Studies show that 90 percent of people buy from brands they follow on social media. Hence, social media branding is an essential way to attract customers to your business.
Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn allow businesses to create deep-rooted and memorable customer experiences. In this article, let’s learn how you can use these critical marketing channels to build a robust social brand that stands out and stays competitive.
1. Develop a Unique Content Voice
How do you create social media content that sounds like your brand? A smart strategy is to work on developing a unique voice first.
Is your brand voice fun, humorous, and lighthearted? Or is it considerate, simple, and down-to-earth? You need to find words that represent your brand.
What you can then do is develop a content style guideline that aligns with these emotional values. That means you need to use words, phrases, and design elements that arouse a certain set of emotions. And do it consistently.
These emotions reinforce your brand imagery in the minds of your fans and followers. To ensure voice consistency, you need to perform periodic content audits.
2. Choose Your Platforms
Let’s face it; there are plenty of social media platforms where you can publish branded content. But are they all worth your time and energy? To choose the best ones, you need to know some critical details.
Is your target audience active on a particular platform? Let’s take, for instance, an e-commerce fashion store. Would platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn work for branding such a business? They would not.
Another good benchmark is to learn about the monthly active users on social platforms in your consideration list. Compare the user-base of different platforms before making an apt choice.
Selecting the best social media platforms is a vital success factor in your social media brand-building efforts.
3. Publish Regularly
A regular publishing schedule is the key to growing your impressions and building brand recall.
You must create content for prospects in different phases of the buyer’s journey: awareness, interest, decision, and retention. To find fresh content ideas, keep an eye on important festive holidays and national events.
For optimizing audience engagement, it’s vital to pre-define your posting frequency as well.
To maintain a daily publishing schedule, you must work with a dedicated social media marketing resource. Alternatively, you can choose to hire one of the recommended social media marketing companies.
Regular social media posting also helps analyze content ideas that are working well for your social media audience.
4. Embrace Native Social Content
What is native content? When you create content to suit the format of a specific social media platform, it’s called native content. It simply means you don’t post a link that directs users to another website or blog, but users stay and consume the post within the same platform.
So, if you create a snippet of content and publish it as a LinkedIn post update or poll, you’re likely to get better results than sharing a blog post link. It’s because social media platforms want users to stay on their site.
5. Respond Quickly
76% of U.S. consumers expect brands to respond to social media messages within 24 hours.
Whether social media followers are sending you an appreciation message or complaining about poor service, they deserve a quick reply.
Make sure you have a customer service representative or a community manager who checks messages and social media mentions every few hours.
When you’re out there to build a positive online brand reputation, social customer service plays a key role.
6. Share Posts in Social Media Groups
As a marketer, it’s a part of your job to build brand equity among people who matter to your business.
Social media communities provide you with an opportunity to connect with specific interest groups. You can find groups where you can post content and generate qualified leads.
Plus, these are places where you can post exciting content formats. For example, you can create polls on Facebook groups and get your audience to start interacting with your brand.
At the same time, you can share your opinion on relevant social issues. The strategy can help you towards purposeful and responsible brand-building. It can help you build a tribe of followers with common values and goals.
7. Measure Your Social Brand Equity
Finally, how do you know if you’re moving in the right direction?
Measuring social brand effectiveness is the right way to determine whether you are using the right ingredients for your social media recipe.
A simple way is to keep an eye on your social media platform’s analytics dashboard. You’ll find one on all social platforms. It will give you a quick overview of your content impressions and engagement.
You can also head to your Google Analytics account and see the traffic and leads you’re generating from your social media handles. Direct traffic is another metric that tells you how many people use your brand name to search for your business.
Don’t forget to check your total brand mentions and the reach and sentiments of those mentions using a suitable online reputation management tool.
This way, you can understand the results of your social media branding efforts and work towards improving your strategies.
Final Thoughts
It’s a great time to invest marketing dollars in social platforms most suitable for your business. Using the right channels and messaging can help you build an enviable online reputation that converts into repeat sales and a consistent revenue stream.
