# Increased brand influence on Mastodon?
###### tags: `blog`

I could be wrong, but I think that one of the main benefits a brand could get from hosting a Mastodon instance is having your brand name tied to accounts all over the place. I notice this in the context of Vivaldi and the upcoming Mozilla servers.

The domain would work as a subtle, muted ad. The more users you can host, the more users you can acquire, and thus your brand permeates the Fediverse. More and more people will see @[e-mail].

The instance itself could also advertise the brand back to the users of the instance. Certain spaces on the web app can be changed to display the name of the company or service instead of the Mastodon logo. Vivaldi.social seems to do this already. I can imagine Mozilla could take it a step further not only with their logo but also with unique themeing, and thus differentiate their landing page from other servers.

*Caption: Screenshot of Vivaldi.social local timeline with Vivaldi Social logo in the top right corner.*

My question is, how valuable will that constant repetition be even if Mastodon becomes big time competitive?

Putting aside whether ads somehow make their way into Mastodon (please no), the main way that a brand markets itself right now is by having an account, posting frequently with the right timing, and engaging with their communities with hashtags, favorites, replies, and boosts.

If your brand awareness grows through hosting a Mastodon server, how worthwhile will it be? Will it be comparable to the work of just managing an account? If it's more effective, will it be worth it compared to the work of hosting and moderating an instance? And unlike with an account, how do you convert the mindshare that comes from a popular server into actual usage of the products that pay the bills?

There's also the question of how this will be received by the Mastodon community. It seems that certain corners are more anti-brand than others. At the same time, the "advertising" that I'm describing here is a dramatic reduction in what companies would ideally want to do with your eyeballs. In this case, at least they're still providing free hosting for a service people can use. Is there a tradeoff here that we can be ok with?

I don't have the answers. It could be that this strategy works great to get new consumers. Companies may want to experiment with this now to see if it's worth it. Personally, I like the lack of company influence in this space, but I am aware that the marketing world will try to use Mastodon and the Fediverse if it gets more popular.

Just something I'm keeping an eye out for. Will be thinking a ton about this in the context of ethical marketing.