Clarifying Your Brand’s Online Objective

The secret of success in any endeavour is to know what success really means when one sees it. If we ask ten people what is the meaning of success, we are likely to get ten different answers. The tragedy of life aside from wasteful spending of personal potential is not to know what success means when you have it. This can be frustrating to a fulfilled life. Many people have joined the bandwagon in creating online presence without any concrete goal outside ‘wannabe’. I want to believe this is the reason why many people cry foul at the slightest hurdle. Majority of these people and brands are among the ones claiming there is ROI on the amount of time and other resources invested or wasted on quacks claiming to be online experts. The way to vent aggression is to claim that they are just enriching few online entrepreneurs.
My first question is: what is your goal? How did you measure your brand performance before reaching the conclusion that online activities are just a charade? When truth must be told, we must not be afraid of confronting falsehood. Online activity (brand management) like other enterprise has its own challenges and will be worth its onions if you first plan your movement before launching into the deep. Any uncalculated attempt may result in great catastrophe. Launching a game plan without a destination in view is a clear sign to anyone who has eyes that the journey will end nowhere. The essence of planning for online activities is premised on the fact that an average of a hundred thousand brands is daily launching from different parts of the universe. Without a solid plan, your brand’s efforts will look like a drop of water into the sea. How far can that go? What effect is that likely to have?
If your brand views videos as the rave and you rush into video uploads, you need to remember that statistics have shown that an average of three million videos are viewed daily by an internet savvy audience. However, for a video without objective, the target audience will not even view it once in months. Also, without a planned objective there is high tendency for you and your brand to be involved in an unhealthy comparison with the Joneses. Forgetting that creativity, consistency, sheer determination and time are important to successful online presence. When an individual or brand has a concrete objective for participating in online brand management/social media, it is easier to draw the parameters of measurement against which activities will be measured and this will prevent the brand from reaching a wrong conclusion about the success of its activities.
Technology is evolving in a complex way. A concrete objective will help any brand to focus on which technology, application and software to use. Each online software has a specific goal to serve. Using wrong tools will lead to confusion. For instance, if a surgeon chooses to use panel saw instead of a surgical blade, what result will that have on his patient? Let me first identify some worthwhile goals that a brand can target to achieve through participation in online activities/social media because I see abnormal use/under utilization of social networking sites by many brands claiming there is no ROI in it.
Brand awareness and recognition. At this level brand activities are geared toward creating the right perception and recognition. This was my initial goal when I began my voyage into the online realm especially when I launched www.yinkaolaito.com. At the end of the first year, it was easy to measure results based on this objective. Without this background knowledge, there is a possibility of my trying to compare my activities with the Joneses. Measuring my personal brand results with this objective after one year, I discovered my brand had gained over five international recognitions as an expert in my niche coupled with the fact that there was an increase in the level of my personal brand exposure to international audiences.
Another objective that can be set is to increase sales/traffic. Strategy development for this objective may look like the one above but the tactics cannot be same. Different efforts have to be made. Different tools will be used to reach the brand’s goal here. In addition to the above, a brand can still set marketing goals as part of its reasons for participation in online/social media. It requires the ‘Wisdom of Solomon’ not to market the traditional way. The online audience is not so kind or patient and can ‘sue’ the brand for intrusion to the court of ‘public conversation’.
Yet another good reason to participate in online activities is recruitment. Your platform can be used to send out the recruitment/procurement needs of your brand. In this case, the brand’s strategy will also be different. Social media/online participation can also be hinged on monitoring/promoting brand reputation. It is wisdom not to allow reputation damage online. We can also look at customer engagement, advocacy, issue updates, research and development. With clear objectives in mind, it is easy to monitor results/ROI. It will also make the brand to adequately prepare for proper funding, staffing of the department involved and will resolve every doubt about the effectiveness of social media/online activities.
From the above, it is clear that individual brands are the architects of their own fortunes or woes in the ‘online game.’ Each online/social media platform has its own peculiar capacities and can function to maximum capacity only when fully engaged. Interestingly, like manufactured products that come with manuals, experience shows that man does not always take time to get accustomed to manuals even though these clearly state how to get best value from the product. Without knowledge, many are abusing some platforms by their activities and when they are caught or controlled, they pile blames on the platform. Even if the platform operators do not invoke sanctions, the brand’s friends, fans and followers may not forgive.
Some brands are not consistent with relationship building or supplying great content on platforms. They just open an account and let it be. Do they expect to get the same results with other brands that are going extra miles in this regard?
My conclusion: Facebook, Twitter, Xing, Plaxo, Linkedin etc could pass for neither friend nor foe. Individual brands can turn the swing and make of them what it wants. Social/online media are no magicians. No promises of quick-fix. No pain, no gain. It is a case of decisions determining destiny. Individual brands should be held liable for failure, not the platforms. Social media, like money, is neither amoral nor moral; it takes the colour of its owner.
That your brand needs immediate results does not mean the goal posts will be shifted for you. You must be willing to pay the price to wear the golden crown. If your brand needs help, ask those who know.
While some say they will never enrich the Mark Zuckerbags and Co. of this world, I say I will rather enrich a man who gives my brand wings to fly around the world while sitting with my laptop and investing fractional hours of my day into it. So Mark and Co., I say ‘carry go.’ Or what will you say?
Anyway given the above, I will like to invite you to the forthcoming two day national conference on social media and global brand positioning/success. With all modesty, I say this is the first of its kind in Nigeria and West Africa. This will hold in Lagos, Nigeria, between February 25-26, 2010. See you there!

Yinka Olaito is a passionate brand, PR and social media expert. He works for Michael Sage Consulting and shares his thoughts at www.yinkaolaito.com. He can be reached on yinka@yinkaolaito.co, Tel: 234 07029778785.