reps, Getting Personal Can be a Tricky Situation” by Abbey Klaassen that discussed this very issue.
Klaassen noted Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford, whose Twitter account is under his name but is also used to promote Ford. Despite the criticism for “brandividuals” like Monty, some argue that connecting a face with a company is the same as connecting a salesman with his/her company.
There is risk involved in using your personal life in conjunction with your professional life via social media, but the human voice may pay off in the end with consumers.
~ by Annie Blewett on March 21, 2009.
Posted in Interaction & Brand Image, Social Media in Public Relations
Tags: Branding, Social Media, Transparency, Twitter
This is an interesting post; I’ve never heard of a “brandividual”. The example of Monty and Ford and the connection between brandividuals and sales reps helps create an image of what exactly a brandividual is. That being said, does that mean that a brandividual is as low on the chain as a sales rep? I would assume that they are held in a higher regard, but as far as being the face or front line of the company, I could see the connection.
Thanks Ansa, that’s a great point. Brandividuals would definitely be more valuable to the company than a sales rep.
Annie,
Your post addresses a lot of problems that companies experience with the use of new social media tools. Many companies are asking themselves, “How do we interact with the consumer, but still solely control out brand image?” The ‘brandividual’ is a great term used to describe a company representative. The most influential ‘brandividuals are CEOs and upper management. Their online interaction with the consumer offers the best information, and positively demonstrates they are invested in the success of the company. It’s great when employee choose to represent their company via a Twitter or Facebook account, but I think specific individuals should be hired to manage the online identity of a company.
I agree with Kim regarding the point that specific individuals should be hired to manage the online identity of a company. Although it is great when employees have unofficial blogs, facebook group/pages, twitter accounts dedicated to their company, from an organization and management perspective I think the majority of companies would fare well if they collaborated with these individuals and turned their focused efforts into a more official representative social medium project. This way all the posts and comments from various employees can be gathered in one single organized blog so that consumers don’t need to search all over the web to find several different blogs, which might be addressing the same topic. With a more simplified, organized communication approach with and between stakeholders companies will soon find greater success in my mind.