Companies that focus on external branding without any focus on internal branding will find that their productivity and morale may suffer. Internal branding is what makes your employees happy, loyal and motivated. Below are some reasons why companies need to focus on internal branding.
Increases Trust
A company with inadequate branding will find that it may undercut its public trust. If a company does not have the right internal culture, that may bleed out into the public realm, and it can hurt sales. Customers today can tell when a business has a strong internal culture and brand. They are more likely to trust a strongly branded company and reward it with their business. This comes along with being consistent in your message, the way you deliver it, and staying top-of-mind with your customers.
Boosts Employee Morale
Interact explains, “success in business is all about people, people, people. Whatever industry a company is in, its employees are its biggest competitive advantage. Bags in Bulk explains, “employees want to have a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging in their workplace. If the goal post keeps moving, or if they receive mixed messages about what the brand represents, they’re going to lose focus and devalue the brand. If you don’t have a solid company culture or internal branding standard in place, this is your time to hash out the details.” By making employees aware of the company and the culture/brand they’re part of you can help improve their sense of belonging and unity.
Creates a Harmonious Workplace
Internal branding means shared goals between employees. When employees are working towards the same thing, it increases harmony and decreases friction in the workplace. Skip Prichard explains, “internal branding gives workers a common playbook and set of principles and puts them all on the same page. In addition, it lends predictability to the daily workplace and, when that occurs, there is less room for disputes between coworkers.”
Helps Recruitment and Retention
Internal branding helps establish your workplace as a desirable address for potential recruits. Many workers are drawn to a company by its story, and internal branding helps tell that story. When your company has a strong internal brand, it catches a certain buzz and means that your business is talked about. At some point, the internal branding catches on with the public and they will want to become a part of it. Often times this happens in the form of online reviews, such as Glassdoor. Bridge explains, “Glassdoor allows users to provide anonymous reviews of a company in categories including compensation and benefits, work/life balance, senior management, culture and values, and career opportunities.” Having positive reviews for your business will attract potential hires and allow you to gauge how happy your current employees are. In addition to recruitment benefits, internal branding helps keep your existing employees in place.
It is worthwhile to invest in internal branding. The rewards are apparent in many different areas. Whether you need to increase trust in your brand, boost employee morale and cooperation, or recruit and retain new employees, strong internal branding is crucial. And in turn, your external efforts will be increased exponentially by having great internal culture.
Many small business owners utilize social media as part of their marketing efforts. Many like to take of marketing, especially Social, through a DIY approach, while others simply can’t afford to pay a firm like RyCOM (although we are suprisingly affordable).
That being said, it can take a lot of time and effort to set up social media marketing campaigns. Here are a few ways you can use artificial intelligence for social media marketing purposes.
Smart Audience Targeting
The beauty of social media marketing is being able to reach a wide audience. That being said, trying to advertise to everyone usually means spending a lot without obtaining many leads. Fortunately, many social media websites help you automatically form a target audience. For instance, Facebook uses AI to provide audience insights to marketers, which enables you to understand information about your audience including their lifestyle and purchasing data. After learning this information, you will be able to fine-tune advertising campaigns to appeal to this audience.
Process Automation
A key aspect of using AI for social media purposes involves process automation. Robotic Process Automation technology allows workers to execute repetitive tasks more efficiently and more accurately than humans can. For instance, chatbots are a popular type of social media automation. This allows you to communicate with leads even when you’re not online. 51 percent of marketers plan on using Facebook Messenger bots by 2019, which could make them vital to your future business plan.
Analytical Decisions
It’s important to use your analytics to your advantage while posting on social media. Each time you create a post, your audience responds. These responses come in the form of likes, comments, shares, and other similar types of activity. Considering that, it’s important to watch this data because you can use it as a guide to determine if what you’re posting is engaging your audience or not.
Intelligent Content Creation Tools
In the past, many marketers steered clear of any type of automatic content creation. During this time, the vast majority of machine-generated articles looked like a complete mess. Many predicted that AI-generated content might soon be the one thing that “saves content marketing.” It’s important to note that AI content is still in its infancy. However, many AI tools work well for helping you generate keywords and content creation ideas.
In conclusion, there are several reasons to utilize AI in your social media marketing efforts. If you’re wanting to reduce the time and effort you spend on social media marketing, consider implementing the previously mentioned tips, or just let us do it for you…
For the past 4 years, we have been working with HCHS on their IncubaterEDU program. As a coach and mentor, I have had the pleasure of teaching many aspects of the Entrepreneurship lifestyle, and what it takes to start and grow a business. I love doing it… so much fun!
The first session we teach each year is about Branding & Positioning. Each year I am reminded that, although I am teaching these concepts to High School students, many business owners have no clue about the topic either.
I plan to do a seminar on this topic for the local business community, so I won’t spend a ton of time on this now, but I did find an article on Entrepreneur.com that is a great teaser about the basics of branding.
Branding is one of the most important aspects of any business, large or small, retail or B2B. An effective brand strategy gives you a major edge in increasingly competitive markets. But what exactly does “branding” mean? How does it affect a small business like yours?
Simply put, your brand is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from your competitors’. Your brand is derived from … Read More
