Using Web 2.0 to build your business
October 24th, 2006 by JaneLast month I blogged about the importance of publicity during the growth phase of a small business, giving evidence that publicity works better in brand-building while advertising is useful once a brand is established.
Taking this model one step further, how can publicity enable you to build your brand?
A brand could be described as a personality. Every business has a personality, and this is what makes you you - what distinguishes you from your competitors and makes you interesting.
Building a brand is like creating a personality, and every personality has layers, quirks and a history.
Publicity is all about building a personality by telling stories, giving away useful information, and engaging in dialogue with your audience. No longer is the marketing process a one-way communication process - users now want talkback with an authentic person(ality).
BusinessWeek Online’s Small Company, Big Brand discusses the important role of the user in building brands, and the need for credibility, which can only be created through publicity.
Today’s social media (or Web 2.0) makes this task much easier. Web 2.0 is all about engaging the user and building credibility through dialogue, and the traditional media are themselves moving into the social media realm, telling stories not only in print but online as well - and the more credible the stories, the better.
The new generation of users don’t tolerate sales pitches that attempt to pull the wool over their eyes. They want real stories that tell the truth in all its glory, allowing them to make up their own intelligent minds.
MySpace and YouTube are becoming platforms for Y-gen advertising parodies, making serious advertisers look ridiculous while successfully parading the brands they truly love.
Penelope Trunk has picked up on the parody parade in her blog post, The Sales Pitch is Dead, and one of my favourite blogs, Gaping Void Cartoons, recently highlighted the marketing benefits of Web 2.0 in Giving vs. Taking.
The great advantage for small businesses is that Web 2.0 is perfect for telling quirky stories about niche enterprises, enabling you to build a fully rounded business personality (brand) over time, infused with credibility. Keep doing it well and you may never need to advertise!
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October 27th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
Hey, thanks for linking to me. Also, thanks for the link to Giving vs. Taking. Made me think about how building a Web 2.0 brand — especially if it’s a personal brand — has to be about being nice. The ideas you list — telling stories, being useful, giving — are relationship things that I’d want with someone who I perceived as nice.
When I first started blogging people told me that blogging is about community and relationships and you have to pay attention to that. Your post makes me realize that the advice is true of Web 2.0 brands in general - they’re about relationships.