Social Media Strategy and Branding: Why Positioning Is Critical In Creating a Social Media Brand

Social Media Strategy and Branding: Why Positioning is Critical in Creating a Social Media Brand



To create a pre-eminent brand in this new Social Media era, the brand must be "positioned" properly. Social Media provides an incredible tool for marketers in creating a brand. Social Media platforms have created historic opportunities for marketers. To market a product, a marketer must have access to a large customer base that is targeted. The scale and the ability to target through social platforms are breathtaking.

Recently, it has been reported that Facebook has reached its 700 millionth member. This would mean that if Facebook were a country, it would be the second largest nation in the world. Think about that for a moment. At one spot, there are 700 million people who are potential customers for your product. In addition to the scale, Facebook targets these people. Facebook follows the movements of their members as the members move through their Facebook space. This creates an immense amount of personal data. Using analytics, statistics, and algorithms, Facebook can target specific individual for specific products. We see this targeting each day on our Newsfeed. One of the most enjoyable experiences that I have on Facebook is that when I open my page, I find a ton of information that I personally am very interested in. I am one only one in 700 million. Each of those 700 million people has a bunch of things that they personally like, which is unique to them. Facebook has a sixth sense of just what their 700 million individual members like. I, just like my 700 million fellow members, are targeted almost perfectly. There are privacy concerns in a Facebook experience, but by making my personal information known to Facebook, a rich, personal experience has been created for me.

Facebook has created a Perfect Strom. They have created a large group of customers, but a large group of customers who only want to buy your product. Now this is only Facebook. There are many, many social platforms all over the world. Many of these platforms are integrated. It is estimated that 1 in 4 people in the world belong to a social network platform of some kind. It is as if one-quarter of the world was brought to one room. These people were shown a commercial. After the commercial was shown, a marketer would have the information needed to make a personalized pitch to sell each of these people the marketer’s product.

Social media is only a tool. To use this tool effectively a marketer must know their field. A marketer must understand how to create a sophisticated marketing campaign using strategy properly. Social media is a double edged sword for a marketer. The great scale of social media creates historic opportunities for a marketer, but it also creates historic problems for that same marketer.

The presence of social media has made it possible for millions and millions of small brands to come into the marketplace. Because the market place is flooded with product after product creating a brand is of paramount concern in social media. To become a pre-eminent, world-class brand, a brand must be the most recognizable among all other brands. This is a difficult task in a multi-brand, social media era. Just think in terms of the numbers. If you go into your local supermarket, there will be over 10,000 different brands on the shelves of the store that you chose to go to. How can an average consumer focus on that many brands? Why would they want to?

This is why positioning is critical to the creation of a brand, especially in social media era. "Positioning" is a term created by marketing experts Al Ries and Jack Trout. Positioning is a perception strategy. To create a brand, you must be able to define your product in comparison to other brands, in your customer’s mind. To position, a marketer must position their product in direct contrast to one other brand. To be successful, a product must have a function. It must all so create a relationship with its customers. This relationship is a critical element to success in the social media era. This is the purpose of a brand.

A perfect example is Coke. Coke has a function---it cools you off on a hot, summer day. It is an iconic brand that has developed a relationship with its customers. This can be seen in the New Coke vs. Old Coke debacle in 1984. Coke had run some intensive tests. It found that a new Coke formula had overwhelming approval over old coke taste. More importantly, they found that the New Coke had an overwhelming approval over Pepsi. Coke management felt it was a no brainer. New Coke was introduced and there was a firestorm of protest. One thing that Coke’s management hadn’t taken into account was old Coke’s brand and positioning. Old Coke had a significant brand with its customers that bordered on a human relationship. Our friends might not be as attractive, as smart, as cool, as other people. But our friends are our friends and we aren’t going to reject them. Our "friends" are "positioned" in our minds---we will never reject them. This is why Old Coke’s friends demanded that it be brought back. This is critical in a social media era. To brand in this era, a brand must create a "friendship" with its customers. This "friendship" can’t be created without a positioning strategy.

Creating a "positioning" strategy is a hard thing to do and explaining it is just as hard. The vehicle that I have chosen to explain positioning is Kelly Rowland, the R & B singer. I have chosen her because she is presently developing a positioning strategy to market her records. I think Kelly is a benchmark because a lot of the issues she is facing are the issues that the average business owner would face in creating a "positioning" strategy.

Most people like music. By using Kelly Rowland, I hope to explain a complicated concept in a simple and interesting manner that can be easily understood. I hope that you will look forward to my "Kelly" series on positioning.



Dean Hambleton

dnhambleton@gmail.com