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How do you make your company and your products really stand out from the crowd on social media?
With the right social media branding.
In this article, we explain what it is, why it’s important, and the 11 steps you need to take to get it just right.
5 Steps to Take Before Your Social Media Launch or Relaunch
When we’re planning a brand-building strategy on social networks for our clients, we start with the following five steps.
1. Create Your Branding Statement
In your branding statement, you need to be clear about:
- Why your brand does what it does
- How you make the world and the lives of your customers and employees better
- How customer care doesn’t stop once someone’s bought from you
- How you’re different and superior to your competitors
Your brand’s personality is greatly affected by what you say in your branding statement.
Today, brand personality is more important than ever to get the greatest return from your marketing efforts.
2. Decide on a Brand Identity or Identities
For most companies, having just one social media brand is enough.
But if your company has its own retail network, it might be better to launch a separate social media account for each store.
Make a virtue of how close you are to your customers. Use social media to demonstrate that you listen to each community you serve and their demands. You’re more likely to benefit from much higher levels of engagement with your followers this way.
Each local or niche-specific social media account you create could then link to your national account for a consistent brand identity across the country.
If you have lots of sub-brands or you offer many different types of products, you might want to replicate the approach to social media branding that luxury goods manufacturer LMVH took.
LMVH operates hundreds of brands offering wine and spirits, fashion and leather goods, perfumes and cosmetics, watches and jewelry, and more.
There’s no guarantee that someone interested in wines and spirits will also want to see watches and jewelry in their news feeds.
LMVH got around this well by spinning off separate but linked social media accounts for larger brands like Louis Vuitton.
3. Identify Your Brand Voice
Your brand voice is how you speak to your target audience.
It can be tongue-in-cheek, business-like, casual, funny, friendly, dry, or whatever you want it to be.
With the right brand voice, you have the ability to communicate on a near-personal level with your target audience not just on social media, but everywhere else as well.
4. Design Your Image
The minute your target audience sees a social media post or an ad from your company, they should know straight away that it’s you—even before they’ve read a word.
Across all social media channels, make sure that you always use the same fonts, logo, and color palette.
Remember to mix up your visual content too.
Create a number of templates to use so that every new post doesn’t look identical to the last.
5. Choose Your Social Media Platforms
Whether you target people in college, new small business owners, or anyone else, chances are they’re on Facebook.
You should also consider:
- Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat if your products and services are particularly visual in nature (why not also create your own YouTube channel for longer-form videos?)
- LinkedIn for B2B lead generation and for increased brand recognition among corporate decision-makers
- Pinterest for wealthier target audiences—four in 10 Americans earning $75,000 or more a year have a Pinterest account
- Twitter if you’re targeting men—it’s the only social media platform where males outnumber females.
Our Top 6 Tips for Social Media Success When Your Account Is Live
Next, we share our top six tips for building brand awareness on social media.
6. Decide What Results You Want
The big question—why are you doing social media? What do you want to achieve from your marketing and branding efforts?
Are you:
- A D2C brand that views social media channels as new sales channels?
- A B2B brand interested in generating leads for your sales team to follow up?
- An app wanting more downloads?
- An SaaS brand or a subscription service that wants to increase its monthly recurring revenue?
An important part of any social media branding strategy is the creation of engaging and relevant content that followers comment on and share.
Brands create two types of content for social media networks—promotional and informational.
80% of your social media posts should be informational with the remaining 20% promotional.
7. Create Informational Content
Content marketing on social media is just as important as the content marketing you have on your website.
Followers really appreciate it when you share useful knowledge, expertise, and insights with them through the content in your posts.
Social media is also great at retaining existing customer loyalty. Prove you still care by creating posts and downloads that show your current clients how to get more out of their existing purchases.
Informational content also needs to demonstrate your authenticity and the values set out in your branding statement.
Most Americans expect their brands to be authentic. Consumers are 4.5 times more likely to stand by their brand and recommend it to others when they believe it has a strong purpose. Seventy-nine percent say it’s important for brands to provide genuine authenticity—such as certifications—when they’re making purchases, and 65% of American consumers will take the time to research a company to see if it is backing up the issues it claims to support.
You can showcase your authenticity through your social media presence by:
- Being honest, genuine, sincere, and responsive
- Showing how you’re environmentally and socially responsible
You might also think about letting existing members of staff become your internal brand ambassadors.
Brand ambassadors use specially-created social media accounts that take followers behind the scenes, describe the type of work they do, share infographics, and more.
The thinking behind this is that, if a staff member is happy to post content about your company, you must be a good employer. And today’s consumers want to buy from companies that treat their staff well.
Entrepreneurs and CEOs should consider creating their own accounts on social media, separate from but linked to the business. Positive content reflects back well on your brand image as well as on a CEO’s personal brand.
8. Develop Promotional Social Media Content
Consistent social media branding should also run right through all of your promotional content.
The same messages of authenticity, excellence, and value for money should shine out of your ads just as brightly as they do with your informational content.
Whichever ad format you use (whether Tik Tok-like shorter video ads, Instagram stories, carousel ads, or product ads, for example), selling the value of your brand is crucial for running the most successful social media marketing campaigns.
9. Make Social Media Posts Frequently
Regular blogging is good for your website’s SEO. It’s the same on social platforms, just more often.
Try to plan content at least two or three weeks ahead.
Focus your social media branding strategy on creating regular content that really connects with your target demographics.
Aim for the highest possible levels of engagement with each post, and you’ll be more likely to achieve your digital marketing goals.
10. Create a Buzz on Social Media Platforms
Your content is what’s going to excite, engage, and convert followers.
But that’s not the only thing you can do to create a buzz.
Follow and Interact With Influencers
Influencers are social media users whose opinions and insights are highly respected by the people who subscribe to their channels.
If an influencer endorses your product, there’s a real chance that many of their followers will make a purchase from you.
Choosing the right influencer to partner with is important.
Would your content sit well with their content? Do they post regularly about the types of products and services you offer? Do their followers share their posts and comment frequently?
If so, reach out to them.
Be Responsive
Forty-four percent of U.S. social media users expect a response to their questions or complaints within the hour.
Be a brand that listens and responds.
Make a point to reply to every comment. Thank every new follower for subscribing with a personal message.
It also reflects really well on your brand’s engagement rating too.
Use Hashtags
Hashtags are words and phrases in users’ profiles and posts preceded by the hashtag symbol: #.
People on social media use hashtags to find out who is posting what about a particular subject they’re interested in.
If you use hashtags in your posts, your content could be seen by far more people than just your followers.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
UGC is content that social media users create about your products, services, or brand.
Always share UGC with your followers. In fact, encourage your followers to create UGC of their own.
Creators love this and, just as important, UGC is “social proof” for your brand—independent verification that someone likes what you do enough to post about it.
Reward Your Followers
Offer freebies and money-off coupons, and run competitions with great prizes just for your followers. This is a very successful social media branding strategy.
Rewards do not even have to be financial.
Make your followers feel exclusive by telling them something important about your brand or a new product or service before you tell the press.
Get Involved
Many social media platforms offer closed community areas, discussion groups, and live chat services.
Always search for questions and comments about your products and services. When you find something, make your brand part of the conversation.
11. Keep a Constant Eye on Your Metrics
Always make a point to monitor your social media metrics in real-time.
Metrics are a very powerful tool, and they allow you to keep an eye on how well your campaigns are performing.
Use insights from your metrics to:
- Create more of the kind of content your followers really want
- Find out which influencers are delivering the best results
Develop Your Social Media Branding and Marketing Strategy With Markerly
For over 10 years, our clients have trusted Markerly to deliver the greatest possible returns from their social media branding and profiles.To get in touch with our social media management team, fill out this contact form and let us know more about your brand, and we’ll let you know how we can help.
