'Net Features : surveys

8 Ways to Create & Portray Brand Authenticity

Administrator — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:20:00 GMT

:: Eric Taylor, Qwaya ::

A positive brand reputation is something that will serve your business well, especially in the realm of social media. Not every brand is going to become a household name with millions of followers, but well-respected companies stand a better chance of influencing who buys from them (and why) and to what frequency.

Developing a brand’s reputation isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight, but there are many different and useful tips to help you improve your own company’s reputation as an authentic, high-value brand.

8 Ways to Create and Portray Brand Authenticity

1: Figure out Your Purpose and Vision and Match Values

Before you begin your social marketing quest to brand your business, you have to start by taking self-inventory. What are your values, and how do they relate to what you want your brand to stand for? Since a brand should be a personal thing, it should be built on your values – on the values of your business. Your brand should be unwavering in this regard, and unafraid to hold that line.

2: Build a Network Using Organic Elements

Paid advertising is OK and, in most cases, actually necessary if you’re using Facebook, but organic reach has its place too. This is especially true when you’re dealing with brand authenticity. Allowing a network of social sites to develop and share organically—at least in part—really pushes a cleaner, more authentic image.

Editor’s Note: Check out “7 Ways to Build Authority on Google+” and “4 Creative Ways to Use Tumblr for Business” as both of these social networks can affect both a brand’s reputation and search standings.

3: Cater to the Right Market

Authenticity in branding is sometimes as easy as catering to the right audience. For instance, if you’re catering to a broader market than you should be in an attempt to develop mass followers, then your advertising and branding methods are going to stand out as a little all over the place, subsequently giving you a fake, inorganic appearance.

Editor’s Note: Today’s brand marketing isn’t about reaching the largest audience, it’s about personalizing the experience for one person to build loyalty, as a result of brand authenticity and personal relevance. Watch your inboxes and mailboxes for our July issue, which covers this hot topic in depth.

4: Learn From Your Competition

Learning about your competitors is always a fantastic way to glean important information about your branding efforts. The more you understand about how others are appearing authentic, the easier it’s going to be for you to tweak things and to come across in a positive fashion. Sign up for your competition’s newsletters, Like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter and Pinterest.

5: Ask For Feedback Regularly

If you want to know how the public views your brand, then make an effort to ask. It could be as simple as releasing a status update that asks the question, “What do you think about us?” Asking for feedback is par for the course, but make sure to follow up with each responder, so they know their feedback is heard and valued.

Editor’s Note: Discover the top digital survey solutions.

6: Honesty and Transparency as a Policy

One of the premier ways to ensure your brand is seen as authentic is to be very open about what’s going on behind the scenes and also with what’s coming down the pike. Make it a policy to be open and transparent, not only in your social media branding (e.g. posts, responses, who your brand follows, etc.) but in all of your online marketing. You will benefit greatly from this.

7: Don’t Lower Your Standards

There are many times when you will be tempted to roll around on the floor with the heathens on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp, or even in your own comment sections. But if you care to notice, the biggest, most well-respected brands out there that engage with fans on social media only do so when they’re approached with positive intent. In other words, the flame-happy trolls don’t receive any feedback. And this is how it should be. Don’t lower your standards by playing around in the mud. Companies should attempt to take brand “distractors” offline by asking them to email someone within the business, so they can solve the issue at hand.

8: Incorporate an Actual Personality

No brand can remain all business, all the time and actually appear to be personable, transparent and authentic. What are you actually doing for the real people following your brand if you’re not allowing your brand to have its own personality? Your brand is a living, breathing thing that needs to have its own voice and personality. And while that voice should directly coincide with your values and your message, it’s still important to inject personality into it. This could include posting images of a company picnic or publishing notes on how a product launch really went down (e.g. long nights and lots of pizza).

Coming across as an authentic brand will open many doors that were seemingly unavailable. Believe it or not, brand authenticity and brand size have a direct correlation. In other words, those brands viewed as authentic are those brands that become household names and big players. Fortunately, social media and the Web, in general, can even the playing field. But before you go tinkering around with the recipe in order to boost your brand’s reach, look at it from an organic, authentic standpoint.

Author's bio:

Eric Taylor is a social media enthusiast, freelance writer and business developer for a Facebook ad campaign tool - Qwaya. The company also provides extensive information, tools and up-to-date news about social media marketing strategies latest trends, most specifically in Facebook.

Videos, Brochures and Surveys Added to 1&1 MyWebsite Package

Allison Howen — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:05:00 GMT

Popular Web hosting provider, 1&1, has launched a new set of inclusive features for its MyWebsite package, which aim to enhance the appearance and capability of small business websites.

The new tools enable users to add video, brochure and online survey functionality to their websites. For example, the new Video Maker tool allows users to create audio-visual material that can be published on sites for a more influential sales approach. With the tool, users can create a video from up to 20 images, and have the ability to add royalty-free music to the video to accompany the images.

Moreover, 1 &1 has launched a brochure app, which can be helpful in assisting consumers with their search for products or services. With this tool, users can combine images and text to create a 32 page PDF brochure that can be viewed, saved, printed or shared from the business’s website.

Lastly, 1 &1 is launching an online survey tool that will be available in April. This app allows users to create and embed surveys directly within their company’s homepage. The tool comes with a variety of survey templates that can be edited and customized. Additionally, a report of the survey results is provided online or emailed to the business owner in either PDF, Word, Powerpoint or Excel formats.

3 Takeaways from Hilton's Vacationitis Campaign

Amberly Dressler — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:30:00 GMT

Does your advertising campaign need some housekeeping? Take a page from Hilton Hotels & Resorts newest promotion, the Any Weekend, Anywhere Sale.

You may have heard Hilton’s radio spots promoting its campaign. Similar to prescription-drug commercials that detail long lists of side effects, Hilton humorously tells listeners not to operate heavy machinery on their weekend getaway unless it’s a golf cart because that would be awesome. They also joke if you are pregnant or plan on becoming pregnant than you really, really need a weekend getaway.

This same satire fueled the recent launch of Hilton Urgent Vacation Care Center, an interactive website featuring personal diagnoses of vacation needs and customized prescriptions urging people to take breaks, weekend getaways and longer vacations.

While Web workers can certainly use some time away from the computer screen, it’s Hilton’s innovate engagement tactics and consistent marketing collateral that should catch their attention. Here are three terrific takeaways from Hilton’s advertising campaign:

Surveys

Short and fun surveys are a surefire way to build customer engagement with your brand. Everyone loves to kill a few minutes answering questions about the last time they took a vacation, their commute and other easy-to-answer questions about themselves. Brainstorm surveys that would interest your customer base. Like Hilton, include a quick form to gather people’s names, email and physical addresses and newsletter preferences. Make sure to send these new email subscribers a custom email message to relate to how they signed up. You can use this list to target them further in the future as well.

Giveaways

Everyone loves getting something for free. As part of Hilton’s campaign promotion, it is offering a chance to win one of 15 weekend getaways between now and Feb. 28, 2013. While many ‘Net enterprises cannot afford to give away such a valuable prize, companies can get creative with prizes and how they run them. Use what you already have (e.g. extra inventory, a service you can offer for free for a month, etc.). Another way of offering a more valuable prize, is by teaming up with a complementary company - a digital gift basket, if you will.

Shareability

Speaking of teaming up, Hilton partnered with Onion Labs, the in-house creative team of The Onion, to develop humorous illustrations to run alongside each Vacationitis symptom including “Straight to Voicemailaria.” These memes can be shared on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Every digital part of your advertising campaign should offer built-in shareable features.

Heatmaps, Mouse Tracking and Recordings at SurveyGizmo

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:58:00 GMT

Online survey software solution SurveyGizmo and Clicktale, a provider of customer experience analytics solutions, have partnered to deliver an analytics toolset.

The integration, which relies on ClickTale’s analytics technology (and specifically its Form Analytics suite) , will include survey heatmaps, mouse tracking and respondent recordings. The partnership should prove fruitful for businesses as they struggle to create more engaging surveys, improve completion rates and capture better data. SurveyGizmo users will have a heap of useful data at their disposal including which questions promoted users to leave a survey and which caused problems for respondents.

“Optimizing the survey experience has always been a major component of both market and customer research. Survey fatigue has become a major concern among researchers, making optimization even more important now. This ClickTale integration gives our customers deep insights into the survey taking process and experience – allowing them to field more specific surveys to fewer customers, and avoid burnout. It’s very exciting,” says Christian Vanek, SurveyGizmo’s CEO.

Five New Apps for Web Pro's on Force.com

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:43:00 GMT

The interest in SalesForce.com's AppExchange never ceases to amaze me. New applications are added frequently, so if you're a SalesForce user and responsible for improving the user experience as well as the efficiency of your own business and marketing efforts, keeping up to date with new releases on Force.com is a smart move.

Below are five recently released (last 45 days or so) applications for Web professionals available to SalesForce.com users (these apps are mostly paid by the way) with a few alternatives thrown in for good measure:

ExactShip: This paid app helps to streamline operations for Internet retailers by managing all shipping from a single packing & shipping solution designed for high volume fulfillment. Supports all major US parcel carriers (UPS, FedEx, USPS & DHL) & more than 3000 LTL/TL freight carriers. Also see FedEx and UPS.

iContact: Email marketing with iContact for Salesforce allows you to create, send and track relevant and targeted email marketing without the need to learn a new application. This is a paid application bu there is no per-user fee. The app also provides results on messaging performance. See also the apps from Vertical Response, ExactTarget, Marketo and BlastWizard.

Bime: A BI application with some impressive visualization capabilities that mixes data from cloud and on-premise sources, allowing for the analysis of all data in one place. The app enables users to take data from SQL databases, Excel spreadsheets, and XML webservices and manipulate it to form predictive models. Also see GoodData Analytics and Sales Pipe Insight.

SalesForce for Google Adwords: Allows online marketers to track Google advertising campaigns and website lead generation activity. If you're looking to more deeply integrate and balance paid advertising insights with your CRM, this paid app (which is included with all SalesForce editions) is one to use. Search Marketers may also be interested in SEO for Salesforce and HubSpot Inbound Marketing Software.

Great Wave Surveys: A solid feedback management application to gather, analyze, and distribute customer feedback. The paid, fully native application enables users to receive real-time responses and utilize standard security permissions to control user access to feedback channel. Also see Timba, Survey Force, ClickTools and FormAssembly.