Have you ever noticed extra advertising on the products you buy? A GAP label on a t-shirt. A movie promotion on a coke can. A movie-themed toy in a McDonald’s kid’s meal. What has made these products so strong that they are now able to cross promote sometimes completely unrelated products?
There are a few components in creating a brand that transcend off-and-online realms, so keep that in mind if you’re working on an offline campaign as well.
- Be consistent. The web is full of properties to engage markets upon; each has its own rules, trends, and unique qualities. This provides a perfect storm for inconsistent branding. Have a clear vision of how you will communicate branding messages and, if on social media, how you will transform a branding message into engagement or conversation. Determine how the brand “voice” will sound and only change that voice to meet the norm for the property.
- Cross-link engagement properties. If you’re on Facebook, share your Twitter account. If you’re on LinkedIn, share your Skype. If you’re on BusinessExchange, share your blog. (Funny how I did that, no?) It gives users a way to learn more, connect more solidly, and/or chose how they want to engage with your business. As a bonus, it also helps you build link popularity for better search engine visibility.
The rest of the tips after the jump…
- Reserve usernames. Your username for posting or sharing should be (surprise, surprise) consistent. Use the name your market already knows you by (ie: Don’t change “McDonalds” to “Best Burgers” or “McBurgerLover”). You’ll only create more for your market to remember, as well as a recognition curve for user engagement.
- Treat avatars as secondary logos. Just because it’s a small graphic, doesn’t mean it doesn’t make a big impact. It does. The Huffington Post has quite a long name–not something easy to read in an 150×150 pixel box. Instead they used the same color scheme but created a clean, simple, symbolic piece that their existing market could pair with their messages.
- Keep content moving. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are a beautiful thing. They allow businesses to (almost) effortlessly share content throughout the web. If you’re doing it right, your business is creating content on a regular basis. Keep the content moving beyond just your company’s website through things like content market and social media sharing.
Huffington Post logo
transformed into this:
HuffingtonPost avatar
Please share your own tips and what you’ve done to reinforce a solid online brand in the comments!
Side note: The photo of the Coke Zero can is from a flight this week. Have you noticed the insane amount of cross-promotions there are on airplanes these days? It’s a way of cutting costs–and I don’t mind that a bit. If you’re interested in a great example of this, check out this short (60 second) video blog from last year:
