We all understand the importance of social media with our advertising and promotional campaigns. But do we use it to our best advantage? Social media branding has become a new “buzz word” in many technology circles these days. The ability to brand your company using the great tool of social media is one of the most important things you can do to create hype for your brand.
All of the social media platforms are valuable in different ways, and you need to be on as many of them as possible. However, you should pick and choose the time you spend on each one and make sure you are spending the most time with the ones that are giving you the best results in terms of your branding.
In the upcoming year of 2017, as we all begin to make plans for the new year and what we wish to accomplish, think about how you will use social media to brand your business and your company ideas and strengthen your place on the web and in the minds of your customers.
Define Your Purpose
Before you launch a social media branding campaign or attempt to escalate your place on the web, think about what your purpose is. There are many different reasons you may use social media.
- Social selling– Social selling is a great strategy that allows you to use the advantages of an interactive platform such as Twitter or Facebook to promote sales. If your goal is to sell more through social media, then you will want to think about how you can best use these platforms to promote your products and create a sales funnel from your social media outlets.
- Content marketing– Content is king. It still is the case that content is important. You need to market that content in all of the places your potential customers will be. Part of your customer acquisition plan should be to engage and excite customers about your products and services and get them to complete your “call to action” to purchase your product.
- Customer support– What better way to engage your customers and offer support than on your social media sites? People are already talking on social media about whether they were happy with your products so why not leverage this power by getting involved in the customer support aspect right on your Facebook or other social media pages?
- Information– Giving free information is something people will keep coming back for. Not only do people respond to offering something free, but they will appreciate the ability to get the information they need to achieve some goal or to accomplish something by learning how to do it through good information online.
- Creating value– “Field of Dreams” had it wrong. But they only had it partly wrong. “If you build it, they will come, but only if you create something valuable.” This is the way the idea should be stated. By creating value around your brand on social media, you will be able to get more people interested in your products and services and get it in front of your target audience faster.
What Social Media Branding Does
Social media branding is not just about posting things on Facebook or Twitter. It’s about creating branding for your company. Look at this example of Coca-Cola’s Facebook page. It is nothing elaborate, but it includes the essential elements of what we think of when we remember the Coca-Cola name. Their logo that we know so well is in the upper left-hand corner to serve as the profile image. Then we see the longer album cover that also carries the Coca-Cola branding.
Keeping Your Brand Image Consistent
All of this together brings home the ideas of Coca-Cola and everything the brand stands for. This is a great example of social media branding. Coca-Cola understands the importance of keeping your brand image consistent across all channels. This doesn’t mean you cannot vary the images, videos, or content that you put out. But your logo should be the one thing that is consistent and predictable so that when a customer or visitor comes to your site, your social media page, or your YouTube channel, they should easily say, “Oh yeah, that’s that company I know.”
What is Branding Really?
When you think about it, it’s all about the branding. Branding is the packaging of a unique idea, company, and product into one recognizable form. This means that, no matter where you see it, you know it’s the same company. Be creative and unique, yes. But make your logo and your brand assets consistent.
Defining Your Brand Personality
What is your brand personality? Social Sprout has something interesting to say about this. In one of their point on their post on social media branding, they state, “Your brand’s personality should be reflected in your social media posts. That means developing a social media voice.” (Social Sprout)
This means that you should communicate your brand ideals and personality in every post. If you search some companies and look at their Twitter or Facebook posts, you wonder what they are selling or what they stand for. This is because too often company owners don’t have the time to maintain their social media accounts the way they should. They may leave it to freelancers who post things they are interested in instead.
This is dangerous for a brand that has as its primary goal to promote your brand ideas and ideologies to the world. People will become confused when there are posts that vary too much from your central idea. So make sure you monitor your posts closely and also see reactions and respond to them when possible.
Post Often
Another important goal you should have in 2017 is to post often. The more people see your posts, the more you stay on their radar. This can lead to higher levels of social engagement and customer acquisition. Also, if you are selling something, it puts you in front of your target audience much more often than if you just sent out emails once a week or posted once per month. View our list of best times to post on social media infographic.
Cross Promotions are Important
If you want to focus on increasing your branding potential on social media, try cross-promoting your brand from one social network to another. This will increase your traffic to both sites and will also increase your branding presence in the minds of viewers. Remember, the more they see you on multiple platforms, the better your brand will rank with customers and the search engines.
The Share Factor
Don’t forget one of the key elements and benefits of social media: the share factor. People get on Facebook to share things. Tap into this natural tendency by creating shareable content and include videos and photos that people will want to share.
Better yet, create an infographic that combines the best of both worlds all in one graphic. Infographics use the power of social media along with the power of visual design and data aggregation to create a powerful way to promote your brand on social media platforms.
Check out our impressive portfolio of infographics and see how we can generate a great infographic for you that will increase your branding in 2017.
Infographics are what we do, and it’s a great place to start in the coming year to get your brand noticed, using the power of social media to bring it all together!
