Social media branding consists of implementing the right techniques to engage with your target audience across different social media platforms, with the aim of boosting your brand’s visibility. Brand awareness is stated to be the top priority for marketers; social media provides the perfect platform to promote your products and services!
As Sprout Social states, your brand is more than just a pretty logo and a nice set of colours and pictures, it’s about how your brand makes customers feel and ensuring your each online interaction your brand has consistent and positive. 80% of consumers stated they would be more likely to evaluate solutions from the brands they already follow on social media. So follow this guide and implement these next five steps to create an effective social media branding campaign! 📋
STEP 1: Cover the Basics
Though this may seem obvious, make sure you start at the beginning and ensure there is consistency with the look of your brand. Ensure your logo, colour palette, bio and handle are universal across all your social media platforms before moving on to the later stages. 🎨🖌️Inconsistency at this basic level is off-putting and portrays a confused picture to your target audience. This will only turn them away and into the hands of your competitors! So, be sure your brand’s profile is consistent across the social platforms you use, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest, so that your brand maintains unity.
When you first begin your social media campaign, it is tempting to follow as many accounts as possible to gain many followers, but do not do this! You don’t need 1000s of followers to begin a successful campaign; 10 followers who engage your services is better than 1000s of followers who do not.
STEP 2: Target The Right Audience
Forbes very rightly notes that not all social media platforms are created equally. Where Twitter and Facebook are more for conversation (though Facebook has an older demographic), Instagram is best for visuals, so it now becomes important for you to choose the social media channels your brand will appear on, carefully.
Contrary to what you may think, there is no need to be on every social media platform the Internet has to offer! If you think a social media platform would not fit your audience brand, or you don’t have the resources to handle content creation for it, then do not use it. This is really working to your advantage as you will be saving energy and resources by not engaging in social media platforms that just do not appeal to your target audience. Focusing in the wrong direction risks sending irrelevant messages to your target audience. Why would you invest in posting on SnapChat and Pinterest when you’re offering B2B services? Neil Patel’s advice is applicable here as he states, “your brand building efforts should be directed towards the right type of people who would be interested in your business.”
STEP 3: Know Your Tone and Writing Style
Your writing style and tone of voice will largely be dictated by your product or service and your target audience demographic as Canva identifies. It is essential to have this secured as this enables your conversations on social media to flow much more easily. This will lead to anticipation from your audience, who will not only connect with you, but will also await your updates.
To achieve this, make sure your language and purpose are clear within your tone. Visualise who your target audience is and ask yourself what language they would use. More niche brands may use acronyms or industry-specific language to appeal to their target audience, whereas a B2C company may not. Know your audience. When it comes to your purpose, Canva suggests identifying the main reason you are on a social media platform. Is the goal to educate them? To entertain? Once you know this you can tailor your content to appeal to your target audience when they start to engage with your posts.
STEP 4: Consistency is Key 🔑
It is very important that you post often so that your engagement with your audience remains high and so your audience knows what to expect from you and when. However, this is not to be confused with over-sharing (which we will discuss shortly!)
🖼️ Make sure the images and information you share or repost are always relevant to your target market and consistent with the style and imagery of your brand. The most important thing is uniformity: view your social media as an “advertising tool kit” and keep the message and imagery consistent across all platforms. One way of achieving this uniformity is posting the same content across all of your social media channels but this is not advisable. This comes across as lazy, thoughtless and will not receive a good response from your audience. Neil Patel’s advice rings true once more when he states that the key is to (mostly) share “exclusive content” on the different social media platforms that you use.
STEP 5: Plan and Post
As previously mentioned, over-posting is one thing you must avoid when you begin your social media branding campaign. Over-posting leads to fatigue and feelings of annoyance from your target audience. Remember how it feels when that really annoying advert comes on the TV so you change the channel? Well, that’s the feeling your audience will get if you bombard them with posts flooding all of your social media channels. It is important to keep communication lines open without oversharing.
Treat your social media branding campaign with care. Make time to create a sort of social media posting calendar and schedule the days you will post what on which social media outlet. This will help you stay on course and you can physically see what you need to be posting and when. It is okay to not post every day! It is advised that, if you are using Facebook, then post a couple of updates daily, on Twitter it is acceptable to tweet up to three times daily, on Instagram once a day and on LinkedIn once a weekday. This will ensure engagement with your target audience and soon your posts will be anticipated as your audience knows what to expect from you on a certain social media and when!
Here you have a guide to beginning a social media branding campaign and there is no reason you cannot successfully implement it! For more helpful tips, be sure to explore GuidedPR’s blog page!
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About the Author:
Camara is a third year Law student at the University of Exeter, with a passion for writing. She’s currently an intern PR Assistant and Blogger at GuidedPR. When she isn't writing or hitting the law books, you can find Camara either working on her own blog that she has created, or on social media keeping up with current affairs!
Find Camara on LinkedIn.
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