TechWag

The hardest thing to do is associate a brand name with product, one way of approaching this is to use FriendFeed as a way to help you associate the brand name you are building with the products you are delivering. You can see examples of this littered throughout FriendFeed, and here are some of the more interesting brands currently using FriendFeed as a name/product association system.

Fantagraphics – Fantagraphics is one of the older mainstay comic book publishers that publish comics under two brands, Eros comix and Fantagraphics. They are located in Seattle, and have been delivering underground comics since 1976. In the world of comic book publishers this makes them part of the old school, people who started publishing comics when fanzines were just starting out. While Fantagraphics is well known in comic circles, using FriendFeed to expand their base enables their business to reach more readers, have people comment on their stuff within the confines of FriendFeed, and otherwise help reach a newer younger audience that they need to reach.

Forbidden Planet – a multipurpose bookstore located in London. The bookstore carries a ton of items, but is great for branding their own store within the confines of the products that they deliver. The good part is that they are promoting their own products within the greater hierarchy of product that they sell. This is great when doing product research, their links pop in Google via FriendFeed before their store links do.

Tor Books – Tor is the science fiction publisher today, and while there are others, normally Tor Writers sweep many of the awards, and Tor has been at the forefront of working out how to use social media, free media, and book downloads to help their authors gain more traction and sell more stuff. Tor is one of the best places to follow in how they are using social media to expand their business, and keep their writers in everyone’s mind.

Marvel Comics – One of the original comic book companies, marvel has seen the ups and downs of the comic book industry from a personal viewpoint. Their FriendFeed page is full of comic book goodness, new releases, and information about comic book characters. Sharing information in this way also helps them create buzz around new comics and new graphic novels as they are coming off the presses. What is interesting is that Marvel has a multidimensional approach to what they are feeding into FriendFeed, in that they use Twitter a lot, but they are also linked into their flickr and youtube accounts as well. When they push a picture or a video, their FriendFeed subscribers (of which there are not many) are some of the first to know.

These four companies (and there are many others who are smaller like this one) are using FriendFeed to consolidate their information, using them to strengthen their brands, and provide bleeding edge information to their subscribers. This is just one way that these companies are using FriendFeed to strengthen their market position, some are also using other systems like twitter and facebook, but the consolidation point is FriendFeed, where as their marketing efforts are geared towards providing information rather than selling product. They are using social networking as a way to keep information flowing from multiple sources and letting people decide if they want to pursue the product. Keeping the marketing to an information only exchange and being active in social networking channels, they are sharing rather than overtly selling their products, which is excellent social media marketing.

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