Branding in the Age of Social Media

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Times were different before social media presence. Companies had other ways of communicating with their customers and increasing their sales, but the moment social media appeared it has changed. And it became highly important for building your brand and your brand voice, as one of the most effective tools to stand out of the crowd. Especially because we’re currently in the golden era of social media, where everyone’s online and easily reachable. So, we can say that social media branding is all about using the right tools and methods to engage with your target audience on social media platforms.

Social Media Branding Strategies

It is not just enough to be on social media. You need to understand how it works and set your goals. Without understanding what your goals are, who your target audience is, and what they want, it’ll be hard to achieve results on social media. So, develop a social media branding strategy in the right way, because you can automatically drive traffic and convert leads.

What you must know is that it is not something that happens in one day and it often takes a lot of patience. You need to take your time, resources and be dedicated. It is actually one of the hardest things to do because you have to take a look at the bigger picture, but benefits are huge. First, try to build a brand across all social media platforms that you see your company will benefit from.

Then, ask yourself what exactly are our competitors doing differently?

If we think wisely and research smart, we can see that all successful social media branding campaigns have one thing in common. They are all investing time and money to improve their strategies. They’re consistent, regular, and actively engaging with their followers on all of their posts and platforms. Learning from our competitors is the best way to make sure we can actually get ahead of them.

If you want to build your social media brand more, here are the top 3 strategies you could implement:

Brand identity

The first step to a great strategy is to build a unique brand identity. You need to define your brand, what it has to offer, how does it differentiate from others, what can you offer? The clearer and understandable your answers are, it will be easier for you to create the right message because social media networks became so crowded. That’s why it is vital that your organization develops a clear and compelling brand identity. To develop a strategy that articulates a clear and unique brand identity.

Content

When you focus on creating useful and appealing content, you are automatically creating a stronger brand reputation. It is often said that the type of content you share on social media shapes your brand. So, you need to understand what content will perform best and gain visibility for your brand or business. It is crucial because that same content can crush your social media marketing campaign. So, sharing the appropriate content on each network should not be ignored. Tip – don’t be afraid to use visual content because articles with images receive 94 percent more views.

Photo 1. Writing blog content

Analytics

Without analytics, you will not be able to track the data necessary for your brand improvement. So, include analytics in your approach. You will be able to study your competition and see where you rank in search engines. To know who is following you, what are they engaging with, and how often they are responding to or commenting on your content. This will help you to improve your content strategy and build a better picture of your target audience.

Related: How to Define Your Brand Voice

7 Benefits of Going Social for Your Brand

Let’s explore the ways your brand can benefit from going social.

Increased reach

Every day there’s an increasing number of people going social. Users tend to use social media for communication, searching for information or to looking for products or reviews. Placing your brand right in the middle is a great way to make sure you’ve seen and your product reaches as many people as possible. There has never been a better or more relevant time to start actively engage your brand all across the internet.

New marketing opportunities

When you’re focused only on a single market, usually a domestic one, you have a very small chance to target other foreign markets across the world. Going social offers you something new and exciting – the chance to increase your audience and reach exponentially. As a result, it’s easier to find new customers from multiple different markets. Moreover, creating new market opportunities is a great way to humanize your brand and show others what you’re truly passionate about in the long run.

Brand awareness

By using the right tools and strategies on social media, you can increase your brand awareness. It’s all about creating high-quality and impressive content about which will consumers talk about and make interactions with it. Therefore, let’s not to forget the fundamentals of all social media, be social. Engage with your audience as much as you can, build a stronger connection with them and see it return tenfold.

Advertising

Above all, social media is great for advertising. You can advertise in many ways, that depends on the platform. Try out by advertising with pictures on Instagram or advertise via video ads on YouTube! Many platforms offer businesses a business profile feature. These include various tools like insights into performances, metrics, statistics and many more.

SEO

Social media helps to build the authority of your page by giving useful social pointers to search engines like Google. In order to improve your SEO rankings, it’s not enough just to optimize your site and regularly publish a blog article. By sharing content from your blog to the corresponding social media account, you’re sending a strong signal to search engines. This is one of the main reasons people go social. Make sure to start building links in order to improve your organic search results!

Added value

Connecting with your clients will add value to your brand and product. Build your respect among them and make sure to take care of them. Engage with them directly and show them exactly what you’re all about. Social media can help you to make a great first impression to all potential customers. Don’t shy away from committing resources towards social media marketing, as nothing could ever replace a customer-friendly brand.

Customer support

Many brands decided also to use social media to provide some sort of customer support service. This way, if customers have questions or uncertainties about something, you can easily answer them in real time. Social networks became the number one choice for users when it comes to contacting a customer support service. Among millennials, it’s preferred to use chat as a primary communication channel, which proves that going social for brands is important.

Difference Between Business Branding & Personal Branding

What you need to know is that both personal and business branding have significant importance in today’s world. Business branding provides the name to the organization while personal branding improves the image of the entrepreneurs who are behind the success of that particular organization. So business or personal, be authentic. Be you.

Photo 2. The process of business and personal branding

Business Branding

A business brand is built around an identity you create for your business. Business brands take more time and work to create because rather than use the name you were born with, you need to create one from thin air. This means crafting meaningful words, and it is hard work. But it is worth the effort.

Personal Branding

It is well known that is easier to build a personal brand because of the tools that surround us. When you build a personal brand, you immediately differentiate yourself from your competitors because you are different than your competitors. Personal brands can be flexible, and as an individual, you are 100% unique.  And that is what makes personal branding so powerful.

So whatever decision you make, base it on what benefits brings you the most revenue.

Related: Brand Loyalty

Conclusion

Building your brand image on social media easily becomes one of the main ways a business can gain more consumers. By going social and signing up for different types of social media platforms, there’s a variety of bonuses one can achieve. Creating new market opportunities, building awareness and adding value to your brand are among the most important ones.

Building a social media presence isn’t easy, on the contrary. It takes a lot of effort and dedication, as not all social platforms are the same. Different rules apply, as certain ones might be better suited for your brand than others. Identifying the right ones might be crucial to the visibility and success of your business in the long run.