Your Online Branding Efforts are going to Waste
Personal and online branding has always been one of the main goals of online marketing. While the web has the added benefit that it is a marketing platform on which sales can be made, it is essentially a great interactive way for companies and individuals to share and spread their brand images.
Unfortunately, a lot of marketers and bloggers are wasting their online branding efforst through making a few crucial mistakes. I have outlined some of these mistakes in a recent guest post on John Chow’s blog. An excerpt from the post is below.
“I have put together the following list of ways you can keep your brand identity consistent in any online marketing campaign using social networking and communication websites, social media websites, blogs, e-mail addresses, IM clients, and beyond.
Always Keep a Consistent Username
No matter what service you sign up for, keep the same username and stick with it. You should use the same name over every instant messaging client you use (Skype, AIM, Windows live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, etc.), on any social networking sites where you create profiles or groups or fan pages (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Bebo, etc.), and on any social media websites you use (Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, del.icio.us, etc.). In addition, this name should also be the e-mail address you use when communicating with others and should be apparent on all company documents and marketing materials.
Pick a name and stick to it. Spell and structure it the same way every time (capitalization and spacing, ie. For my blog I use AM Beat , not ambeat or AMBeat, or Ambeat) and do your best to ensure that others do it the same way (without being pushy).
Always Keep a Consistent Image
Whenever you create an account on a web service, chances are you have the ability to upload a profile picture. Always make sure to use the same picture with every service you use. If you are branding your company, use your logo. If you are branding yourself, then use the same profile picture across all web services.
For a company, there are two main logos you can use, the actual logo itself and the symbol portion of your logo (or a certain smaller element which clearly resembles the full logo). This smaller portion should serve as your website’s favicon and can be used as profile pictures if the service only allows room for smaller pictures (Instant Messaging clients for example) where the full logo would not fit.”
You can read the full post over at John Chow.
