We’ve talked about why you should build your brand, about creating content, and some of the different platforms you can use to promote your brand. However, the majority of your effort online will be about building a community around your brand. Creating content may seem difficult if you’ve?never done it before, but if you’ve picked your topic successfully, it’s the easiest part of the entire venture. The most difficult aspect of building your brand online is creating an active community. In his seventh and eighth chapters, respectively titled Keep it real… Very real and Create community: Digging your internet trench, Vaynerchuk discusses how to go about building your online community.
In my opinion, alot of marketing I see is very phoney. I think that people today are more media savvy than ever before, and they are also aware of how fake marketing efforts by major brands has become. We live in an age where prepared PR statements are a way of life (see my blog for a list of some of my favorites). I’m not fooled by them, and I don’t think anyone else is either. People value authenticity. It’s why?we go online and seek out consumer opinions. By building a community around your brand (personal and as a business), you won’t have to sound your own horn, your community will do that for you.
So how can you build this magical community? Through alot of hard work and time. The basic idea is that you should create your content and distribute it (see previous post for details), then start looking at and commenting on other people’s content. You should make the most of every interaction, stay on topic, and be yourself. Resist the urge to post things for the sake of posting them, and instead only post when you have something of value to share. You should follow people on Twitter, or sign up for some pages on Facebook. Basically, you need to get involved. You can’t just post content and hope that people show up.
When people visit your site, they will be hooked on your outstanding content (you do have outstanding content right?). You also need to make the most out of those call to action buttons (subscribe, follow-me, share, etc).
Next we will discuss the best marketing strategy ever, and you won’t want to miss it.
Notable quotes from these chapters:
- Being authentic and being perceived as such by your audience relies on your ability to ensure that every decision you make when it comes to your business is rooted in being true to yourself.
- Creating community is about starting conversations.
