Are You Achieving a Win with Social Communication?

Branding isn't what you tell people. Branding is what people tell their friends about you.

Over the past few months, on behalf of InfoStream we have been interviewing members of the Urban Animal Industry to understand how Social Communication Programs are working. Perhaps not surprisingly, experiences haven't been uniformly positive and some have even abandoned or delayed further online involvement. Many of these conversations had similar expressions:

• Websites and interactive online ventures did not achieve the results expected
• Existing talent is already committed so asking them to take on 'social' is an imposition
• Re-posting content from other sites hasn't been effective in developing traffic
• Acquiring original content is expensive and hard to sustain
• Online conversations on media such as Facebook, when negative is hard to manage
• Supporting a real-time Twitter feed is exhausting
• Achieving presence in a noisy online environment is more difficult than expected

Last week a TEDxYYC presentation was published. Google expert, Chris Adamkowski talks candidly about 'Connecting in the Digital Age'. The video shows how online presence is more about 'Being invited In' than 'about cutting through the clutter' (rising above online noise). Watch this five minute video and see if it helps you understand how to 'invite someone in'. 

Branducation:

1. Is your organization connecting in the digital age?
2. What metrics did you create to measure performance?
3. In what ways have your expectations been met or not met?
4. Provide (in 200 words or less) a discussion of how you will achieve your branding goals online.