Brand Building — The Content Mentality
Why you should start thinking like a media company
Earlier, I wrote an article on how content consumption is dynamically changing and we as content creators need to adapt and execute on new platforms.
This one is about Execution — How we executed brand building to create loyalty over volume.
Never before have brands and consumers had the ability to create and consume content at scale. Because of the smartphone and the internet, and social media, anyone can produce and distribute. Just 15 years ago, if you wanted to create a commercial to promote your brand, you would need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on media and marketing. Today, you can literally use your smartphone, understand where your target audience spends most of their time on social media and the sort of culture that they are interested in as a cohort (Highly important) and create a facade of “entertainment” while executing the purpose of your brand being on that specific medium.
Two Things — Participation and Strategy.
When any Early-Stage startup engages on social media, they always try to structure their content to sell. I understand that’s the strategy of your presence but it’s not brand building — it’s just noise. Our products are built around technology you can use to understand “who” from “where” loves “what”. Take 5 minutes, put in the effort to curate that one piece of content that will interest that one individual and execute the process on a one-on-one level and more will follow.
The Bangalore City Police Department —
Like I said earlier — understand where your target consumer base operates. The PD took an initiative to reach to the age cohort of < 25–30 (Macro on Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter) to push content through memes. When the targeted cohort responded, then they transacted successfully with their key core content and exponentially grew in followers.
Day Trading Attention to build brands
Before attending the RISE conference, like every company we wanted reach (website visits, signups) but here’s the problem — If you’re a startup that’s working on creating a brand (early stage) — You’re not credible and you are likely to stay that way. The people you share your business card or your product brochure with which have your company’s Facebook/Twitter links don’t take 5 minutes to go to your page and create a relationship (A.K.A : follow/like) because on a macro, they don’t see value.

We added a snapcode to the back of our cards and promised people a good laugh. This rippled curiosity and some of them added us. Here’s what we created value on :
1. A direct relationship — Facebook and Twitter is too clogged. When users added us on snapchat, our content would appear on their feed. 97% of our snapchat audience watch our content from start to finish — Value.
2. Engaging — Instead of trying to sell, now we have the luxury of creating entertaining content as the gateway to the long term sale. When we push links to that one medium article or increasing signups — They don’t mind doing it. Content is not always enough. Everyone can create something interesting, but if no one ever sees it, it becomes irrelevant. — Engage.
3. Error Rate — If you’re engaging with your users on social media you decrease your Error rate with them. What this means is (Alpha’s and Beta’s listen up) when you mess up with your core-technology — and we know that’s always bound to happen especially as a tech startups, they give you another chance — Loyalty over Volume.
If you don’t start thinking like a media company and prioritizing brand along with content, you are going to lose. This is where the attention currently is. There is Zero excuse for not engaging on social media and building a brand reputation — all you have to do it start.
Content is the cost of entry.
If you want it, and you are building something you hope others will use, then this is the article for you.
If you think this article is interesting, please don’t hesitate to recommend it by clicking the ❤ button below.
The Next Executive 🦄 on Medium Claire.ai ! Twitter and Facebook!
Any questions? Drop a message at suhas@claire.ai
Leave a like. It goes a long way :)



