Kyle works with companies to develop sustainable digital marketing plans through employee training and engagement. He is the author of Twitter Marketing for Dummies, Branding Yourself, and KyleLacy.com.

We all have a brand. I have a brand. You have a brand. Xerox has a brand. The definition changes daily. We can argue about what is right and what is wrong. I’d rather not. The true definition is held inside the social ecosystem. Your brand is the perception or emotion maintained by somebody other than yourself.

Your brand is defined by the experience of your user/customer.

It has always been laughable that we thought we could control our “brand.” There is always an opinion and someone to voice it (whether that’s online or offline). We can’t control those opinions and never will.

As marketers, we shouldn’t want to.  We want to learn from it in order to shape the customer opinions of the future.

We want to influence it and encourage others to do the same.

We have all lived life in different patterns and with different experiences. Our emotions and opinions are based on (sometimes) completely irrational thoughts. However, they are important and do matter to us. They are all being shared in the world of social media.

When developing a social, search, and/or digital strategy, it shouldn’t be based on your ability (or assumed ability) to influence someone. It should be based on who the end consumer trusts. You need to know who they trust.

They are searching for experiences, not brands.

Let me give you an example.

I was in Chicago for a conference last month and needed a good steak joint for dinner. Google Maps helped initially with restaurants within walking distance, but it didn’t give me the “experience.”  I could have used any number of applications to find reviews but I decided to ask my Twitter and Facebook friends. The post was retweeted and shared. I was given advice from my friends and their friends. Every point of contact along the way led to my decision on where I would spend my money.

The most important aspect of my search was the opinions, perceptions, and emotions of individuals within my social ecosystem. It wasn’t the ranking on a page, the reviews of strangers or a top 10 list from the newspaper.

It was the total experience of my social sphere. I was searching for an experience not a brand.

I was searching for opinions, not a mission statement.

Search engines should (and will) take into account all social interactions surrounding a brand and searcher’s online identity. We are demanding it.  Bing, Google+, and Facebook are pushing and adapting. So should we.

As a brand, you should be proactively trying to influence search rankings based on user’s opinion. That is a given. However, you should also be building a social sphere of influencers who are brand ambassadors.

Brand ambassadors are the clients and customers who know your product, passion, and purpose better than anyone else (other than yourself). They are the clients who could and (will) work for you in the future. They love what you do and they pay you for it.

Where do you start? You probably already know the customers who would be the perfect fit.

If not, start with your customer database.

1. Your database is what drives the creation of a brand ambassador program. This is solely built off transactional data, which leads to social data. Which clients are purchasing from you the most? Did customer “A” purchase more than customer “B”? What did they buy?
2. Do you see any overlap with the top names in the database on top creators on social media? Are there customers who share and extol the many virtues of your brand using Facebook and Twitter? Do they interact with you on weekly, even daily, basis?
3. Communicate with the top customers from social and transactional. You could offer a rewards program for helping to spread the message online or encourage them to tell the story.

A brand ambassador or storytelling strategy allows brands and customers to interact and share content that individualized in nature. It also allows for the customer to share the story with their friends. And people and opinions are important to search.

Search engines and their ranking systems will be important as long as people use them. We are at the crossroads of search and the social identity. Google+, Bing, and Facebook are fighting for the right to “own” a user’s social sphere.

They are fighting to own the brands and the experiences that surround them. They are struggling to own individuals, not groups. They want to understand the mass opinion, as well as, your own.

As a brand, you should be focused on creating the best experience possible for your social sphere. When experiences are the focal point of your digital strategy, you will reap the reward of increase social interaction and sharing.