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Kathryn Minshew: Helping Women
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Written by: The Story Exchange
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TSE Special Series: America’s
Immigrant Entrepreneurs
Open Mic Series features expert advice from experienced women business owners.
Opportunities for Women
Entrepreneurs
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Open Mic Series: Q&A on How to
Build a Brand
Open Mic Series: Q&A on How to Build a
Brand
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Ida Cheinman (IC): Building brand engagement is one of the most challenging aspects of developing a
successful marketing program. People tend to engage with things they care about and so in order to
be engaging, your brand must stand for something, it must move and inspire its audiences.
Advice & Tips
Happening Now
Tip 1: Define your company’s “why”
Inspiration
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My first tip for building and maintaining brand engagement is actually more than a suggestion — It’s
imperative. It begins with defining your company’s “why” – its larger purpose, the reason it exists
beyond selling products and services. Developing a purpose-driven brand is the foundational step in
generating engagement, because it takes your audience’s connection with your brand from
transactional to relational, giving you a meaningful platform for fostering Involvement, Interaction,
Intimacy and Influence – the four cornerstones of brand engagement (as established by Forrester
Research).
Here’s a little more about what each of these cornerstones
refers to:
- Invol vement refers to the number of people who visit brand
touch points (e.g. number of website visits; amount of time spent
on a web page; or a number of visits to a physical location).
Involvement, Interaction,
Intimacy and Influence – the four
cornerstones of brand
engagement.
- Interac ti on refers to the actions people take while visiting
brand touch points (e.g. subscriptions to an eNewsletter; downloads of a white paper; purchase of a
product or service).
- Inti mac y refers to the affection or aversion a person holds for a brand and is measured by
assessing the general sentiment of the audience (e.g. blog post comments; customer service calls).
- Infl uenc e refers to the likelihood a person is to advocate on behalf of the brand (e.g. satisfaction
ratings; forwarded content; repurchases).
Interviews
Lifestyle
Opportunities
Role Models
@GoldmanSachs’ 10,000 Women
Initiative >>Top recipients from
#China, #Brazil, #India, #Egypt
#Afghanistan via @dowser
http://t.co/nUVZxf8z1F 03:05:28 PM
June 11, 2013 from HootSuite in reply
to GoldmanSachs
ReplyRetweetFavorite
Start small, then grow big: 15 Places to
Make Money Creating Your Own
Products via @Mashable
http://t.co/i172Pt8u0R 01:15:51 PM
June 11, 2013 from HootSuite
ReplyRetweetFavorite
Jennifer Paige Boonlorn founded
@soulcarrierbags, handbags made by
refugee ladies to inspire your journey
#socent http://t.co/j2xRQ5CiB6
12:25:55 PM June 11, 2013 from
HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite
Tip 2: Develop a content marketing strateg y
Once you’ve defined your company’s purpose, you’ll need to communicate it to your audiences
across all customer touchpoints in a meaningful, thoughtful and relevant way. There is an
overwhelming number of communication channels available today and there are several phases to
building brand engagement: from awareness to long-term involvement. One tool that gives you
superpowers to do it all is content marketing. Therefore, my second tip is developing a robust and
relevant content marketing strategy.
Follow @TheStoryXchange
2,483 followers
Tip 3: Listen up and keep testing your tactics
My final tip is to listen and analyze. If you carefully listen to your audiences’ needs and aspirations,
you will be able to address them in a way that will not only create repeat clients and happy
employees, but life-long brand champions. Also remember: it not only takes time to build
relationships and trust with your audiences, but also requires testing different types of content,
communications and tactics to learn what really works for your business.
Read about why Ida started her business in her 1,000 Stories submission.
IC: When developing our brand, we went through a formal exercise for developing a brand platform
that sets the foundation for all verbal, written and visual communications for our firm. This ensures
that everything we create is always “on-brand” and that our brand doesn’t deteriorate over time.
We track and analyze the levels of engagement for everything
we do in order to find our sweet spot, and this actually points to
another important tip: patience. It takes time to get to know the
people and companies you want to engage with your brand. The
more you research, explore and analyze, the sooner you’ll have
the insight you need to truly engage.
It takes time to get to know the
people and companies you want
to engage with your brand.
IC: Since its inception, Substance151 has made a commitment to create a positive impact on society
and the environment through its design, practice, education and community involvement. When the
“green” marketplace became very crowded, we had to make sure that our audiences could see that
sustainability is a part of our corporate DNA, not just a part of our green marketing campaign. One
of the best tools for adding credibility to a company’s “green” claims is green certifications and
trustmarks, and in 2009 Substance151 became a Green America Certified Business. (If you are
looking to become a certified green business, I would recommend two certifying entities: Green
America’s Green Business certification or B Lab’s B Corp certification.)
To further demonstrate our commitment to creating a positive
impact on society and the environment, we became one of the
first three Benefit LLCs in the United States in June 2011. While
becoming a benefit LLC did not fundamentally change our work,
product, or operations – we were already a Green America
certified business – it created a greater level of accountability
and an objective framework for measuring our progress. For
example, one of the benefit corporation requirements is
publishing an annual benefit report.
One of the best tools for
adding credibility to a
company’s “green” claims is
green certifications and
trustmarks.
For other entrepreneurs considering organizing as a benefit corporation the process is very similar
to filing for any other corporate charter: you need to file articles of incorporation with the State
Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT for a new business) or you need to file an article of
amendment with SDAT (existing corporation). To find out if your state has passed benefit
corporation legislation, use this link: http://benefitcorp.net/state-by-state-legislative-status.
Additional information and resources are also available at http://benefitcorp.net/for-business/howto-become-a-benefit-corp.
A BOUT ID A C H EIN MA N
Ida Cheinman is the Founder and Creative Director of Substance 151. She has over 15 years of
design and management experience with a primary focus on brand strategy and design across print
and interactive media. Under her leadership, Substance151 has built a solid reputation for its
strategy and design work and its passion for advocating environmentally and socially responsible
business practices. Recently, Ida has been recognized by Bmore Media as one of Baltimore’s Green
Masterminds and named an Eco CEO by Baltimore SmartCEO. Follow Substance 151
@substance151 for more tips and connect with her @idacheinman.
The Story Exchange is a global video project empowering women to achieve economic independence
through entrepreneurship. By producing and promoting video profiles of successful entrepreneurs
from all walks of life and sectors we encourage others to gain economic freedom, create the lifestyle
of their choosing, and uncover their full potential.
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