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#1: Your Competitor Brand Files

I once knew a marketer who took screenshots of his top 10 competitor blogs at the beginning of every year. At the end of each year, he would break out the social media rebranding files and review them. Then – he would outdo them.

#2: Core Message Updates

If your business has drifted into new markets or changed direction, your branding could be off. Social media rebranding is about expressing your core message. If yours isn’t on point, it’s time for a design shift.

#3: Social Media Rebranding Assets

At the end of every year, review your online assets. Assets can include URL’s, account names, domain ownership, images, videos and total worth. If you’re missing some – get them. For example – no Pinterest account? Secure yours right now.

#4: Twitter Page Refresh

Social media rebranding applies to your Twitter page as well – so review it. Then compare it with other pages in your niche. Any trends, useful design tricks or graphics that you like? At the end of this year, your brand needs a shiny new Twitter background.

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#5: Facebook Page Refresh

Facebook pages should be refreshed every 3 months, so if you haven’t done any social media rebranding there for a while, do it. A new profile pic and cover page can go a long way for your brand. It says – ‘we’re always moving forward.’

#6: Youtube Video Social Media Rebranding

Youtube is changing, so gear up for the change by freshening up your Youtube brand page. Count how many views you’ve received and chart out goals for January. Then start fresh with a funky new look and feel that will attract attention and more subscribers.

#7: LinkedIn Copy Refresh

LinkedIn isn’t about images, it’s about copy. Redo yours! Research better keywords and create new, interesting and punchy copy for your profile. Social media rebranding is more than design, it’s about strategy as well.

#8: Inexpensive Graphics Packages

If you’re trying to keep costs low, great news! November-December is a great time to cash-in on social media rebranding specials from tech and design companies. Template sites offer a lot of great image packages that you can use to revamp your look.

Courtesy of smashingmagazine.com

#9: Newsletter Recharge

Your newsletter is the one social media rebranding tool that you can’t skimp on this year. Find new templates to use or get one designed for your company – your subscribers will love the way you’re always looking to add value to their experience.

#10: Website Rebrand

Websites can be pricey to rebrand every year, so look at updating it instead. Social media rebranding includes your website and blog! Add new plugins, update your social media plugins, add an app or just redo your header.

Social media rebranding lets your customers know that you’re always on the cusp of the latest design and tech trends. That’s good for business!

Did you like this blog post on social media rebranding? Then please share it with your friends!

Which platform do you think is the most important to rebrand?

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#1: Real Estate Sales

At number 1, is the real estate industry. People love connecting and sharing text, images and videos about property. Plus, the realtors have learned to use mobile social technology, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to increase sales – even for big ticket items like multi-million dollar homes

#2: Careers Niche

Job hunting, head hunting, executive search and career advice couldn’t be a bigger social niche than it is right now. If you’re in careers, you’re in social.

#3: Blogging For Money

In at 3 is blogging for money – loads of people are teaching individuals and companies how to achieve excellent results by running a business blog.

#4: Universities

Education loves social media – to the point where students are even connected to a mobile social network to receive direct updates from the Dean.

#5: PC Hardware

Direct sales for PC and tech equipment abounds, not only on private sites, but on places like Ebay, Amazon and Craigslist – where it’s all built around social communities.

#6: Technology Field

With gadgets, innovations, technology and inventions on the rise, the tech field is very integrated with all things social media. You’ll find that tech newsletters have the best social integration of all, with an entire community infused into monthly updates.

#7: Mobile Marketing

While mobile marketing is technically a form of social media, there’s no doubting that social and mobile belong together. It’s the hottest niche right now, by far.

#8: Social Media

Strange as it sounds, social media itself is a massive niche, with millions of people claiming to be ‘experts’ on the subject. I guess as a viral niche, you don’t get any better! If you select this niche though, make sure you start from the ground up.

#9: Gaming Niche

App games, PC games or console games – the world is obsessed with gaming. That’s why it works so well with social media. Gamers want to be in-the-know all the time.

#10: The Humor Racket

Coming in last is a vague niche that still dominates the internet – humor! With memes and joke sites on the rise, social is taking this niche to a whole new level. One meme has so much viral potential that millions of people could view it after just a few hours.

These 10 niches are the fields that are making the most of social media, to modernize their processes and make more money. If you’ve been searching for a new niche that would benefit from your social media skills – pick one of these!

Heard of any other niches that should be part of this list? Tell me what it is and why it’s leading the way with social media, here.

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#1: Your Social Media Goals

The first thing you need to do is define your social media goals, and then prioritize the ones that matter most. There are a lot of reasons why businesses use social media. Your goals could be to source new clients, to hear what your clients are talking about, to educate and share information with them, for market research, to drive traffic or to build a fan base online.

Any one of these can be your main focus. Most businesses begin with – build a community. You can’t begin marketing, listening, interacting or selling without one. Write in a word document exactly what your business is trying to achieve with social media. Make it your social mission statement.

#2: Investigate Best Practices and Use Them

Explore each platform, learn as much as you can – and then put together a ‘best practices’ document that outlines the do’s and don’ts for your employees. Include general information, and the info that’s more specific to your niche. If you want your brand perceived in a certain way – make sure to infuse your document with rules about tone, language, content, graphics and multimedia.

#3: Social Media is Just The Beginning

Part of your social media campaign is going to include working with outside social media applications or management programs. You’ll need to include a ‘best practices’ for these sites too. Social monitoring and analytics programs can be misused, so find out how, to nip any abuse in the bud before it happens. Keep your brand identity firmly in mind when you create this document.

#4: Feedback From Experts

You’re not a social media expert, and let’s be honest – you’re busy. In this case you can either hire an expert to help you draft your brand management guidelines, or get in touch with a community that will help you for free. LinkedIn is a great place to get free advice from people that understand branding and social media. Use them! It can only help you produce a better set of guidelines.

Finally, keep your document a work-in-progress. Ask the people that are working with your social media to make notes as they go along. Things will crop up all the time that you’ll want to include in your policy document.

Sometimes it will be something small, like the rules regarding comment moderation on your blog – and sometimes it will be something huge that you learn through practice. They all contribute, and eventually you’ll end up with a great set of brand management guidelines for use on your social media sites.

What is your biggest brand no-no on social media sites? Can you think of one? Let’s discuss it below!

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It’s also an excellent chance to update their business brand – specifically for use on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and FourSqaure. Having a brand these days is not good enough – not when you’re about to launch it into cyberia. It has to be memorable, and perhaps most importantly, incredibly unique.

This doesn’t include the big brands that are already famous, we’re talking about small business brands – that easily get lost in the cold, hard online world. So here’s how to reinvent your brand with social media, to make it pop off the page.

#1: Consistency Is Key

Look at your business brand with critical eyes. Does it communicate who you are, or what you do? If not, does it at least have some punch to it? Using your brand on social media is going to get you a lot of extra attention. If you’re not happy with your ‘bland brand’ then the time to upgrade it is now. There’s no point creating a whole new brand for your social media sites, no one will recognize you in the real world.

Keep your brand consistent throughout your online and offline marketing pursuits. You can use variations on different platforms, but make sure that your business colors are always present. People need to know that it’s your company. The only way to do this is to maintain a consistent identity on all new online platforms.

#2: Beware of The Little Technical Bits

Before throwing hundreds, even thousands of dollars at your new brand – remember that you will need variations for different platforms. Twitter for example requires a tiny little avatar – and your brand needs to be powerful even in this format. This might require you to just use your initials, or some sort of icon you have devised for these circumstances.

#3: Becoming a Knowledge Source

Your business brand will know be competing with many other brands in the open market. You need to become a knowledge source for people or clients, interested in your field. This means preparing to become a mass content producer. Having a well-branded Facebook page means nothing if the content isn’t always fresh and plentiful there. Content is the backbone of redefining your brand with social media.

#4: Investigate Social Multi-Media

Youtube is almost the world’s biggest search engine, so for extra exposure, your business brand will have to cross into video, slideshare presentations, podcasts – other forms of media that aren’t content–based. This might require some investment in having your logo turned into flash, or animated in some way. People on social media love interaction, and this will definitely help transform your business into an online powerhouse.

Social media can take a simple brand and make it world-renowned. All you need is some time on design, content and multi-media. Then, you need a fresh angle. If you get this right – nothing can stop you becoming a huge brand online!

What part of your social media branding did you find difficult? Let us know!

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In fact, it acts as a virtual extension of your business card. So far, very few people use it other than digital marketing enthusiasts, designers and other web based professionals. But this will change, as About.Me becomes a tool that will support and improve your business reputation. Here’s how.

1. Your Personal Online Business Card

People are discovering that About.Me has applications beyond the virtual realm. They are adding it to their real-world business cards to enhance their personal profiles, to their email signatures and websites.

Imagine if you had one central place where your clients could visit, to find out more about you. Not your business, not your team – you. It gives you a chance to explain who you are, and what you’re all about in a short and sweet manner. The benefit? People can find out who you are in one click, instead of wading through a sea of additional social media pages.

2. Collecting Your Pages in One Location

Now that most social media is connected, it may be simple enough to jump from one to the next – but there’s something pure about starting from an About.Me profile. Because you are able to add nearly all of the additional social media pages you like below your description, it acts as a central base for all of the various online versions of yourself.

Many people have two kinds of business cards – one for their position in a business, and a personal one for networking. About.Me really unites these separate roles by literally creating a complete online profile for you. All it takes is one high res image, a clean write up and all your social media buttons below that. The result? Harmony – you have to love it.

3. Another Blanket Tool For SEO

The great thing about this site is that no maintenance is required. You don’t have to post updates, or retweet comments, there are no group discussions to join and you won’t get into trouble if you don’t recommend pages to view when you’re on it. It literally takes 5 minutes to set up, and its there forever. Your own little piece of harmony among the usual social media chaos.

The benefit is obviously that it will help you improve your rankings on Google, without you having to work at it everyday. When people search your name and want a quick ‘who are they’ there it is, waiting for them. Your digital, interactive business card – waiting to lead them to all of your other social media profiles.

Our thoughts on About.Me are simple. The site brings you one step closer to having a complete social media profile online. Whatever you’re doing right now, stop doing it. Go get yourself an About.Me profile. It’ll help you find the right balance between business content, and personal promotion.

Do you have an About.Me profile? What do you think of this site? Let us know, below!

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In today’s discussion we’re going to get to the bottom of the social media branding problem. By the end of this post, you should know whether or not to create an umbrella brand, or segregate your individual brands by creating separate social identities for them.

Re-examining The Purpose of Social Media

When you’re going to explore a problem like multiple branding on social media, you need to bring it all back to the basics. What is social media about, and why as a business, is it going to benefit you? Here are some great reasons why businesses use social media.

• To modernize themselves online
• To extend their influence
• To ensure that their business remains relevant
• To secure brand profiles on the internet
• To manage the flow of information about their business
• The improve their business via valuable feedback and monitoring systems
• To nurture relationships and encourage community growth

At the heart of it all, social media is about two way communication, engagement and interaction. Businesses want to get to know as many interested potential clients as possible, so that these people will eventually choose to buy from them. In other words, a relationship needs to be formed with a community or target demographic, in order for brand loyalty to occur. The old ‘give and take’ system.

Why Splitting Brand Identity is a Bad Idea

Social media between businesses and consumers is often honest and transparent. Real people, talking to real people. The problem comes in when one ‘person’ (a single business) has multiple brand identities online.

Yes, it’s important to reach the right target market, which is why many businesses consider setting up multiple accounts in the first place. But having the same person communicate between brands can confuse and irritate people.

The Exception To The Rule

The exception to the rule is when a large company produces very distinct, popular brands and has the budget to employ many people to run their social media strategies. For small and medium sized businesses, its best to keep all of your products or services under one social media brand identity.

If a particular product of yours takes off and becomes huge, the demand for a separate following will become apparent. And even then, there will be a fluid and easily identifiable brand connection between the ‘main brand accounts’ and the ‘sub brand accounts.’

It all begins with defining your online identity as a complete business first, and measuring the needs of your communities as they develop. That way, your various markets can still connect with your core brand across social media pages.

If you’re ever in doubt, ask your community! If you don’t have much of a following yet, the safe bet is to keep it simple with one account for each platform.

What do you think about multiple social media accounts for individual brands? We’d love to hear your views!

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Certain tones will help to elevate you and establish you as a leader in your field, while others could be in bad taste and will tarnish your online reputation. Knowing which to use and which to lose, is a process every business has to go through before sending out their streams of conversation on every social media platform.

Recognize The Tone of Your Chosen Industry

Ever wonder why accountants aren’t very funny, and why marketers speak in a salesy way? They each abide by a specific tone that helps others identify who they are and what they do online.

The tone of a 140 character micro blog for example, can be funny, witty, sarcastic, serious, salesy or straight to the point – depending on your intention and chosen field.

While you might want to distinguish yourself from other accountants in your field by being funny – remember that your clients aren’t looking for a joker, they’re looking for someone serious, analytical and exceptional with numbers. Jokes might hurt your future relationships before they have a chance to blossom online.

It’s best to stick to your industry standard – creative career choices can be creative – the more straight-laced career choices need to be careful of being too ‘out-there’ in their social media strategies.

Keep These Points in Mind:

• How do you want your clients to perceive you?
• Will you be able to maintain this tone indefinitely?
• Do you want to spice up your tone online to get more follows?
• The internet is your cyber-resume – are you proud if it?
• Is your tone credible and believable?
• Would it be better to be innovative instead of following the crowd?

Uniform Goals You’ll Want to Consider

All businesses on the internet want to achieve a certain level of recognition for what they do and how they serve their clients. Develop your online reputation with market leadership as your end goal. In order to achieve this, you’ll need to carefully weigh up your choices when deciding what your online image will be.

What will your businesses voice sound like? What images will you allow, and not allow on your pages? What links and content are allowed? These are considerations you need to take into account before you begin.

The last thing you want is for a raunchy image to appear on one of your daily blogs – and oops! There goes all that credibility you’ve been building for the past 6 months.

Always be professional, even if you’re relaxed and friendly and stay positive when writing. Ask yourself the hard questions – like how important is it to separate your personal and professional persona online? Mean what you say and be genuine about it, and people will take you seriously no matter what you decide to use to further your online business reputation.

Can you sum up your online tone in one word? List it, along with your business name below!

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By doing this, and by stimulating positive feedback, your likeability as a business increases. This means that you begin to have a presence in social media, and your reputation evolves as a result of that.

But whether it evolves into something positive, or into something negative – comes down to a few fundamental features in the end. To truly create a likable presence on your social media pages, you need to concentrate on a few of these key points.

A Recognizable Brand Means Brand Consistency

For people to quickly understand that your social media pages are affiliated with your business page or blog – they need to all share a common brand identity.

This doesn’t mean that they all have to be the same, it just means that when you get a designer to mock up your Facebook, Twitter or Youtube pages, people should be able to recognize that your brands are one in the same. And yes, you should get a designer to design each of your pages as part of your social media identity.

Whatever You Do, Do It Properly and Completely

There’s nothing more irritating than arriving on a Facebook business page, and it’s only half complete. Sometimes this means that you’ve decided to list your business with 8 million social media sites (a common mistake) or, even worse – you’ve started and just haven’t found the time to finish your profile.

Social media makes your business highly visible on the internet, which means that every rushed profile, quick thoughtless post or funny (though wildly inappropriate) image is viewed by potential customers. Oops! Every single little thing you add to your business social media pages makes an impression. Make sure it’s always a positive one!

Use Appropriate Images of Yourself

People that begin to use social media for business, sometimes don’t realize that their peers in business will see the photos that they post of themselves. Don’t grab any old holiday pic of yourself and slap it down as your Twitter image. Think of the image you would like to project for yourself and for your business.

An accountant for example, would not get more work from an image of himself tipsy and sitting at a pub with his friends. Choose a professional image of yourself, and try to keep it the same throughout all of your pages so that people can identify you.

When you begin the social media journey – it’s up to you to ensure that each action has a purpose, and that purpose is to expand your community and make money. If it doesn’t contribute to either of these goals, then it doesn’t belong on your social media pages. Keep it professional, light-hearted and most of all – clean. Let your unique social media personality develop, as long as it’s in line with your business goals!

What three key points did you work around when creating your unique social media image? Trustworthy, kind, kick-ass? Give us your ideal traits below!

Courtesy of wynnsolutions.com

By doing this, and by stimulating positive feedback, your likeability as a business increases. This means that you begin to have a presence in social media, and your reputation evolves as a result of that.

But whether it evolves into something positive, or into something negative – comes down to a few fundamental features in the end. To truly create a likable presence on your social media pages, you need to concentrate on a few of these key points.

A Recognizable Brand Means Brand Consistency

For people to quickly understand that your social media pages are affiliated with your business page or blog – they need to all share a common brand identity.

This doesn’t mean that they all have to be the same, it just means that when you get a designer to mock up your Facebook, Twitter or Youtube pages, people should be able to recognize that your brands are one in the same. And yes, you should get a designer to design each of your pages as part of your social media identity.

Whatever You Do, Do It Properly and Completely

There’s nothing more irritating than arriving on a Facebook business page, and it’s only half complete. Sometimes this means that you’ve decided to list your business with 8 million social media sites (a common mistake) or, even worse – you’ve started and just haven’t found the time to finish your profile.

Social media makes your business highly visible on the internet, which means that every rushed profile, quick thoughtless post or funny (though wildly inappropriate) image is viewed by potential customers. Oops! Every single little thing you add to your business social media pages makes an impression. Make sure it’s always a positive one!

Use Appropriate Images of Yourself

People that begin to use social media for business, sometimes don’t realize that their peers in business will see the photos that they post of themselves. Don’t grab any old holiday pic of yourself and slap it down as your Twitter image. Think of the image you would like to project for yourself and for your business.

An accountant for example, would not get more work from an image of himself tipsy and sitting at a pub with his friends. Choose a professional image of yourself, and try to keep it the same throughout all of your pages so that people can identify you.

When you begin the social media journey – it’s up to you to ensure that each action has a purpose, and that purpose is to expand your community and make money. If it doesn’t contribute to either of these goals, then it doesn’t belong on your social media pages. Keep it professional, light-hearted and most of all – clean. Let your unique social media personality develop, as long as it’s in line with your business goals!

What three key points did you work around when creating your unique social media image? Trustworthy, kind, kick-ass? Give us your ideal traits below!

Courtesy of annemariecross.com

Some of these businesses are still in the garage of people’s houses! But that doesn’t matter anymore. The only thing that matters these days is perception through interaction.

Perception Through Interaction

Now that social media has paved the way for global exposure, anyone can take their business from nothing to something in a year. It all begins with the control of perception. A small business in Texas, doesn’t mean anything to anybody – nobody knows about it, it might as well not exist. They have their small handful of clients and their business remains small for years.

That same business, that discovers social media, has an entirely different future. They learn to use social media to help dominate specific keyword combinations, and as a result they become the most popular, well known business in their niche, in Texas. All it takes is constant and unyielding interaction.

If you can control the way the world sees your business ‘cool, progressive, smart, on-the-ball’ you can attract your ideal client from cyberspace. Social media if anything, is a way to spread your brand all over the internet. The more people see your brand, the more willing they will be to buy from you. It’s the familiarity concept that has always worked so well.

How Do You Use Social Media To Build Your Brand?

Put up a website. Register with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and start a blog. Then expand your social media range to include social bookmarking, video marketing, image sharing platforms, social news sites, social search sites, question and answer sites and podcast communities.

Blanket your brand all over the internet using social media. Then (and this is where most people get it wrong) perfect your interaction on each platform.

It’s only via complete control of the interaction you have on each platform, that you can control the perception the world has of you. On the internet, you’ll find a million and one ways to excel on a specific platform.

Do this for long enough, and people will start to take notice. Your community will grow. People will decide that you’re the niche authority they’ve been waiting for. Even if it’s in a small localized community.

Build your reputation and your brand power will grow. Social media can do all of this for you, but you have to commit to doing it the right way. Working with social media is almost like filming yourself saying something and then playing it on the seven o’ clock news. People are going to see it. Your messages will be heard.

So make sure that what you’re saying is carefully planned out. The number one way to build your brand power these days is – social media. Start now!

How do you build your brand power online?
Tell us now!