Cyber branding is the low-cost way to brand your product or service—to brand yourself—and to connect with your customers and prospects in a genuine way. People want honesty and authenticity, not hype and gloss, and the online world is the place to present your business and yourself as you are, without resorting to “commercials.” The fresher your ideas and the better your product or service, the more receptive the digital world will be.
- Cyber branding doesn’t favor the rich and powerful.
- It favors the new and the nimble.
- It favors the human and the real.
- It favors those who share.
Unlike traditional media, cyber branding doesn’t reward the important, the famous, and the rich as much as the engaging, the interesting, and the helpful. Sharing is the essential ingredient of digi world. Cybe branding rewards those who understand how people use the Internet today to find out about companies and brands and to be a part of those communities.
People and companies that are opaque will have difficulty in the digital age of branding. People and companies that are comfortable in their own skin will succeed. Those who share their personal stories and their business narratives and provide valuable, real, and truthful messages will thrive. Digi world rewards those who innovate and who make good stuff or offer better services.
Cyberbranding enables you to customize and personalize messages like never before. People want to know your story, so share it with them—the grittier or more truthful, the better. The more you open the curtains to reveal what is going on behind the scenes, the closer and more connected your customers will feel to you. As an example of what I mean, lets look at the story of blogger Heather Armstrong and Dooce.
Armstrong began a blog called Dooce in 2001, while she was employed as a web designer and graphic artist in Salt Lake City, Utah. In it, she spoke honestly and graphically about her frustrations at home and at work—and she soon found herself out of a job. Whether or not her firing was a direct result of what she wrote in her blog, the term “dooced” has come to mean being fired for one’s online activities (something to keep in mind when developing your own web presence!).
No matter—Armstrong chose to see her dismissal as an opportunity. Her loyal readers continued to follow her story through the birth of her two kids, her struggle with depression, her appliance breakdowns, and every detail of her life as a liberal ex-Mormon living in Utah. Her audience grew until, on a typical day, more than 100,000 people visited her site.
Here’s the good part. The business part. In 2004, Armstrong began accepting text advertisements on her site, and in 2005, she began accepting graphic ads. She had turned her online “hobby” into a moneymaking proposition, in the process becoming the first personal blogger to derive substantial income from advertising. In 2009, Armstrong was named by Forbes magazine as one of the thirty most influential women in media—right alongside Oprah, Diane Sawyer, and Barbara Walters. Estimates of the revenue from ads on her website range from over $300,000 to $1,000,000 a year, and that doesn’t include her speaking and endorsement fees and book royalties.
Sources: Break Through Branding, Magazine: Brand Board
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