Twitter, Facebook, or Blogging: Which is a better extension of your brand?

Now before you say anything, I’m sure that all three of the above mentioned applications are probably best used in collaboration with each other to help accentuate your brand online. BUT, what I’m asking is which of the three: Twitter, Facebook, or setting up your own blog, would help create more “buzz” for your brand?

I’ve created all three for one central brand and from my experience and allotted time, I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps the best way to get people interested in your brand would be on Facebook. Sure, having Twitter would be good, but how many people would continuously check out your Twits if they don’t even know what Twitter is. I think Twitter can be used as a “breaking news” or “news flash” approach with a brand, but just by itself can be pretty limited in its capacity. Doing something more mobile instead of Twitter would probably be a better use of time. Considering the brand I’m working to promote online, I’ve received about 67 followers in just a few short months. That’s not a lot, but then again, I haven’t been promoting this Twitter account anywhere.

Although I shouldn’t use THAT as an excuse. In fact, I have not been promoting any of these items online at all. I just create them and people manage to stumble by and show interest. Now with my blog, I wanted to talk about what’s going on with my brand. At one point I think it would have been good because we can create all this buzz about all the “insider” stuff but it grew to the point where I thought to myself…why should I create this blog when there are many other blogs out there more credible than the one I’m creating now? Now if you can answer that question and reinforce my decision, then I’ll give you a hearty pat on the back and say thanks, but I figure that it would essentially be a PR movement where we’d go out and start rapports with blogs that talk about what’s related to the brand. I’m still going to keep the blog, but it’s grown to the point where I think more people can find useful and stickier content and potentially unbias information on other blogs. Definitely the key thing is that if you are going to create a blog, make sure that you have information to blog about. Don’t just create for the sake of creating…you need to have solid information there to keep attracting readers and if you take months to update in-between posts, your readers will start to leave your blog and go elsewhere.

But focusing on what is probably the best for your brand, I would say go with Facebook. That’s where the audience resides these days. Sure, you can create your own page on Myspace – in fact, that’s probably the place where people were creating their own brand pages. I know about a year ago, I was at Travelcom in Las Vegas and there was buzz about this whole web 2.0 phenomenon and how the industry should be in Myspace. Now it’s all about are you on Facebook. My, haven’t things changed in just 12 months!

But I digress, going back to the Facebook example to extend your brand online…I found that there is great potential for this. Sure, you can create your own profile on Facebook, but why not start a Fan page? Yeah, that’s what I did…and it’s turned out pretty good so far…way better than what I could have achieved on Twitter and my blog. This page has been maintained about the same as each of the other elements I discussed in this blog, but the one thing is that people are already on Facebook scoping their friend’s page out. So naturally why not jump on board? I could have set up a Group page, but there’s no customization and a disadvantage is controlling the brand. A group page is more like a social hangout that is more laid back and disorganized. You create a fan page and that’ll allow you to shape the wording you want on the site, but still allow your fans to offer their comments and create dialogue.

Initially this page did not create the fan base I had intended, but in several months since it was started, it managed to blossom to a page with over 1,300 fans, 100+ contributed photos, 100+ wall comments, and plenty of healthy conversation. I can link to blog RSS feeds and even add in Facebook page applications to help create more sticky content. What’s even better is that I can manage “event” postings that’ll allow me to bring more people to the proverbial table. One event that is associated with my brand has garnered close to 10,000 attendees! I think it’s been quite successful and I think that this is probably the most effective tool online aside from your website online advertising, and e-mail marketing to get your brand out.

Obviously this is all based on perspective. I’m sure that there are other ways to gather your audience and make them more interested in your brand than these three applications I mentioned, but from my experience, I think that Facebook is the darling of the brand world right now, but soon I’ll need to figure out where next to stretch my arms to help spread the good word about the brand.

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