I was asked by Andy Angelos, to join a panel discusion focused on maintaining a centralized brand presence at SocialDev Camp Chicago on Saturday. While the discussion was taken in several directions, not related to the central theme, I thought I would add some comments I thought belonged in the panel discussion, but may not have been discussed or weren’t clearly stated.
While I don’t know how one would maintain a centralized brand presence across networks and applications (reading that now confuses me — is that from one geographc location? From one super app built by Google? Maybe living in one place like YouTube and embedding everywhere?), I think maintaining a consistent brand presence makes more sense. It was where the discussion was leading, so here are my additional comments.
1. Whoever you are as a brand, be that in all the channels you may use. In other words: same identity/screen name/callsign/nickname/photo, etc (i.e. Manny’sMothBalls with a picture of a moth 100×75)
2. Be predicatable in the delivery time of your content in each channel (every month, every week, every day, hourly – your choice just be consitent) people will expect you like the morning paper (does anyone get one anymore?)
3. Talk in the voice of the brand but adapt it to the channel you are using (don’t use the hashtag in facebook, it belongs on twitter-I do this personally, but for personal only, and because I am lazy and use ping.fm, be formal when required, casual when appropriate) and maintain voice consistancy relative to the brand. Don’t get into controversial discussions as a brand (politics, religion, heated social issues).
4. Have something of value to contribute to the conversation (remarkable content-it’s hard to do, but keep at it). This is where you could link to or embed content–live in one place, show in many–Hey Centralized Brand Presence–CBP-coin it.
5. Do the research upfront on who your buyer persona is and don’t operate in every network or use every application because EVERYONE is using giant social network/microblog X. Be in the places where your buyer persona participates.
6.Engage one on one. With a person as a person. Talk with, not at. You have 2 ears and one mouth, use them in that order (does that work on the web? I think it should)
Did I miss anything, cause confusion? Let me know your thoughts.
Ciao
Marty