The use of social media today has tremendous potentials in brand developing activities. Unfortunately, it has not been used optimally by entrepreneurs yet. Particularly, by those young entrepreneurs who are still students. Twitter, for example, is still only used by them as a place to vent out their day-to-day problems. In fact, every tweet is a branding that can actually be developed to attract consumers.
For this reason, Communication Studies Department of Bakrie University invited Firzi Abidin, business unit director of Fortune Digital, as a speaker in the workshop titled ‘Online Branding as Today Trend for Entrepreneur’. Located in the Kuningan Campus Epicentrum Jakarta, the event which is also a series of Marcom Week was attended by nearly one hundred students from various schools and universities in Jakarta.
Although traditional media still plays an important role for Indonesian market, however, we still have to remember that digital media has some advantages in brand building. The current media is good at brand building because it has the tendency to involve consumer engagement, the fast speed of information spreading, as well as the facilitation in measuring and changing the strategies or tactics.
In addition, digital media also has the ability to reach consumers when they are surveying before purchasing a product, even to lead consumers to purchase online and, in turn, encourage them to share their positive testimonials to other consumers. “In the other hand, integrating traditional media and digital media still causes a major impact for Indonesian consumers,” said Firzi.
In order to get the most out of online media utilization as a means of brand building, Firzi shared his recipes. The first things that must be done by the entrepreneurs are making their own media channels, such as websites. “Better yet, if you have the account of social media and blogs” he added. Buzzer should also be taken into consideration as a party that will help to promote the brand via Twitter. Then, do not forget to take the advantages of our own media channels to update the content which involve user engagement, as well as creating online communities.
Firzi added that it is also important to use ads with pay per click system. The goal is, of course, to increase the traffic of media channels that we own. In addition, the search engine marketing should also be used so that the efforts made are getting more effective and efficient. Finally, consumers should also be able to have the online experience that has been deliberately created.
To cap it all, Firzi reminded the participants not to hastily expect a satisfactory result of every branding step that has been taken in the digital world. “Building a brand cannot be done overnight. Most importantly, every message and experience created should be coming from the brand value. This value may be adjusted to the ongoing trends, but you still have to keep maintaining its consistency so that the consumer will always remember it,” said Firzi.
Bambang Sukma Wijaya as the club’s faculty adviser of marketing communications of Bakrie University Adbrandclub who is also in charge of Marcom Week shared his excitement on the materials presented. “Through this workshop, hopefully, they will be more understands about the importance of online world in brand building. So that they do not just use the Twitter to vent their everyday problems solely,” he concluded.