Those days we talk more and more about building ecosystems around brands. Especially online where we have to adapt our brand attitude, messages, interactions based on the medium we use. Think of your own example, you’re not the same on Twitter as you’re on Facebook as you’re on your personal blog. We all adapt those presences based on the social network, people interacting with it. So we build our own little media everywhere…
With the social networks being now part of the web journey for all our users, we can no longer ignore that our brands have to face it and integrate it.
How do we do that? It is for sure by understanding the various environments, their codes and audiences, the way they’re used and then by defining your brand positioning/voice for each of them.
Today’s web ecosystem means that you can no longer plan the web as an isolated website, but more that an “alive” presence. Our brands will have to be humanized to be able to interact and be credible in such environments.
For example, a web plan today should integrate various tactics:
- think on how you can export your site content, can people share it easily? not only via en email sent to friends but surely by building pieces that are made to be shared and use tools to facilitate a large spread (ie. Addthis).
- what’s your voice on Twitter? on Facebook? On your blog? On others’ blogs?
- what’s your voice on your mobile site?
- what’s your voice in your newsletters?
- what’s your presence on FlickR? YouTube?
All these can be planned and tailored to deliver better results based on clear marketing objectives because at the end they can save you tons of media spends and build an efficient awareness. Like Seth Godin said last week in a conference here in Montreal “Stop advertising and start socializing”.
I truly believe that the web is more than a media, another way of connecting with consumers, the web is a living environment. It has demonstrated in the past years that it can create “virals, and like in real life, if you want things to grow fast, you just need to set up the perfect conditions for it.
Have a nice week-end all :)
Post by Isabelle Quevilly, May 1st
Tags: ecosystem, facebook, flickr, sharing, social networks, twitter, VIRAL, youtube
