Use social networking sites wisely to enhance your brand image

Social networking sites have been started as a platform to meet people and discuss ideas. It has evolved a lot in its function as a meeting place to an effective media for communication. Many corporate companies are using the service of such sites to enhance their brand image.

When these sites were emerging as a media for advertisement, there was a misconception that it will be useful for products which are non-durable. Industries engaged in the production of Textiles, cosmetics, fashion accessories were the first one to display ads on these sites. Shortly service providers entered this area. Later on every industry started using the service of these media to enhance their brand image as the concept of advertising has changed. Earlier advertisements were meant to sell products or services directly to the customer. As the time passed, this concept also changed. Advertisement mainly aiming at promoting the brand name presently which will attract customers automatically. That could be the reason for many corporate entering into different social service activities too.

National Express, one of the leading public passenger transport company earned a unique honor in this area with their facebook fan page receiving 1, 00,000 likes which is the first time achievement of a company engaged in transporting. Presently they have more than 20,000 twitter followers too. Company is planning to use this opportunity to give publicity to their social activities such as children cancer charity help etc. It will use the service of this fan base to spread words about special offers and packages offered by the company from time to time. Thus, they feel that they can earn goodwill of people which can be turned to customers later.

All this started from May 2012 when National Express hired a dedicated content manager, Sally Hawkesford. Till then the company did not have any committed persons to manage social media. When she took up the charge, the company has about 23,000 fans in facebook fan page and about 4,000 followers in Twitter. She has planned a different strategy to attract more fans and followers. According to her the practice was to post the same material in fan page as well as in twitter. She changed that policy and came up with different postings in different communities which will attract the attention of the community members. The strategy found to be success as she could bring up the number of likes to 1, 00,000 and followers to 21,000 within a short time, less than a year.

Now this is the high time for the corporate houses and other small business organizations to hire a professional content manager or SEO. Internet marketing is becoming the most successful and cost effective strategy. Whatever you are investing on a professional will never become a waste. It will pay back for sure. Now start thinking about increasing your brand image by hiring a professional content manager or a search engine optimizer.