How Is Social Media Changing Your Branding Strategy?

Social Media has taken Marketing to a new level. New-age thinkers swear by it, and the ones who ignore it would soon be history.  It has given the local market a gigantic platform and new mediums to reach out. We've arrived at a stage when social media presence decides a brand’s existence, something so unheard of just 5 years ago.

Social media has also changed the dynamics of branding. Instead of looking at this as a threat, one ought to see beyond the obvious to understand and appreciate the long term implications and benefits that Social Media would offer a brand.

As though to adapt to this revolution, Branding, which once focused on bringing forth the brand’s message to the end-users; is now concentrating and viewing it as a two-way process. This allows the consumers to communicate and increase the opportunity and thereby, to own it. Business Houses have accepted the fact that it is time to metamorphose from the age of “commercial yelling” to “commercial conversation”.

 The advent of Social Media has increased the interactions between the brand and the end users, and essentially changed the way Business Houses view their consumers. Although the fundamentals of brand building are untouched, the marketers have an added onus to the traditional “etching the brand in the minds of consumers”. Social media has forced the brands to think on additional parameters viz:

1)      How to build relationship to gain trust?

2)      How to bridge the emotional disconnect or gap, in order to stand out and gain a decisive identity?

3)      How to nurture loyal fans?

However, social media is not to be mistaken for brand overhaul. It merely provides a heightened platform to the brand to better acquaint the world of your thought, leadership, identity and product offerings. Hence, campaigns are being overhauled and strategies being revised to incorporate the social media facet to brand management.

Branding forms the backbone of any product and hence it’s vital to pay meticulous attention to strategy it. Branding, however, has changed ever since the advent of Social Media. We wouldn't be wrong, if we were to say “Social Media has compelled us to rethink -reinvent our strategies”.