Branding or Connecting: How About Both?

Big brands have woken up to the power of online and are now buying billions of impressions to build and reinforce their brands. So let me propose adding another level of interaction to the mix. Instead of brand impressions, clicks, and actions, let's encourage and measure "brand connections." Until recently, about the only way to make a lasting online connection with a target audience was to have them join your e-mail list. E-mail is all well and good. But the explosion and adoption of social media provides marketers and media professionals with opportunities to make genuine and lasting connections with customers and target audiences.

We can now make lifelong connection because people's profiles and social accounts rarely change. We can embed our client's brands, content, and messages into the social environments where their target customers congregate. We can enable consumers to make our clients' brands part of their online identities and help them talk about our brands in a way that our clients want to be talked about. And here is the big part: our online media can add serious octane to this potential. Use online media to encourage brand interactions and connections in the social space and watch the lasting value of your impressions and campaigns go through the roof. Watch the benefit of your impressions turn to valuable lasting connections! Brand marketers should be super greedy about amassing brand connections.

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Labels: ClickZ, Facebook, Social Media