OneVue Annouces the Release of VuePoint 2.0,

Directly or indirectly, companies spend millions of dollars building and protecting their brands. In the early 1990’s, many companies woke up to discover the internet and the power of the web. In several cases, they spent tens of thousands of dollars to purchase their domain name. It appears that, for the most part, we didn’t learn our lesson and history is once again staged to repeat itself.

The Web 2.0 era has changed the way consumers interact and communicate. Social networking, once considered to be a fad, has now expanded to include business, professional and social communities. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn are just a few such sites that have seen explosions in both professional and personal use.

The argument by many is open platforms for customers can actually hurt the brand because you have no control over the content. The fact is that if customers are not satisfied with your product or service they will complain among their peers without your knowledge. By engaging with your customers, you are at least aware of these conversations and can work to correct them and thus build and protect your brand and customer loyalty

Several companies are successfully engaging in social networking. Zappos.com (http://twitter.com/zappos and http://www.facebook.com/pages/Zapposcom/7172307686 ), Ford Motor Company (http://twitter.com/FordCustService) and Dell (http://www.dell.com/twitter) are among several companies that have embraced this new media and discovered a whole new way to interact and stay in touch with their customers. Consequently, many companies have already “missed the boat” so to speak. Disney and Motorola have both discovered that their branded names have been “hijacked” on Twitter while others like IBM (http://twitter.com/ibm) have protected their brand but choose not to utilize the technology.

Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh has over 27,000 fans (customers) following his daily comments on twitter. Starbucks Coffee began using twitter in November and now has 22,000 customers engaging in short communications. What better way to engage with your customer base? Retailers are always looking for ways to engage and communicate with their customers and this is the perfect media. Imagine posting “Rod is working on a new promotion at www.onevue.com” to your customer base or simply getting feedback on your latest Blog.

The great thing about history is that we can learn from it, and for most companies it’s not too late. Protect your brand by engaging in social networking, while at the same time increasing your customer loyalty.