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How To Build Your Business Brand in the Metaverse

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By Zaheer Dodhia

Is your brand ready for the metaverse? It can be a complex question — for one thing; the answer depends on what “the metaverse” refers to for you as a business owner. For another, it can depend on the type of business that you run. But, ultimately, brand owners want their companies to be ready for anything — and active growth is often top on the list.

What Is The Metaverse?

The answer to this question depends on who you ask, but a simple definition is “a collection of technologies that allows us to interact in a virtual universe.” Most commonly, those technologies involve augmented or virtual reality and video.

Technically, our ability to interact with AI or with avatar representations of others on social media is an offshoot of what the metaverse is intended to be. The function of the metaverse is to meld the physical and the virtual into one.

As technology advances, experts and innovators predict that we’ll spend more time in this digital universe than we do now — and maybe more time in our virtual world than we do in the real one. With the heightened focus on digital communications and ecommerce during the past two years, this doesn’t come as a surprise. Statistics already show the rise in interest — in 2020, almost 84 million people were using AR/VR regularly in the United States alone, with that number projected to rise to 110 million next year.

There’s endless scope for the imagination with the metaverse concept — not to mention endless scope for business growth. Big companies like Microsoft and Epic have already invested in the metaverse, aiming to stake a claim on their virtual brand. As a result, the market for augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality are projected to reach 300 billion dollars yearly by 2024.

There’s no doubt about it — the metaverse is the next significant shift in the digital world, and it’s best to be ready to take advantage of it!

Here are the top three ways to build your business brand in the new digital movement known as the metaverse.

Unified Branding

Branding is always one of the top keys to building a business. Branding not only identifies who your company is but connects it with core values, products and services on offer, and even your audience.

“Just make sure you have a brand” isn’t really the best advice, though, because inconsistent branding can actually be detrimental to your overall brand. Inconsistency can cost — 90% of consumers expect to have a consistent experience with a brand regardless of the platform, and consistent brands are more likely to have strong visibility, whereas if consumers are less aware of a brand and have less of an impression of it as a whole, they’re less likely to notice the company — and therefore less likely to engage or invest. Neglecting your colour scheme or making a logo design mistake can have serious consequences.

Along with consistency, specific elements can help with solid branding. For example, using a signature colour can boost a brand’s recognizability by up to 80%. That means that customers would be 80% more likely to recognize and interact with your brand in the metaverse if they see your signature colour.

Leitmotifs, or sonic branding, are also valuable to a complete branding package. Some statistics suggest that using audio — think jingles or recurring notes, like with MacDonald’s ba-da-ba-ba-ba — as part of your branding can increase recognition by up to 46%.

In the end, the numbers show the importance of keeping your branding steady as you move into the metaverse with your brand. Unified branding across all platforms, including print, storefront, social media, and website, has been shown to increase revenue by up to 23%. That’s significant growth, especially for a small business.

Virtual Experiences

The metaverse is all about virtual reality, and adding virtual experiences into what you offer your customers is an excellent way to get them ready for the metaverse even now. In addition, you may be able to leverage the rising sales of VR headsets, which is one of the most popular ways to explore the metaverse concept. From just under five million sets sold in the US in 2020, sales are projected to reach more than 14 million yearly in the US by 2024.

But VR headsets aren’t the only way to craft a virtual experience to share with your customers and attract them to your business. Build a digital storefront that mimics your brick-and-mortar store. Create digital tours of your products. Ikea is an excellent big-name pioneer of this, already demonstrating how to use the metaverse concept to grow a particular aspect of a brand. With virtual room design, Ikea customers can see what furniture and features will fit, how the colour scheme will turn out, and how frustrated they may get while figuring out how to put it all together.

Okay, that last part isn’t actually a feature of Ikea’s virtual experience. But it’s only a matter of time.

Video Production

A final and significant way to build your business brand in the metaverse is to incorporate videos in your marketing, website, and social media posts.

The importance of video isn’t anything new. Approximately 85% of marketers already leverage video use as an essential part of their strategy, with 92% of that number labelling it as essential to their work going forward. Video nets the most engagement on social media, especially Instagram. More than 90% of businesses point to social media videos as a key that has garnered new customers and directly caused conversion.

But with the metaverse being focused on virtual/augmented reality and video, video production is even more of a recommendation for brands that are looking to grow. Not just for marketing purposes, either — other popular kinds of videos include how-to or explainer videos and social media videos, both of which puts the focus on entertainment and education.

The more value you can provide, the more likely you will attract new interest. And with new interest, your brand is sure to grow.

To the Metaverse and Beyond

It’s challenging to get a consensus on just what the metaverse means and how far it will take us. But one thing is for sure — we’ve been spending more time in the virtual world than ever in the past few years, and it’s almost guaranteed that the trend will continue.

With essential brand-building methods, your brand will be ready to grow in the metaverse and whatever comes next.

Feature Image Credit: Julien Tromeur; Unsplash

By Zaheer Dodhia

Sourced from readwrite

 

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The Best Way To Grow Your Personal Brand In 2020

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By Luke Lintz

A personal brand is how your accomplishments, personality and work are portrayed to others. The major difference between a business brand and a personal brand is that a personal brand is built around you, so it’s easy to connect on an emotional level with your audience. A business brand is built solely around showcasing your business services, offers, testimonials and track record, with very little emotion involved.

Branding shouldn’t be a battle of whether to have a personal or business brand, but how you can effectively grow both brands together. Something spectacular happens when your personal brand is bigger than your business brand and you can effectively refer people who have built trust with you to your company’s products or services.

My marketing agency specifically works on high-level personal and business branding. The most common question I receive from potential customers is: “What sort of ROI is associated with building a personal brand?” I always respond, “It’s priceless, and it takes at least 12-18 months to get there.”

I find this a funny question because I think everyone is capable of comprehending the long-term value of building proper personal and business brands, but so many people are stuck in short-term thinking. The ROI of branding is that it’s an enhancement to your current direct marketing efforts. The value comes in the long term with many different streams of revenue. For example, we had one client who grew his following on Instagram from 3,000 to 100,000 followers by posting consistent, quality content. Through an Instagram direct message, he was booked for a speaking gig that paid $25,000, with travel costs, hotel and food covered.

There are three main categories for your branding presence: your online presence, social media presence and local presence.

• A branded website, press, dedicated articles, features and a Google Knowledge Panel all play a role in your online presence and determine how you are portrayed on search engines.

• Consistent and high-quality content, your short bio, and the number of followers you have all play a part in your social media presence.

• How you are talked about with other people (when you are not around), or if you’re not talked about at all, is your local presence.

I dedicated the majority of my time to my clients’ brands until recently branching out and working on my own personal brand. I am now working heavily on growing my social media and online presence by publishing consistent, quality content about my main projects, working with major influencers around the world and publicizing it all.

If you are just starting out with your personal brand, regardless of industry or experience, you should ask yourself some of these questions:

• Who is your target audience?

• What do you want to be known for in 10 years?

• Who are some leaders in your industry, and what do their personal and business brands look like?

• How are you going to dedicate time each week to work on your personal brand?

There are more people online than ever. With such an overwhelming number of people in your industry or niche, how do you stand out? The answer is simple: There is no such thing as competition. There is no such thing as two of the exact same personal brands. If you’re able to stay consistent and are willing to invest your time and resources into your personal brand, you will be bound for success in the long term.

If you don’t currently don’t have a personal brand, here’s an action plan for getting your brand started:

1. Open social media accounts on two platforms. If you’re a business professional, you should have accounts on Instagram and LinkedIn. Don’t overwhelm yourself by starting on every platform available.

2. Next, collect all your professional photos. You don’t have to be in a suit, but the photos should be very high resolution. If you don’t have any photos, find a local photographer, and book a photo shoot as soon as possible.

3. Hire a graphic designer, and ask them to make social media banners, Instagram stories, and graphics for your Instagram and LinkedIn profiles from your professional photos.

4. Create a biography for your social media accounts. This is crucial because it’s the first thing your potential audience sees, and we all know how important first impressions are. Keep it short and concise. It shouldn’t focus too much on you, but on how you can help your customers.

5. Plan out a strategy to post consistent content about what you do.

After all of this is done and you post content day in and day out, you will eventually see returns that you can’t put a price on.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Luke Lintz

Owner of HighKey Holdings Inc.

Read Luke Lintz’ full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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How to Use Instagram to Build Your Business Brand

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By Susan Friesen 

3 Ways to Start a Brand-Centric Social Media Strategy

Instagram has quickly become a dominant force in social media and you’ll be surprised how effective it can be for your business.

A brand-centric™ social media strategy is a great idea before starting any social promotion. You’ll not only save time and money down the road when you have a following but building that following will also be much easier.

Branding with social media can actually reach a significant audience but you need to give users a sincere reason the follow.

This comes from understanding the value of your current brand and properly translating that into an account your ideal users will seek out and want to follow.

With Instagram you have massive brand potential. If you haven’t already done so, you need to properly define your brand. Have a look at our post on defining your brand if you’re stuck.

Now let’s look at what you need to do in order to properly build your business brand on Instagram:

 

  1. Your Profile

    Your profile page is where you should start your business branding on Instagram.

    You can feature your logo or a headshot depending on your business branding. I always recommend using your professional headshot if you are the face of your business and use a logo if you are a larger company like Adidas’s profile shown here.

    Then you have 150 characters in the description field to tell people about what you do. Use this space to make a clear and compelling statement. If a hashtag defines your business, then this is where to include it (or them if there are more than one).

    If you ever have a promotion with a relevant hashtag you can update your profile accordingly.

    You then have 1 opportunity for a link. If you’re just starting out with Instagram, then you’ll likely want to just make this your home page. Ideally, have this link click to a landing page for your free giveaway so you can use this space for list building too.

    The next time you have a new promotion you’ll want to swap the link and direct users through it.

  2. Your Posts


    Consistency is key and not just in your posting schedule. You need to have a common theme to all your images where that theme provides your followers with a window into what you provide.This is not the platform to be spamming ads on at all. Your followers want to know a business brand on Instagram by seeing who is behind the brand, not their advertisements.

    In saying that, you should absolutely show off your products, especially when you have something new to offer. But don’t just pop up advertorials.

    Instagram is a great place to show off the community of your business. If you have an office birthday party, post some pictures or a short video.

    If you have a day where employees bring their dogs to work, then let your followers see what’s happening.

    When you’re posting all of this remember who your core target audience is and who can actually become a client. Gear your posts towards that overall theme.

    When appropriate, you can direct users to a link by posting: “follow the link in our bio for more” using the text section that accompanies every post.

  3. Your Competition

    Your competition is a great way to find new followers already interested in what you do. They can also provide great insight into what hashtags are effective in your industry.

    If you use Instagram already, you’ll have seen how competitors are always watching each other on this platform.

    Once you like or follow a particular brand you’ll see that within minutes your account will be followed by another brand related to the brand you just followed.

    There are companies who literally only do this one thing as their entire business model.

    Caution: Stay away from any company promising to blow up your follower count. Volume might seem like good optics for a business, but these types of services will only devalue your brand and account by getting you irrelevant followers who post spam comments.

    Follow your competition yourself and comment on their posts with real insight.

    This is a genuine and sincere way to not only build your brand and find new people but also put you into the position your users will be in with your own account.

    Look at what posts your competitors put up that do better in terms of likes and real comments and adjust your own strategy to reflect their success.

A great way to start it all is finding out which hashtag really defines your business. Understand that there are a communities for particular businesses on Instagram and you’re going to want to become a part of the ones relevant to your industry.

Starting this can be tricky but maintaining it can be even harder. A dead brand on Instagram sends a bad message to users and with 75% of users consulting social media before making a purchase, you’re risking a lot by having this done incorrectly or not at all.

To make the most of your Instagram account, contact us and our social media experts will help you make building your brand on Instagram an easy and fun experience.

You can also sign up for AMPLiFY! Business Academy which is a program we offer that allows you to work with other small business owners and entrepreneurs and our own in-house experts on social media and online marketing to make the most of your business-building efforts.

Your best approach will be to do both so we can work on building your account with you properly and then through the monthly AMPLiFY! sessions you’ll learn how to further grow your business and address any problems you encounter.

As always try to make this a fun experience. If it feels like a drag or you’re not sure if you’re doing it right, then let us know. The ROI on professional social media marketing can be significant and we’d love to help.

By Susan Friesen 

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Sourced from Business 2 Community

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