photo by G3K
Brands
Companies have already been building brands with personalities. Now companies are giving identities via various social media tools such as social networking sites, blogs and twitter (eg. comcastcares).
Brand identity is the intended unified characteristics that form the brand.
Social networks giving brands identities
Myspace & Facebook
Bands have been embracing social networking through myspace for a while now. Some bands even use Myspace as their main website. Fans dream of getting in touch with the stars they admire. That’s why they go to concerts, try to get a signiture or a photo and try to get as close to the front as possible.
With Facebook’s recent redesign they have made the pages consistent with user pages, full with tabs and their own streams. This gives companies the ability to appear and act like a normal user.
Pages not only appear like profile pages, they function exactly like them. Instead of ‘friends’, they have fans, which is sort of one-way as they can’t become a fan of users. Once someone becomes a fan, a thumbnail and link appear in the user’s info tab in their profile. They even have a wall where you can view the page’s stream and people can leave comments. Luckily you can change the settings for the default view to only show page updates.
Twitter, the chit-chat
Companies have also been migrating over to Twitter, whether just to stream their content (@nytimes) or to get involved in the community (@JetBlue). This allows brands to be at the same level as other users and converse with them.
Twitter provides a place to not only broadcast but also as a customer-relations tool. Building real relationships with the customers and getting the word out through multilogue.
Branding
Branding, a name or symbol associated with a company, is the physical appearance of a company, the face, that is judged based on reputation and appearance. It a gives physical body to the company.
Voice
Blogs have long been popular with companies as a way to broadcast. Social media has opened many more channels and easier ways to go to where their customers are, in the social networks. The difference now is that the customers can directly respond and converse with other customers. Information then becomes disseminated through multilogue.
Mix-in
Content from companies is now mixed in with the content of consumers, whether via Facebook stream or twitter updates. While they are taking on identities, they really must be an Identity by opening up a two-way channel if they want to really build relationships with customers.
