Stand For = Stand Out
An exciting era of unprecedented online customer conversation has emerged. From Twitter to Facebook customers are weighing in, being invited by the brands they love to influence key decisions through social media. This new reality, however, means that brands will need to concentrate, more than ever, on defining and communicating a strong sense of self in order to succeed. What a brand stands for is still the very thing that will help them stand out.
Social media represents a collection of powerful tools to better understand and respond to the customer, from real-time focus groups to consumer-led product design. But, the issue with all of this is that is has the potential to focus on the customer at the expense of the brand. As your brand flocks to social media, flooded by customer opinion, the challenge is to maintain a strong sense of brand purpose. This takes the initial and crucial step of defining who you are, what you truly believe in, and what you can uniquely offer the customer under that umbrella.
Customers need authenticity to hold onto
The old marketing idea of "defer to the customer," where you position your brand against a perceived consumer need may seem right for the open conversation that social media provides. However, if all you focus on is what customers tell you, you risk risk losing yourself to the collective customer, and the authentic attributes that attracted them to you in the first place. The internet does a great job of exposing lies and fake authenticity. If you are constantly positioning and repositioning your brand and your products based on customer input, you will be perceived as disingenuous, taking a stand on nothing. Ultimately you will lose the very customers you were catering to.
This doesn't mean that you should avoid engaging your customers through social media. Increasingly you will have no choice, and the real-time aspects of social media can offer great opportunity and insight. But, before opening yourself up to the conversation social media offers, before engaging the outside world, look internally and be clear on what you really believe in and protect it.
Initiating the conversation
We've all considered mission, vision, and value statements, but let's toss these aside. It's hard to get customers excited about a set of lofty words, often crafted in marketing speak. Instead articulate what you believe in, and what you can deliver, simply so that everyone in your organization can understand it, lay it as the foundation for your brand, and then make it part of everything that you do and say. With this clear sense of purpose, you have the best chance of using social media as a conversation tool guided by principle rather than pure customer opinion.
Getting it right
As consumers continue to demand greater engagement from the brands they love, the idea of strong internal principles will become essential. Social media will become more than a real-time focus group or a customer lead generator. It will be a means of communicating your beliefs, engaging the consumer on your terms as well as theirs. This way you can grow your brand by creating brand loyalty from those who fiercely believe what you believe, while responding to their shifting needs, without unwittingly sacrificing your authenticity and unique purpose.
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