SUCCESS WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
HOW SOCIAL ARE YOUR BRANDS?
Social media platforms have grown explosively over the past few years, transforming our expectations of how organisations connect with their customers, build product awareness and cement brand loyalty. Kimberly Wahl looks at the best approaches to take.
New social media marketing experts arrive on the scene every day—each with their own ideas of how companies can reap the benefits of social media with a well-placed blog, tweet, or video post. If it hasn’t happened yet, the chances are good that in the coming months someone at your organisation will ask you, “What are we doing with social media?”.
Te trend shows no signs of abating, either. Social media investment continues to rise across industries, with a recent survey published by the research firm Advertiser Perceptions showing that two-thirds of companies sampled planned to increase their social media ad-spending in 2012, with a majority projecting an increase of at least 5 percent above last year. Enthusiasm for the medium is justified: with little in the way of up-front expense, a robust social media presence can pay enormous dividends. Given the networking model at the heart of social media, consumers are in effect doing your work for you, and the return per effort can be extraordinary.
Success with social media requires more than enthusiasm, though, and many companies continue to overlook one of its most obvious necessities, namely the availability of brand- and trademark- specific social media user names—the so-called ‘vanity URLs’ that are identifiably yours. Not only
www.worldipreview.com
do these names allow consumers to reach your brands through direct navigation, they provide critical visibility and offer a central point around which to orchestrate your marketing efforts.
Regrettably, not everyone realises this. Otherwise why are sophisticated international companies still spending thousands, and in some cases millions, on product development, trademark applications and brand launches without taking the time to find out whether their marks are available on the most popular social media sites? Oſten they’re not, being owned instead by a third party with no particular goal in mind, or a ‘squatter’ looking to part with a name for a tidy sum.
Regardless of to whom they are registered, the impact of these ‘lost’ URLs can be devastating: wasted trademark filings, thwarted marketing efforts, and thousands spent on domain name recovery. Vanity URLs may seem like a small part of a social media plan, but the legal and marketing ramifications of not having them to support your brands are significant, and organisations that fail to recognise their value well in advance do so at their own risk.
Having a plan
Stewardship of a company’s brands and trademarks has long rested with the corporate legal team and
Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 1, Issue 2 49
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