Social Media and Branding

I finished reading Part 4 of "Share This: the Social Media Handbook for PR Professionals" and I am making connections between my use of social media and how professionals should be using social media to market their brand. 

Part 4 discusses how to use social media to improve a brand and encourage communication and interaction between a company and its customers. The difficulty of measuring return on investment was mentioned and I feel that there is a way to make the system function more effectively. "Share This" gives an example of P&G using printable coupons to increase sales in store, but there is no effective method to get people to buy items from a store while remaining on the social media site. Measuring ROI can be difficult, however, if managers keep track of their sales before and after posting on their social media outlets, they should be able to determine if there is an increase in sales.

As I was reading, I began thinking about how I use my social media websites and how the organizations I am involved in use social media websites. The book discusses the importance of engaging your followers and monitoring your content. I made a connection to Alpha Xi Delta and how our PR Vice President and Social Media Chair use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We are told to be aware of what we post in order to keep our Chapter clean of any negative or inappropriate posts. Our social media team works very hard to keep the organization's Facebook Page (found here) updated and full of necessary information. 

In terms of Facebook and the generic social media websites, my sorority does well to keep things engaging and informative, but I think we could utilize other resources to make our presence even stronger. "Share This" suggests the use of videos (YouTube) and blogging to reach out to an audience. I agree with the book that people do not make the most of using video or blogs to engage their peers (or companies to the customers). Both blogs and video content are easy to share and you can keep people more updated about what you're doing because you can go into more detail and they can actually see things in action.

I think Alpha Xi would do well to begin a blog or a YouTube channel, or both. I would love to post videos of events to show other chapters what we are doing, and maybe they could get some ideas from us!

"Share This" is mainly targeted towards professionals, but I think everyone can use these tips in their daily lives. We all are a brand, we all are trying to put our best foot out there and we all are trying to get a response from a specific audience.