Branding Basics on the Web

Branding, or brand marketing, is a basic concept in marketing. Essentially, branding involves marketing materials and tactics that help to build and maintain an image with a company’s, or website’s, target market. Branding on the Web is about building recognition of a website, and giving visitors or customers a specific feeling or attitude about the site, based on the message the owner wants to convey. Examples of online branding materials include:

1. A website’s official name.

2. A domain name.

3. A logo.

4. A color scheme.

5. Packaging materials on any products being sold.

6. Images on banner ads for the site.

7. A site slogan.

Building brand recognition, even online where branding materials can be in front of a target market regularly, takes time. Here are some keys to effective branding online:

1. Ensure that all online branding elements actually appeal to the target market.

2. Online branding materials should be memorable, and should portray the company’s intended image.

3. A website’s message to its target audience should be consistent throughout all of its branding materials.

Building a brand image for a website or online business isn’t enough. A webmaster or business owner has to constantly reinforce their branding efforts with their target market. Here are some

Internet marketing tactics that help to reinforce brand marketing efforts:

1. Online Advertising (Using the company logo, slogan, color scheme, and message in advertisements when possible keeps a brand visually in front of members of a target market.)

2. Email Marketing (Including a logo and slogan on all email correspondence reinforces branding, while regular communication with members of a target market keeps that message fresh in their minds.)

3. Online PR (Announcing regular news related to a website through press releases or blogging can keep a website’s name and message in front of the target audience. It also provides a way to build and maintain trust in a brand by letting webmasters and online business owners display their expertise in the niche through blog posts and press release quotes.)

Social Networking for Internet Marketing

Social networking sites (such as Myspace, FaceBook, and Orkut) allow Internet users to form communities online quickly and easily, from groups of friends to business networking. These groups of networked individuals, often in similar demographic groups, have become a virtual gold mine for Internet marketers, who can place their message in front of members of their target market on social networking sites for little or no cost.

Social networking sites have also become an easily abused Internet marketing tool, forcing social networking sites to crack down on new types of spam (such as message spam and bulletin spam on Myspace). This spam is a result of people artificially inflating “friend” counts (the number of other members in their social network) through mass-adding and bots. The owners of these profiles will then sometimes market their own products, or charge others to have their URLs blasted to the bulletin board of thousands of other members.

Why Social Networking Spam Doesn’t Work

Simply put, social networking spam doesn’t work. That’s not to say there won’t be any conversion for the marketing effort, but rather that it very rarely will offer a decent return on investment in comparison to other marketing tactics.

Here’s why:

1. Huge social networking accounts rarely are filled with targeted members. Therefore, those seeing the message won’t likely be members of the target market (unless someone’s marketing something like a Myspace resource site, or a band marketing to legitimate fans, which are two exceptions to the rule)

2. Many of these paid posts (often in “bulletin” form) are only highly visible in limited quantities, based on post time, and only when a member is logged in. Therefore, most members blasted won’t ever even see the message.

3. Even if targeted members of a market do see the message, actually open the message, and actually read it, there’s still the traditionally very low response rate common in most direct marketing methods.

Ways to Use Social Networking Effectively for Internet Marketing

1. Build a highly targeted “friend” list, rather than using bots.

2. Personally welcome any new members of your network, or at least as many as possible.

3. Time bulletins and messages to when members of the target market will likely be online.

4. Offer something of value (like news or exclusive information) in the posts, rather than simply sending links.

5. Contact members regularly to keep the message in front of them, but don’t overdo it, to the point of looking like a spammer.

6. Join groups on social networking sites related to the niche, and promote in them where it doesn’t violate group rules.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing or the SMM is the meeting ground for social media sites and certain internet marketing goals. Each business may have a different motive or priority while implementing SMM. Hence, a goal cannot be generalized; it will differ for every organization with an online presence.In most cases an SMM is implemented to promote a service or product, however, it can also do wonders if it is successfully implemented to increase brand awareness and overall visibility on the internet. Both retaining and enhancing an organizations reputation can be done through SMM.

In most cases, online communities do not accept ancient selling techniques, such as too much advertisement or orthodox selling techniques, in such a case, an SMM may have to be executed, skillfully and under intense observation.

You must spend time in analyzing your target audience, and also ensure that your SMM campaign is successfully reaching the intended audience. Ensuring that you have an appealing message is also essential when it comes to building an SMM campaign for a few select communities or service buyers. Convincing information sent through a simple, though a heavy exposure medium such as an entertainment network is a simple way to guarantee success in your SMM campaign.

Other marketing techniques which are related to SMM:

There are various other marketing techniques which are very closely related to SMM, namely SEO or Search Engine Optimization, WoM or the Word of Mouth marketing phenomenon, SEM or Search Engine Marketing, and SMO or Social Media Optimization. One such effective marketing technique is called Viral Marketing. Viral Marketing or simply VM is a promotional concept wherein people voluntarily add to the campaign by spreading your message, as they themselves approve of your service or product. Viral marketing has been compared to Human and Computer Viruses which have an extensive reach and a rapid growth action; this is also where the technique gets its name from.

Social media sites and the origination of SMO:

A social media web site can be defined as a common ground, where individuals and experts gather to share their views, perspectives and opinions. Social media has adapted various mediums like images, audio, video, and textual mediums.Social media sites provide a huge variety of subjects, topics, and objective discussions to choose from. The idea of implementing SMO is to make the required changes to a website so it is easier to link to, in turn making it more visible in the social media website searches. In the late 90’s and Indian named Rohit Bhargava coined a term called SMO. He also enlisted five important techniques which are still considered to be important SMO guidelines.

Five point guideline to successfully implement SMM:

1- Improve the ability of your website, so that it can be linked to easily

2- Improvise you website in a manner, so as to promote the idea being bookmarked

3- Incoming links are special, treat these links with respect by providing a dedicated space for them

4- Ensure your content is precise, it should be informative and appealing, this will increase your transportability and pave the road for your content to be passed along through various sites and communities

5- Encourage Information supplied by a third party, using simple platforms which enable re-usability. Common platforms that reinforce re-usability would include the likes of RSS and other common Web Feeds.

There have been a number of additions that have been made to the above mentioned five points, namely factors like creating original content to as to not disappoint users who may land on your site, staying fresh to keep up activity and retain interest in your site visitors, use precaution while selecting a SMO technique, engage in providing simple but useful resources to your visitors, increase the possibility of your users sharing ideas by providing the required space and increasing comfort levels, analyze and then decide who your target audience should be, do some research and develop you won unique SMO strategies, etc.

Available Social media sites:

There are many social media sites available on the internet today. Some of these sites are also built to target certain, products, industries, or services.Sites and their niches, which satisfy the above mentioned mantras of good SMM:

Digg:

Digg is a content sharing website, where the content is supplied by Digg users and read by Digg’s community members, which brings a social or public aspect to it. Digg is a perfect example of the fourth point mentioned above. Digg ensures that a submitted article gets the right kind of exposure it deserves, it is perfectly understandable that the article may then get attention based on its quality.A bookmark/rating option called ‘Digg it’ is provided by the website; the option lets you account acknowledgements and as a result, shows the popularity.

Flickr:

An online photo managing and sharing website. Flickr, was probably one of the first sites to have started a photograph sharing environment.

Flickr’s release triggered an entire wave of photograph managing and sharing websites across the wide span of the internet.

This is a user based website, where all additions are made by members only.

There are a lot of social media websites like, looking at a few, there is a website called youtube.com where you can upload your videos, del.icio.us which is a social bookmarking website, which let’s you store your bookmarks online, this helps you access your bookmarked sites from anywhere around the world. Other information based websites would include the Wikihow, which is probably one of the biggest ‘How to’ websites on the internet, the information and content on this website is provided by it’s users, and there’s Technorati, which helps in organizing bloggers and blogs, Technorati also provides a special option to it’s users, it allows you to see who has linked to your blog.

Is it worth spending so much time of Social Media Marketing?

The answer is yes! Your survival kit for the internet has just one tool, that one tool is the visibility of your website. Advertising for your website will not give you the kind of exposure social media marketing and SEO can.Tapping into this useful channel is very important if you wish to build a well known internet identity.

Will Social Media Marketing Improve my search engine rankings?

The answer once again would be yes. SMM increase accessibility to your website. Interlacing of relevant websites is bound to bring in more visitors.Linking to relevant websites or higher ranked pages will not only increase the visitors but also improve the quality of visitors that visit your website. After all, SMM is a marketing method and successful implementation will increase your rank dramatically.

Plan your SMM strategy, when planned perfectly SMM will overwhelmingly increase your visibility and exposure on the internet.

Social Media Marketing

The emergence of Social Media Marketing is the ultimate outcome of a balanced combination of Internet Marketing and Social Media. This integration though brought a revolutionary change, the success of an SMM campaign still depends on the situational model. Integrating the two modes, i.e. Internet Marketing and Social Media cannot run the show until the common goals of both are identified and planned accordingly, and this is what needs a thorough understanding of Social Architecture and designing marketing strategies in accordance with the prevailing situation.

Social Architecture in its original essence is one of the determining force of functionality of social media, and the major components on which it bases, are: users, their identity and the relationship of users with each other and their interaction with the rest of physical and or virtual environment. On the other hand content and context are the ruling forces of Internet Marketing. When combined, Internet Marketing and Social Media, a new Media Marketing Circle originates sharing the bases of both and having a strong bond in between them. The shared bases of Internet Marketing and Social Media generating the SMM Circle can also be termed as the pillars of Social Media Marketing.

For a better understanding of these pillars of SMM, let’s start with Users; being the only target of marketing campaigns users are of utmost importance. In fact the whole SMM circle revolves round users in one way or other. Considering this pillar as of prime importance, let’s keep it at the top.

Since SMM is a user-oriented approach, it’s crucial to identify and classify these users in accordance with their potential and the market segment they hold. Coming to practical examples of SMM in action, let’s consider the User profiles; public and private, based on their location, ethnicity, preferences and aptitudes. User profile itself is a unique identity and provides a base for the right marketing strategy. Why I classified ‘Identity’ as a pillar is simply that excluding such from the list will impinge on the whole SMM plan. For more and more exploration of this attribute of users, five methods identified by Ben Wills (a leading Social Media columnist) can help to a greater extent, i.e. Identity Declaration through ‘about us’ page or network like Linked In, Association in the form of blogroll, del.icio.us, Stumbleupon etc, User-initiated conversations like Yahoo and Google groups, Provider-initiated conversations allowing 24/7/365 support and In-person interactions.

Another pillar of equal volume is ‘building relationships’. The strength of relationship actually determines the effectiveness of SMM plans, and the key to build such relationships is the selection of appropriate communication strategies that may be better set by tagging after the five methods of identity exploration mentioned above.

The pillars of Social Media Marketing mentioned above are actually the privy ends of the SMM world and need some vigorous representation in order have an online presence. While discussing the vigorous representation, it’s turn for king content to put light on. Along with having a hold of SEO hall of fame, content rules the SMM arena as well, the only difference is that here people are given preference over bots, i.e. content in a particular context. Content romps home of social media networks if it gens up about something that most of the users search for.

Vigorous representation is incomplete without the better use of social media tools, i.e. digging, stumbling, technorati favorite, commenting, sharing, bookmarking etc. These tools are, however, mixed blessing, as criticized as well and this criticism does hold justification, i.e. quantitative use deploying the quality of content. This is a serious issue and probably a hurdle on the way towards success of SMM as well. Replying to this criticism, another school of thought is of the opinion that quality still finds its way because the users are people, not bots, and content if not providing what users are looking for or is in old hat, will not be able to gimmick any attention even if made very much popular artificially.

Summing up the pillars of Social Media Marketing, i.e. Users, Identity, Relationships, Content and Social Media Tools, it can be stated that SMM is based on clear concepts of interlinked concepts of media marketing and social networking, and long term results need to hunt up the existing patterns and to rearrange them according to the prevailing situation.

Best Internet Marketing Tactics for a Website

When running a website or online business, it’s important to choose the best Internet marketing tactics, which will offer the biggest reward in traffic or income compared to the amount of time or money invested. This is called getting a good ROI (return on investment) from your Internet marketing tactics.

There are many common, and general, forms of Internet marketing, and most can work for a wide variety of websites and online businesses through the different Internet marketing tactics available in each. These are some of the basic types of Internet marketing:

1. Email Marketing – email newsletters, coupons and offers, etc.

2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – link-building, keyword optimization, etc.

3. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – search engine advertising, etc.

4. Viral Marketing – video / file-sharing, tell-a-friend, etc.

5. Affiliate Marketing – having others sell your products for a percentage

6. Online Advertising – banner ads, text link ads, sponsorships, etc.

7. Online PR – online press releases, blogging, etc.

There are a few steps in choosing the best Internet marketing tactics for a website or online business:

1. Choose a niche or industry.

2. Identify the target market.

3. Determine what most influences that target market.

4. Evaluate the competition’s strengths, weaknesses, and their marketing tactics.

5. Create an Internet marketing plan, including a marketing budget.

As a part of creating an Internet marketing plan, list all possible Internet marketing tactics that fit your budget and have the potential to reach your target market. Once you have a master list of potential Internet marketing tactics, run each through the following checklist to narrow down the best options, and create your final list of Internet marketing tactics for your website or online business:

** Will reach the target market.

** Will be able to influence the target market.

** Has been used in this niche or other niche’s targeting a similar market successfully before (better if it’s been used to target a similar market, but never exactly done in the current niche)

** Will set the website apart from the competition.

* *Will fit within the Internet marketing budget for the site.