Brand Knowledge: Know Like Trust Series

This short post is part of the 'Know, Like & Trust' series. For background, see the first installment regarding trust . The primary aim of this series is to discuss how to encourage audiences to know, like and trust brands in the social media content management process.

Since a brand's aim to become as humanized as possible, brand knowledge can be understood as being similar to knowing a person. Just imagine; you feel like you know someone who you have seen enough times in a consistent way that you can identify them in a crowd or describe them to some one else; because you know their values, you can predict their actions and are even willing to buy new product releases without getting details; you are so familiar what they bring to the table that you can recall them only on the basis of what they mean to your life. In short, brand knowledge closely relates to brand awareness.

Within the context of social media content management, I suggest that brand knowledge may fit in tactical content pillars like 'Traction' (involving social or other hot topics that can go viral using virality pillars), 'Beliefs', 'Values' (involving lifestyle branding and core values) and 'Social Proof' (regarding values and beliefs). However, regardless of the tactical pillar, keep the following in mind. 

• Teach brand recognition to consumers. For instance, show brand assets in a consistent way in all posts. Be clear about your brand's voice and tone.
• Deliver value beyond the product. In other words, create content to inform, educate or entertain leads. Lifestyle branding is a case in point. 
• Patagonia's 50-minute video called 'Tribal water' discusses the matter of access to water for Native Americans in the US. The content is what one would imagine like-minded friends might discuss because it touches on deep values and beliefs they share. Consequently, the video aligns with the brand's core values so as to gently woo like-minded customer friends. While the product appears in the video, Patagonia never used hard sell tactics. Instead, its delivered value is the friendly chat itself.   
• Make the content shareable, after all, you want people to know about the brand. Having people share content within their personal sphere of influence is great advertising.
• Hold contests. Doing this with other brands (with the same target market) will boost brand awareness.

CONTENT RELATED TO BRAND KNOWLEDGE

• Social media content management
• Know, Like and Trust Series
• Brand awareness