مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد برندسازی آنلاین و زمینه تجارت به تجارت – امرالد 2018

Abstract

The chapter discusses online branding in the business-to-business domain and the benefits it offers to B2B actors. Online branding is a tool to interact and communicate with existing and potential customers. The authors also present content marketing as a marketing effort available to B2B marketers, as well as the nature of digital relationships in social media. The reader learns the importance of branding the company through digital channels and those benefits that can be reached through such actions. The digital tools presented in the chapter relate to social media, for example, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs, search engine optimization, and paid advertising. These tools are discussed in detail, both related to their benefits and pitfalls.

Introduction

Online branding is becoming increasingly common and important in modern society, as marketing is to a great extent carried out digitally, via various social media platforms, blogs, websites, and other online channels. Even though online communities and the digital context overall are more visible and relevant to consumers in the B2C context, B2B companies must also be digitally present and brand themselves for partner companies and stakeholders in the digital context. Brand values in the B2B domain are increasingly communicated using digital tools. Research related to online B2B branding is, however, scarce (cf. Lipia¨inen & Karjaluoto, 2015), as companies are still uncertain of the benefits of online branding in the B2B context. Swani, Milne, Brown, Assaf, and Naveen (2016) argue that one of the main problems concerning digital branding within the B2B sector is that very few companies actually know how they should communicate with their customers and what kind of content they should publish, in order to achieve positive results. In this chapter, we focus on the importance of online B2B branding and its potential benefits. In addition, the chapter discusses what kind of content B2B companies should strive to publish and suggests how companies can communicate with their business customers. On a side note, this chapter will focus solely on online B2B branding. However, the reader is reminded that digital branding and online branding are not quite the same thing. The difference is simple: online branding requires an Internet connection, whereas digital branding can be done via various other digital platforms. Furthermore, the term social media is often used when discussing online branding. A usual misunderstanding regarding social media is that it only incorporates the most common platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Social media refers to all kinds of online platforms that allow the creation of user-generated content. Thus, blogs and Internet forums are also platforms that fall under the same category (Kohli, Suri, & Kapoor, 2015).