Building a Brand With Social Media

We all know that social media can help establish your brand awareness and recognition online, including creating a human voice for your customers to interact with, simultaneously making your brand more accessible to new and existing customers.

Here are 6 strategies to help you build a credible online brand.

1. Establish social media platforms

There are a multitude of social media platforms to interact with. But you need to be selective of which platform to take advantage of. Spreading yourself too thin can have the negative effect of your brand not reaching your potential audience and becoming lost in the noise.

Let’s take a look at some of the most popular social media sites:

• Facebook is the social media boss, currently it has a whopping 3 billion active users on a monthly basis. This makes it essential for any brand to promote themselves on.
• X is an excellent platform to engage and influence through conversation.  It has proven to be the landmark social sphere for breaking news.
• LinkedIn is the social network for businesses and professionals targeted at B2B. It’s the ideal networking site for generating leads, connecting with businesses and finding new employees

2. Consistent imagery

Branding is all about imagery. It is important your brand is instantly recognisable. Ensure your brand image is consistent on all your social media sites. Make sure your username is consistent with your brand name. Try to register the same brand name across all channels.

The design look is crucial to creating a unique identity for your online brand. Make sure the same profile image is used on all your social media accounts, this includes cover photos as well. The imagery you use should reflect the colour palette and style from your own logo and branding guidelines.

3. Join the discussion

Building your own audience and establishing your image at the beginning will take time. The best way to generate a fan base is to “socialise”.

Begin by proactively connecting with the community. Start by finding social influencers in your field or subject area, who already have an established audience. Mention the social influencers’ name and connect with them directly, so they may help share your own content with their followers.

Join discussions groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. Particulate in conversations on X. By participating you build yourself as an expert in your field and sharing your knowledge can elevate your brand, so the community knows who you are.

4. Shareable content

You can take advantage of social media to syndicate your content to increase your brand’s visibility and potentially attract new customers and brand yourself as an authority in the field. Use social media as your brand’s voice and content.

To effectively help promote your brand recognition, create content that people will naturally share. Always ensure any content you share supports your own brand image.

5. Update and monitor regularly

Keeping your social presence regularly updated and fresh will keep your followers interested in your brand. It creates an image that you are an active and enthusiastic brand and someone who cares about their image online. Nobody likes to follow a social media account who only publishes once or twice a year.

Set up dates in your calendar to do this regularly. On the other hand, updating your profile too frequently, may annoy your audience.

6. Mistakes to avoid

If you ever receive any negative feedback, poor reviews or even low ratings, don’t tarnish your brand online by making yourself look aggressive or unresponsive. Or worse, using copy and pasted robotic responses. Always respond to comments in a timely fashion and instead use this situation to show how your brand’s commitment to quality customer service.

Many brands focus heavily in just promoting and selling products to their audience. People don’t go on Facebook to be sold to. They go on there to waste time, connect with friends, chat and watch silly cat videos. Make sure you engage with your followers, promote interesting and entertaining content.

Don’t ever buy fake followers or likes. This may make you look popular, but the whole point of social media is engagement. Artificial followers will never interact, promote or take an interest in your brand.

With so many of us already on social media sites, you can now actively join the ranks to become known in the industry. Directly connect with customers on these social media platforms. Be a brand others want to associate with and people will naturally follow you.

So, what you waiting for? Get socialising now!

SOURCE: Creative Bloq