Social media is a great way to help promote a brand because of convenience and connection. Social networks are unlike other marketing platforms because they offer brands an easy access to target audiences, and the ability to maintain online relationships. An online brand profile allows a company to introduce its brand identity, and make the brand more present in consumers’ everyday lives.

The biggest platforms that will help bring the most traffic to a brand are Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. Facebook offers a limitless amount of space to promote a brand, with room for wall conversations, updates, photos, video, pictures, interests, and more. Though Twitter and Linkedin are a bit more limiting in what you can share with your audience, they are equally as powerful as Facebook for engaging interaction and forming an online identity.

Consistent updates on Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin will help flesh out your brand’s profile. Followers can learn about news updates, comment on posts, and offer other insights that may help your brand be the best it can be. The unique quality about social networks is that they build a community and thus a loyalty around your brand, which is valuable for staying relevant and attractive in any industry.

One of the most valuable things social media has to offer a brand is the ability to associate with other brand names online. Partnerships can increase visibility to a wider audience, and leverage a brand into new markets. Alternatively, if a brand targets a specific market or a certain audience, there are niche social media sites to explore. For example, if your brand is a diaper company, it would be advantageous to follow or even start a mommy blog, to get feedback on what mom’s think about your products.

In the past, brands have just been names and logos, but now they trigger online conversations, bringing more life and interaction to a brand’s identity. Not only can you see what consumers say about your brand, but also what they say about competitors. Following a competitor’s profile page can help a brand to monitor the direction of its competitor, and stay up-to-date in the market.

In a brand-centric world, social media can really help a brand distinguish itself and maintain a fresh image. The social media-scape is still new, allowing room to innovate the ways in which it’s being used. We should be seeing some interesting social media initiatives from brands in the near future!

Contributed by: Emily Hassell

The media world has yet to stop buzzing about Google’s intriguing new social network, named the Google+ project. It only seems right to follow up on our last post with recent news about some of Google’s most valuable website possessions — and how Google+ plays into the equation.

Mashable.com announced this week that Google has plans to retire its Blogger and Picasa brands in order to rename them as Google products. The popular blogging and photo-sharing websites, respectively, are being rebranded under Google’s initiative to integrate all of its brands for the launch of Google+.

Blogger will be renamed “Google Blogs,” and Picasa will instead become “Google Photos.” The changes will be implemented as soon as mid to late August, which many believe is when Google+ will be released for public use.

These initiatives are part of a slowly evolving rebranding process on Google’s part that has been in effect since at least 2008, when Google renamed the newly acquired JotSpot as Google Sites. This time, however, the newly rebranded sites will be implemented as features of Google+, although the details of exactly how aren’t clear yet.

Google’s rebranding endeavor certainly has the potential for greater brand recognition and prestige. If you visit the current Blogger site, one of the top ten most visited sites in the world, it’s not very clear that it’s owned by Google (Picasa is a little more obvious, with the word “google” in its domain name). Rebranding each site under the Google umbrella not only eliminates any doubt about the site’s brand, but also strengthens Google’s image of versatility in the online world.

Of course, the payoff may not be worth the integration in the long run. Users may not utilize the new brands through Google+ at all, and Blogger and Picasa loyalists might be upset enough with the obvious commercialization of their favorite sites to choose different blogging or photo-sharing options. Additionally, although consistency is important for the Google brand (Google Maps, Google Images, Google News, etc.), it could erase the unique, image-conjuring identities formerly held by names like Blogger and Picasa.

Whatever the outcome, it will be interesting to see how the shelf lives of these popular sites fare when they are rebranded with the Google name. Do you think the initiative is a clever strategy or a step in the wrong direction?

Contributed by Allison Meeks

Google is a big part of many people’s daily Internet routines. They check their e-mails on Gmail, find directions on Google Maps, and use its namesake search engine multiple times a day.

But there is one digital arena that Google has failed to succeed in, and that is social networking. After Google’s 2010 flop with Google Buzz, it is still Facebook that dominates the scene. The social networking giant touts around 750 million active users, and is an Internet staple for many. These successes are due to Facebook’s strong brand, which conveys social connectivity that is easily accessible by anyone.

Last Tuesday Google announced its new try at social networking — the Google+ Project. The network is very similar to Facebook — users can share status updates, photos, videos and links with their friends. However, one of Google+’s most unique features is their “circles,” where users can place their friends in categories (“friends,” “family,” etc.) and decide which information they want to share with each group.

This venture shows that Google wants a social networking brand position that is distinct from Facebook. Google wants to be associated with something that more closely imitates the connections you have with peers in the real world, where there is secure and personal control over who gets to know what information.

“In real life, we have walls and windows and I can speak to you knowing who’s in the room, but in the online world… you share with the whole world,” Google product management Vice President Bradley Horowitz told the New York Times. “We have a different model.”

A problem with Google’s brand strategy, however, is the network’s striking similarity to Facebook, in content and in layout. Some users won’t want to add a new social network to their repertoire if it has the same look and feel of what they’re already using. Google, as a leading web innovator, could have brought more to the plate here.

Regardless, the launch of Google+ shows the world that Google wants to continue positioning itself as a multifaceted and technologically relevant brand. The corporation has been largely successful thus far in its developments from a simple search engine into a go-to resource for news, images, and even as the owner of Youtube. Now it’s looking for a way to maintain its image of simplified versatility, and social networking is the next frontier.

Do you think Google+ will chip away at Facebook’s hold on the social networking market?

Contributed by Allison Meeks

Facebook recently introduced a subtle change and for once it won’t change the appearance of your news feed. Facebook introduced a new feature that allows users to identify people or objects that have their own Facebook Pages.

Previously, users could only tag their friends. Now users can tag celebrities or public figures they meet or tag the brands and products they use. For example, if I posted a photo of myself running in Nike sneakers, I could label the shoes with a tag that links to Nike’s official Facebook Page.

For now, this tagging feature is limited to Pages for people or brands and products, although Facebook plans to expand these categories.

If it catches on, this new feature could be great for brands looking to go  viral and spread awareness about their products. Companies will no doubt run contests, forcing participants to tag products. It is essentially free advertising on one the coolest and most popular websites today. At least for now.

The new tagging feature could also be an opportunity for Facebook to monetize the site’s photo service, perhaps adding sponsored tags.

After all, nothing evokes fond family memories like that tagged bottle of soda in the background!