CREATIVE THINKING
WHEN SOCIAL MEDIA & BRANDS CLASH
David Mclean of Geometry PR discusses the challenges of raising the profile of your brand in the social media age.
While the digital revolution of the last few decades has provided wonderous new ways to reach out to markets, it also consistently throws up new challenges, many of which cannot be predicted. In some cases, these challenges are considerable and are a serious speedbump to effective business development.
Social media has been perhaps one of the most problematic areas. It’ s not the actual process of reaching out to audiences via Twitter, LinkedIn etc that’ s the problem, rather, it’ s the constraints and rules of these platforms that are the issues, and the ways in which they are not able to easily accommodate often essential processes such as rebranding.
Take LinkedIn as an example. As the most businessorientated social media platform, LinkedIn is proving increasingly important for many businesses as the best social media platform to reach the high-value audience that matters. However, issues arise if you need to rebrand, or if you expand into new markets.
If you are a business that has spent years building up a robust and attentive LinkedIn following, yet you need to change your branding to reflect a fundamental change in your business structure( for example branching into a new market), you will find it very hard to apply those changes to LinkedIn, which only allows minor branding changes to business pages. What this means in practice is that you either have to stick with your old branding, which is counter-productive, or you will need to go through the tortuous process of trying to get your existing following to migrate to a new business page while you attract new followers.
Of course, this might not be an issue for the majority of businesses that do not feel the need to rebrand, or which are unlikely to branch into new markets. In those cases, social media is a much simpler animal to control; you simply build and maintain your following.
Yet the fundamental issue remains that social media has changed the way we need to view corporate branding.
Prior to the internet age and particularly the social media age( Web 2.0), it wasn’ t so much of an issue if your name or branding was uncomfortably close to another business on a different continent. But the online world is truly global, so these issues become serious when you are trying to build online profile or fight for search engine visibility.
For established businesses, these are inconvenient issues that all-too-often need to be addressed. However, for new businesses, or those planning on starting a business, it cannot be overstated how important these issues are
when you start to think about naming and branding your business. They need to be your starting point if you are to avoid future problems as your business grows and evolves.
You need to take the emotion and the‘ gut instinct’ out of the process, and take a far more scientific approach to developing your name and your brand. You need to think about a brand that not only allows for easy expansion in respect to the online world, but one that does not throw up challenges or conflicts that impede your ability to build audiences and visibility
For more info: www. geometrypr. co. uk
@ geometrypr
CREATING REELS FOR ROYALTY
The team behind Bath video production agency Jooka are proud to be providing local businesses with production services fit for royalty.
Based at Glove Factory Studios, Jooka has been collaborating with design and brand consultancy Rednine to produce video content for His Royal Highness the Duke of York’ s Pitch @ Palace enterprise. An initiative designed to give entrepreneurs the chance to get their tech business idea in front of a global audience of influencers.
James Stapleton of Jooka said,“ It is a huge privilege to be filming at venues such as Buckingham Palace and St James’ s Palace, and to rub shoulders with today’ s business elite at these events.”
Increasing demand from companies using video content for marketing on social media and YouTube has seen Jooka open a second office in Bristol this year. Just two years after the company was set up in 2015. They were also recently selected as a finalist in the Creative Bath Awards.
Jooka’ s Matt Paish said,“ For a young company we’ re really proud of how far we’ ve come in such a short amount of time and we’ re working on some really interesting local projects too.
“ Whether the aim is brand engagement, product exposure, explaining how a service works or simply a need for regular rich content, our team can advise you on what will work best. Our goal is to produce films that drive an emotional connection between your brand and its audience.
“ Short form video content in particular is really popular at the moment as it’ s snappy, engaging and has proven to be really effective for companies using social media.”
Jooka’ s in-house services include filming, animation, motion graphics, aerial filming, stop motion and time-lapse.
For more info: www. wearejooka. co. uk
@ wearejooka
THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2017 23