CHAPTER 5

Become a New Top Digital Brand

In this chapter, you will read:

Introduction

Everyone dreams of making money on the Internet. Whether it is a huge, sprawling corporation or a small brick and wall shop that wants to expand to an online market, the Internet is a new frontier of promise and opportunity. Or at least, it was around 20 years ago. There is still plenty of opportunity on the World Wide Web. The problem is that the Wild West days of the web are long gone. For example, multiple Internet search engines such as Lycos, AskJeeves, and eventually even Yahoo fell to the onslaught of Google. These days, Google’s throne is so secure that not even Microsoft, which alongside Apple is essentially the entire tech industry, can’t even make headway against them.

The old websites were used to present reading material and nothing else. Soon that changed with the new type of technologies. Everything was quickly overtaken by Web 2.0. That was not all Web 2.0 changed, however. It was not some kind of software or tech upgrade, but an entirely new way for people to use the Internet. Web 2.0 is used to describe the “second evolution” of the Internet, the time in which people could respond directly to websites and have their comments remain online until the websites’ servers were down. This changed the fundamental nature of the Internet from passive information into a place for active social engagement on a global scale. This is all to explain that the Internet as it exists now is entirely different from the Internet as it once existed. Yet not every business gets this basic fact. Many companies still treat the Internet as if it is the era of e-branding, in which they apply the traditional newspaper and magazine style marketing to the Internet. Needless to say, this doesn’t work anymore.

Digital Marketing Doesn’t Work as It Used to Be

Still a lot of companies avoid the Internet all together, recalling the Dot Com bubble bursting back in the early 2000s. Everyone was so excited for the various business opportunities the Internet offered that companies were throwing all the money they had at new Internet opportunities. Like all bubbles, it burst and left many people completely penniless. These days, the Internet works at the breakneck speed of instant gratification. Social media websites like Facebook and Twitter offer immediate social contact, YouTube offers hours of free entertainment, and there is always a live feed streaming something that is happening at right that moment somewhere in the world. This means that any company trying to use the old, traditional methods of digital marketing quickly find themselves drowning in the rapids.

The new digital technology, perhaps now in its teenage phase, has stabilized enough to allow large companies to carve out entire kingdoms but at the cost of being able to find any consistent way to market. Companies have to move at the same breakneck speed as the new technologies that are used in on the online environment, which means they have to be constantly on top of anything that is becoming popular. Because if a company doesn’t get noticed immediately, it is unlikely to get noticed at all. That said, by reading this chapter, you should be able to make use of some generalized tools that could help your business. None of them are 100 percent effective, but then again, no marketing tool is 100 percent effective. Unlike traditional marketing, however, current digital marketing tools have to be upgraded and utilized constantly. What are these tools? Where did they come from? How can they best be used and how do they differ from traditional marketing? These are all questions that have no specific answer; everything depends on the type of business you are in. If you manage to answer those questions, you will become a top digital brand.

Digital branding tools change quickly, and this is especially true when new technologies are involved. If this is ever in question, go to AskJeeves and do a search on Geocities. After typing those terms into Google, it becomes obvious how quickly and completely the Internet can change. This is why any attempt to engage in e-branding first requires research. Unfortunately, even that isn’t easy. Any research on digital marketing tools is going to bring up search engine optimization (SEO). This often leads companies just dipping their toe into online business to presume that SEO is all they need. Not only is that untrue, it is potentially fatal to the continued health of the company! This is because SEO is just one e-branding tool out of many. It is a useful one, and even necessary for many businesses. Yet just because it is a useful tool doesn’t mean it is going to be the thing a particular company needs. What’s more, there are some businesses that benefit far more from other e-branding tools than they do SEO.

This is the first, and major, way that e-branding differs from traditional marketing. Traditional marketing attempts to identify target markets and create an ad campaign that appeals to that target. It is often a good idea to run different styles of advertisements in different areas, because a target market might have different desires and needs in one area than another. If McTully wants to market its cafe style drinks, it’s unlikely to create an advertisement showcasing someone drinking a mocha latte in a warm, cozy environment in Arizona or New Mexico. In that area, it might instead create an ad campaign around someone strolling through the city in summer clothes while carrying an iced coffee. Both are advertising the same thing, McTully’s cafe style drinks. Yet they’re targeted to different markets. Sometimes they do it the opposite way, finding a target market such as “20-year-old man” and then finding out what that market wants in each area of the country. Either way, traditional marketing allows for the creation of multiple advertisements, any of which may never be seen by people outside of the target market depending on the context.

E-branding doesn’t have that luxury. When something is on the Internet, it is there forever and for everyone. Since it is impossible to market multiple target markets in the same ad campaign outside of some specific contexts (some markets are simply going to have opposing needs), you need to get clever. Instead of trying to tie marketing to an area or a specific market, you need to rely on what is popular. The different ways to do that are the different digital branding tools. This is why not every digital branding tool is beneficial to every business. Because Internet is global and there are a never-ending number of ways people are getting in touch with each other. Each of those communication methods creates a website where those people congregate. And those websites are the places where digital branding happens.

Sadly, so many businesses fail here, at this spot. They know they need to market online, but they don’t realize how important it is for them to have a solid brand. Branding is everything on the Internet, and a company is known by how interesting and visible it manages to be.

Build Your Brand Online

It is easy to think that a company’s brand is obvious. Sadly, that is rarely the case. It is easy for a company to think it has an obvious brand, given that the people in charge of marketing work for the company. They spend their work hours inside company property, doing company work and dealing with company business. When a person spends so much of his or her time immersed in the company, it is easy to presume everyone can see what that person sees. This is a mistake you should avoid doing. This is why branding is the first step to e-branding. Like all marketing activities, it is important to figure out what type of markets you should be targeting. For example, a comic book and collectibles shops might want to market themselves as being for people who like DC Comics rather than Marvel Comics. So, while a company may not be able to target an area market, as well as it once could, it can brand itself as for all people who fit a specific niche.

The other reason e-branding is so important is simple functionality. A website is created to generate leads and sales. If it is not catching people’s notice and getting them to buy the products, then it is not doing the job it was designed to do. Unfortunately, the Internet is all about instant gratification. As mentioned previously, if a company doesn’t catch people’s attention quickly, the users will move on and the company will be left behind. So, what can be done to help branding? Branding has to happen internally rather than externally. Simply attempting to get the users to notice a company logo just won’t cut it because there is no reason for people to pay attention to a company logo.

So, if branding is the goal, keep in mind this simple rule of thumb “Proper branding makes people remember a company fondly.” There are several ways to do this, and each one is important. Some companies won’t need to work on some aspects of branding while others will need to work on some aspects even harder, but these are the things to keep in mind when branding is the goal.

Brand Voice

The voice of a brand is the way the company presents itself. In the previous example, we have one comic book company to be more appealing over the other, but a brand’s voice is even more in depth than that. It is not just about who the brand appeals to, it is about the way in which a company appeals to those people. To keep with the comic book example, how does the company feel about Marvel Comics? Obviously, the answer is “a company is not a person and so has no opinion,” but that is not true in the case of building a brand. Maybe the company thinks Marvel comics is great, but DC Comics is better. Perhaps the company thinks Marvel comics isn’t even worth reading. Perhaps the company would like to ignore the existence of Marvel comics altogether.

The brand’s voice doesn’t have to make grand declarations every other day, of course. In point of fact, the voice should never be a conscious thing for the reader. Rather, the reader should be able to get a sense of how the company feels in its promotional material and information presentation. This is the exact opposite of traditional marketing, in which a company may have policies but it rarely has to deal with having a particular voice one way or another. While this may be the case with online businesses (it will quickly become obvious if an online shop only sells one type of comic book), there are hundreds of other online shops that all do the exact same thing. Since there is only so much a company can do with traditional sales tactics such as temporary price drops, a brand’s voice gives a user a reason to shop at one company over another. The users simply like the way that company presents itself.

White and Black Hat Tactics

Yet the one thing that remains constant is that Google works hard to ensure its search engine brings the most relevant websites to the top of the page. It does this so well, in fact, that over 90 percent of searchers don’t go past the first page. As if that was not hard enough, a full 50 percent find what they’re looking for with one of the first three links. The answer is clear. If a company wants to be noticed, that company needs to be on the first page for any keyword search. If possible, a company should aim for the first three links. There are two styles of digital tactics, referred to as White Hat and Black Hat tactics. As suggested by the names, White Hat tactics are designed to create the most relevant information in order to attract return users with the idea that return users are more likely to be customers. Black Hat tactics are designed to get as many eyes on the website as possible, in the hope that a larger pool of people means an increase in sales.

The most obvious way to get Google’s attention is via keyword use. Keyword is a term that refers to specific words and phrases that match the search terms users are searching for. An easy example is the phrase “plumbers in Chicago.” A person who needs a plumber and lives in Chicago is liable to pull out his or her phone or tablet, go to Google, and type in that very phrase. If a website has that phrase in the text, then Google’s algorithm views it as relevant. Yet even though it is relevant, it has to compete with hundreds, if not thousands, of websites that have the exact same phrase.

An example of a Black Hat tactic, one that Google has recently managed to fight against, is called Keyword Stuffing. This refers to putting the keyword into a website as often as possible. The higher the number of keywords, the more relevant the Google algorithm would decide it was. A common White Hat tactic is creating multiple pages of relevant, if simple, content, which uses the keyword a more reasonable number of times. In each case, the goal is to use as many different versions of the keyword as possible. “Chicago plumbers” is only one keyword that might be used. There is also “emergency Chicago plumber,” “cheap plumber Chicago,” and so on.

Another thing the Google algorithm looks for is how long a person remains active on a website and how often people return to the same website. The longer and more often, the more relevant Google presumes the website is. Because so many people use the website and use it for so long when they do, it simply must be an incredibly relevant site. There are a number of different ways to use links in order to build relevancy. An example of a Black Hat tactic is the use of hidden links. These are links hidden among the text of a site, usually by making the hyperlink color the same as the normal text color, causing the user to accidentally click on them. They often cause a small user message to pop up, asking if the user would like to leave the website so that the company can claim innocence. Yet it is done on purpose, because when the message pops up, users are likely to click in surprise, thinking that something is going wrong.

Backlinks are a great White Hat tactic. These days, websites have multiple pages no matter what they are for. Not only is this encouraged, but it is necessary in order to responsibly use keywords. On these pages, it is often possible to link to other pages on the same website. This encourages users to click on these links and see the other pages. Some sites do not benefit from this as well as others, of course. An industry giant like Cracked.com makes constant use of backlinks, whereas a local pawn shop makes limited use of backlinks.

These are just a few Black and White hat tactics. You should be familiar with some of them but at the end of the day you should leave that aspect of your business to a specialist. Google will often release code for HTML and other website programming language to better craft a website to meet relevancy standards. These updates allow websites to do things such as tag context words so that Google’s algorithm can recognize more than just keyword use and other programming tweaks that help companies get a step up. However, these are programming tools and are only used to enhance what digital tactics have already utilized rather than tools in and of themselves.

E-branding on Social Media and Review Sites

The next major tool for e-branding is social media marketing. As mentioned earlier, Web 2.0 took the Internet by storm. If the modern Internet has a new, fancy name then it would have to be the Social Media Age. The number of different social media websites seems to change on a daily basis. However, the social media website business has the same problem as the Internet as a whole. Namely, large companies have already carved out stable niches for themselves, making it harder to get a foot in the door. This became obvious when Google attempted to create a social media site that would do what Facebook did, but better. As anyone who pays attention noticed, Google+ quickly became obsolete. Because Google is an industry giant, the company still maintains Google+. Yet even so, it is obvious to everyone that the site is nearly useless at best.

The point is if Google can’t rival Facebook then no one can. The reason people get confused about this fact is that multiple social media websites have become huge. Almost everyone has a Twitter account, as well as an Instagram account and possibly even a Tumblr account. There are also sites such as LinkedIn, and a wide array of different message boards and forums where people still discuss things and engage in active conversation. However, these websites all do different things. Facebook is a site built around the idea of a person having a single “base of operations,” at least in terms of online communication. Facebook gives each user a place to post his or her thoughts, images, videos, and other media and information, which is then sent out to all the people who want to see that information. Twitter seems similar on the surface, with people following an individual and reading that individual’s thoughts, videos, and images, but Twitter is designed for short bursts of information. It is limited to 140 characters, which simply is not designed for in-depth conversation. While that doesn’t stop some people from trying, by and large, Twitter is designed for quick communication of simple thoughts, whereas Facebook is designed to give more information.

It is the differences between these social media websites that allow all of them to maintain their hold on the industry at the same time. Because they are all different methods of communication, people will often have accounts with all of them. That is why any company that wants to be a top brand will quickly learn what social media websites are and are not useful for its needs.

Branding on Facebook

As mentioned previously, Facebook is a website allowing the quick communication of more important and larger amounts of information. A user will post things on his or her wall (Facebook’s name for a user page), which other people will read and comment on. Because Facebook allows for so many characters in a post, this makes it a good platform for the communication of nuance. That is not all Facebook does, however. Facebook also provides groups, which work in a similar way to forums. The administrator, in this case the person who set up the group and anyone they choose to give equal editing power to, creates a page based on the group’s intent. If it is a fan group for a particular band, then the admin might upload photographs and promotional images of the band into the photo section. The group might upload videos of the band in the video section, allowing people to see and hear the band’s music.

Facebook is a great place for any company wanting to build a loyal fan base. It allows the company to share promotional information and give its fans and customers a place to chat. Not only that, but a well-run Facebook page could be used as another way for customers to send information to the company. There are downsides to Facebook, and those downsides need to be considered before designing a branding strategy. A major downside is that Facebook is often lax in user protections. Not in terms of software or hardware security, those are generally safe. Rather, Facebook is not very good at ensuring users are courteous to each other. A user may be able to ban an abuser and erase his or her abusive posts, but Facebook rarely ban abusers. There are certainly situations in which Facebook bans or closes user accounts, but rarely is it due to things such as harassment. This means a company must plan ahead and ensure it has a competent public relations employee. Human nature is to get defensive when they are being attacked, but more often than not a company ends up looking worse when they attempt to fight back. There are certain companies that have managed, but by and large, the companies have to simply take the abuse and hope that blocking the user from their page will work.

In addition, Facebook isn’t really designed for ease of use. This is because Facebook’s main purpose is to get information on its users and sell that information to marketers and other companies. While Facebook wants and requires users to feel comfortable, by and large, people are forced to accept user-interface changes. A company may be able to maintain its Facebook page the way it wants, but if Facebook makes it difficult for a user to actually utilize the features or find the group, then it is not very useful. And Facebook does make it more difficult for users to find things. Interface changes such as reworking the way posts from followers show up (rather than simply allowing users to see posts in the order they were posted), changing up which posts they see and how often, and other counterintuitive changes often leave groups and pages high and dry as half of their followers suddenly stop seeing their posts. Because of this, Facebook can be difficult to manage. It is something of a double-edged sword, allowing a company to reach multitudes of potential customers. Yet at the same time, a company that relies on Facebook as its major marketing outlet can easily figure out what to do if half of its followers stop seeing its posts. Hard to market to people who don’t know you exist. Even so, Facebook is nearly a requirement for any business that wants to be online.

Branding on Twitter

Twitter is a fascinating online service that mimics a blog, but has a maximum number of characters, requiring that users be as brief as possible with their words. Because posts are so short, a good PR (Public Relations) manager needed to run the company’s Twitter account is essential. Excellent communication skills are essential for Twitter as every word has to count. Still, this “microblogging” site is as useful as a real blog in building an online brand identity, but it definitely requires a different skill set to make it work. The main advantage of Twitter is that it is fast and efficient for communicating simple ideas. Additionally, there is the complex but essential world of hashtags. Hashtags are additions to a post that begin with the “#” symbol followed by a keyword or phrase without any spaces between them. Though these count toward the users’ limits on the size of their post, they will ensure that the microblogging posts (known on Twitter as tweets) appear in the searches and feeds of other Twitter users who are interested in the subject of these hashtags. Using hashtags is a fantastic way to build a brand, but one should be very careful which hashtags he or she uses.

Naturally, the most popular hashtags of the moment are advisable for building a brand. Unfortunately, with the chaotic state of the world, some of these hashtags are political in nature. While some companies may not mind being seen as taking a stance on political issues, others may well want to avoid the entire situation altogether to avoid alienating potential customers. That said, not every popular hashtag on Twitter involves a hot button controversy that could get a company’s public relations department in trouble with its customer base. Of course, it is possible for a company to start its own hashtag, though this should be approached with caution. Hashtags for events can create an image of your brand in the mind of the public, without the cost of paying money to sponsor an event. A hashtag about a music festival will show up in the feeds of users searching for that music festival, associating a company with the style of music happening there. In a similar vein, sporting events, holiday events, comic book conventions, museum exhibitions, public festivals, and important days in history oftentimes have hashtags associated with them. Learning these hashtags, generally done by simply going to Twitter and spending time looking up hashtags, is a great way to associate a brand with nearly anything Twitter users are talking about.

The main downside of Twitter is that there is a lot of white noise in there that can be hard for a company to get noticed in. Millions of people use Twitter hourly while they are conscious and many established celebrities and companies tend to get the vast bulk of the attention. Even using all the most popular hashtags cannot ensure that a Twitter feed will be noticed, let alone followed. With so many users posting so many tweets, it is much like being in a massive room where everybody is talking and only a select few have access to a microphone that lets them actually be heard. This is quite a dilemma for anyone working toward e-branding, but there are some ways to help.

The best way to work toward getting attention on Twitter is to simply attach links to a brand’s Twitter feed on other social media websites, as well as that brand’s website. From there, a company Twitter feed should get at bare minimum a daily update on things that are important, whether it is a bit of written comedy related to the company’s brand, an update on the latest release of a new product, commentary on a situation somewhere in the world in relation to your brand, or nearly anything else that can be condensed into less than 200 characters. In addition to providing advantages in SEO, a Twitter feed is an easy way to allow customers to connect with a brand in a high-tech way that takes almost no effort. That said, a social media manager handling a Twitter account for a brand must know how to write an amusing post with hardly any space to write it in. Each character counts, let alone each word, and a social media manager must make each of them have a maximum impact.

In a similar way, there is the depressing phenomenon of tweet wars where two or more Twitter users use their Twitter feeds to verbally attack other users in text. Twitter’s administrators simply do not have the ability to stop every user recruiting violent radicals for extremist groups, let alone stopping the multitude of trolls and other abusive users. Getting into a tweet war is generally a very bad move, as it makes a company look unprofessional. Of course, there are PR managers who can successfully engage in a tweet war, but it is still a bad idea if done too often. And as is the way of human nature, many people think they are much better at such things than they really are. This is a mistake that can send a company into a tailspin if it is not careful.

Branding on Instagram and Tumblr

There are a few websites other than Twitter and Facebook that allow people to connect over the Internet. However, they are fairly specific and not a great fit for every company. The other two major ones are Instagram and Tumblr, each of which has a specific niche.

Instagram is a site designed for sharing images. People who follow an Instagram account will then have the option of leaving a message in a sidebar of the page the image is on. It is rarely a conversation, because it is not really set up to have that kind of interaction. Instead, the idea behind Instagram is that companies, celebrities, and everyday users can show off images showcasing either their brand or their everyday lives (which are also designed to showcase their brand if they’re doing it right). This is a great tool if a company wants to have a more relaxed, casual voice to its brand. Allowing potential customers to see images of the company work site, the employees doing their job, and new and creative innovations is a great way to let them feel like they’re part of the family. It creates a welcoming atmosphere and suggests that a company is willing to be transparent about itself and what it does.

The downside of Instagram is that it has the same problem as any uploaded image on the Internet. Once an image is uploaded to the web, it is there forever. Not only that, but these days photo manipulation is easier than ever. Programs like Photoshop allow people with almost no skill to crop and alter images. While it is unlikely that people will presume altered images from a company’s work site are real, it creates a very real problem for any company dealing with the situation. If the company says something, it runs the risk of backlash in the form of people saying they should have a sense of humor. If it doesn’t say anything, it is possible that people will begin associating the altered image with its brand more than its actual logo. Even worse it could be used in court in order to argue that the company is no longer protecting its trademark, because the company allowed that particular use of its trademark goes by without statement. Instagram is only as useful as long as a company is transparent and interesting. In order to judge if Instagram is a good tool for e-branding, the question of whether or not people want to see the pictures must be answered. If a marketing intern heads into the company building and finds plenty of interesting, uncontroversial things to take pictures of, then an Instagram account may work. If that intern has to stage pictures and disrupt work flow in order to get anything interesting, then it may be better to avoid Instagram altogether.

Tumblr has a myriad of problems that make it difficult to properly utilize for e-branding. Ostensibly a blogging site, Tumblr has changed its user interface so many times in so many different ways that it can often be difficult to find anything. The original idea of Tumblr was similar in nature to LiveJournal, in that it gave users their own space to upload longer posts and writing. However, Tumblr sharing isn’t straight forward. Users have to follow a Tumblr feed, and while they can reply to a post the response isn’t actually posted directly to the user to whom they’re responding. Rather, original post is then uploaded to their own feed, with the addition of their comment. This often makes it difficult to follow conversations, though people often try. This can result in a pileup of conversations that never quite follow a logical flow. The end result is that people on Tumblr wind up following people rather than conversations. The outcome of this is that clever responses and user interactions happen in a much different way. Rather than attempting to archive posts, Tumblr users are encouraged to simply repost an entire conversation as it comes across their feed.

The practical effect of this is that Tumblr ends up working in much the same way as a brainstorming session done via e-mail. In fact, Tumblr conversations often end up looking exactly the same as e-mails that have been forwarded multiple times. This isn’t to say Tumblr has no use in e-branding. In order to use Tumblr, a company has to be prepared to have no control over its messages on occasion. When something gets posted to Tumblr, users will reblog it at random. This makes it difficult to keep a coherent message, which makes branding difficult. However, if a brand’s voice is relaxed and open to brainstorming, then Tumblr can work quite well.

Branding on Review Sites

There are an ever-growing number of websites dedicated to nothing more than allowing customers to leave reviews of a business. This grew from online auction and sales sites such as E-Bay and Amazon, which allowed buyers to leave reviews of sellers or products. Soon, websites began encouraging people to leave reviews of not just products or specific sellers, but restaurants, individual franchise locations, and specific stores.

These sites can offer amazing opportunities for small businesses wanting to break into the online market. Because these sites are specifically designed to help users find local businesses, it allows a company to ensure a certain amount of traffic to one of their physical locations. If the company is just a small start-up, that could be their only location. As such, ensuring they have a good reputation in the physical world can help them springboard into the online world as they offer current customers the ability to shop online and bring their products to new people across the globe. Of course, the problem with this is that these websites have little to no oversight in terms of fake reviews. Not that it would matter, because in most cases it is a “he said/she said” type of situation. With no oversight and the anonymity of the Internet, many people will choose to post extremely negative reviews. So, any company that wants to use review sites to help build its brand has to walk a careful line between not giving in to unreasonable customers and trying to keep their review scores positive.

Then there is the issue of buying reviews, both positive and negative. Much like with social media followers, there are companies who will buy reviews. They hire another company to write up reviews, both positive for their own company and sometimes negative ones for other companies and then attempt to reap the rewards. Unfortunately, this often works. Because these review sites have almost no oversight, there is no one to fix the problem. These sites generally allow companies to send in a claim, and the review might be removed. But then, it might not, and the company can do nothing about it. If a company wants to use a review site to build its brand, buying positive reviews is a fairly good idea. However, it is important not to overdo it. Too many good reviews, or reviews that seem overly positive, can often be a red flag that the review is bought instead of natural. If it becomes obvious the company has purchased reviews, it tends to lose quite a bit of business. No one wants to give their money to a company who lies to them, after all.

Buying Followers, Is It Worth It?

No matter what it is, if someone will buy it, then someone will sell it. This includes social media followers. The key to using social media for e-branding is having enough followers to make a difference. A company could have the best Facebook posts and post the most amazing messages on Twitter, but these do nothing if there is no one to see them. What is more, even if people see them they also have to share the posts. If more people aren’t constantly following a social media account, then the account stagnates and becomes pointless. To that end, there are companies who will sell followers. For a specific price, which varies depending on the company and the exact services, an official social media account can gain thousands of followers in a short period of time. The benefits of this are obvious, and it would seem like a great idea. However, like all e-branding tools, it might not be a good idea for every company and every brand.

If a company is building a more stoic, professional brand then buying followers might work quite well. The fact that these followers generally have limited interaction with the company is not very important because the company is not trying to seem conversational. If a company is simply having straightforward, professional comments and responding only to the questions asked, then the fact that so few people respond simply does not seem that odd. However, many companies are trying to foster a more open, casual brand voice these days. Such a voice makes it much easier to become part of the community on any social media website. Being part of an Internet community is absolutely vital if a company is going to become a top brand, and only companies that are already top brands can generally afford to have a more sterile voice.

That said, it might be beneficial to buy a small number of followers, just enough to inflate numbers but not so many as to make it obvious when they do not respond. This course of action can be a good idea if a company is just starting out and hasn’t entirely solidified a brand voice yet. With a small number of natural followers and a high enough follower count that potential customers won’t think the company isn’t worth the interest, a company can try a variety of different voices. It is much easier to throw things at the wall and see what sticks when there aren’t many people to notice the mess. Ultimately, buying followers is beneficial in only a limited number of situations. It is generally more cost effective to hire someone who can devote all his or her work time to managing the various social media accounts and grow followers naturally. By the time a brand can benefit from buying followers, there is generally no need. Still, a company must decide for itself what is and isn’t useful in overall marketing activities and brand building.

Summary

If a company wants to make it in today’s world, it should possess an online brand. Yet not every tool is right for every company, as this book has shown. While a company can certainly find reasons to utilize every single tool that e-branding has to offer, most companies can get by with a Facebook and Twitter account and some targeted SEO work in order to get their company website noticed by Google. Generally, only the more niche companies need to worry about utilizing the more esoteric e-branding tools. Even so, the Internet is constantly changing, and things that were important fade into obscurity all the time. There are many websites that were once a cornerstone of Internet entertainment, only to have become forgotten and have their servers shut down. Sometimes, this is simply unavoidable. Markets change, people change, and some brands simply aren’t a good fit for the world that comes after that change.

This is why e-branding is so vital for any business that wants to succeed. It may seem counterintuitive, given e-branding is all about making potential customers attracted to a company’s brand rather than specifically the product or service. It makes sense when the breakneck speed of the Internet is taken into account. Twitter hashtags are always becoming popular and forgotten, with new ones to jump on to every single day. Video-sharing sites such as YouTube change their search algorithms, making all new videos go viral and top name YouTube personalities fade away. The practical effect is that keeping on top of e-branding allows a company to stay on top of what’s most important to current culture. By knowing what social trends to connect with, and which social trends should be avoided at all costs, a company is able to subtly shift the appearance of its brand. This shifting allows a company to bring its brand, its voice, and its products and services to the modern world without becoming symbols of ages past.

And at the end of the day, that is what e-branding is all about. Ensuring a company is able to stay competitive and remain noticed without having to completely reinvent itself. Ensuring a company can stay part of the conversation on what customers want out of their industry. And allowing customers to feel as if they’re not just clients but they are friends with the company. If history has proven anything, it is that people want to identify and associate themselves with brands that allow them to proclaim themselves a part of something. All a company has to do is figure out the trends and hang on for the ride, provided it is taking care of its brand.

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