How Branding Scores Traffic from Social Media

Branding is important when it comes to social media marketing. If you are trying to use social media sites for exposure and traffic not only is it important to brand your domain name, but it is also important to brand your user name by keeping it consistent throughout all social sites.

social media branding

By keeping your user name consistent people will start getting familiar with it. This will cause them to friend you as well as vote on your submissions. And most of these sites such as Reddit are based on reputation (karma points) which means the more stories you get to the front page, the more powerful your account is going to be.

So before you run out and signup for all the social sites out there, make sure you use the same user name and icon. It will just increase your brand awareness thus making it easier for you to promote stories on these sites.

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Reader Comments (8)

Muhammad Saleem, March 1, 2007

Just to add to what Neil has mentioned above, here's a personal example:

My Digg user name: msaleem My Netscape user name: msaleem My Reddit user name: msaleem My StumbleUpon user name: msaleem-stumbl (msaleem was taken)

While I also completely agree with the keeping the user icons the same, the fact that I am a Netscape Navigator compelled me to use an photograph rather than my avatar from Digg.

HMTKSteve, March 1, 2007

I also use HMTKSteve everywhere I go.

MicleMihai, March 1, 2007

Interesting way to build a brand.It seems that in these days everything, and almost everything is related to branding, and his power.

keepclear, March 2, 2007

Absolutely spot on,something I have been doing all along.

MG Siegler, March 2, 2007

Some excellent points Neil...and excellent use of avatar examples (the Lord Licorice second from the left would be me). I was in the process of migrating my icons to use an actual picture of me for a more personal approach (like on MyBlogLog) but perhaps I'll stick with good old Lord Licorice now.

I decided a while ago to for sure stick with it on Digg because with the taking down of the top user list I'm not sure anyone would "recognize" me if I switched up avatars...who actually takes the time to read names now anyways...ha ha.

lonelybloggers, March 3, 2007

I agree with you 100%

Have the same username, brand everything consistently and beyond traffic, you can get your brand seen by thousands of people for free.

Read our blog, http://www.lonelybloggers.com/blog/ and see what we are doing with our YouTube campaign. We talk about branding extensively and what our strategies are on using social media to build a brand.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=lonelybloggers - Watch our viral video series (not question of the day).

It's all about branded-content and leveraging free distribution channels to get your brand seen...

DanielthePoet, March 3, 2007

I used a photo for everything for over a year. In the past month or two, I switched to another photo because I was just getting sick of seeing myself the same every time (not to mention that the original photo made me look like Panama Jack).

So now I'm in with the new pic, and I'm wondering if it's hurt me in the area of recognition. Guess we'll see how long it takes to gain some familiarity, eh?

Andy Beard, March 5, 2007

I am AndyBeard on every service I have joined so far, and on all but StumbleUpon I have used a distinctive logo.

Actually I changed from using a logo on StumbleUpon to using a picture, I don't know why, but seemed like the right thing to do. Stumble Upon seems more... personal, as well as less specific. I have had a few decent "stumbles" 500+ but much less effect from other services, but then lots of my content probably goes into too much detail for the Digg mindset, or is too commercially focused.