Brand building is the process through which businesses develop a unique identity in the market and set themselves apart from competitors. While there are several strategies to build a brand, companies mainly rely on social media because it helps them reach a wider audience and engage and interact with them. Social media is also cost-effective. That said, when building brand awareness through social media, businesses need to consider a few important things.
Understand the target audience
One of the first things to do when leveraging social platforms for brand growth is to understand the target audience. Also known as TA, the target audience is a pool of people who are more likely to buy the brand’s product or service. Understanding the target audience is important because it helps companies develop social media campaigns tailored to their tastes. For instance, if the target audience is children, the company can create social media posts using simple language, bright colors, and engaging visuals like cartoons.
Companies can create different personas to determine their target audience. Personas are profiles of potential clients’ personality traits, interests, preferred content types, favorite media platforms, and more. Each persona represents a different market segment, so brands can refer to them and create custom social media campaigns for each segment.
Establish the tone
Brands looking to build a strong identity using social media should focus on establishing their tone. The brand tone or voice refers to how the brand communicates with its audience. A brand could be playful and friendly or professional and formal when connecting with the target audience on social media.
Establishing the tone is a critical step because it creates a personality of the brand in people’s minds. Business owners should think hard about how they want the brand to sound to the audience and structure their copy accordingly. When choosing a tone, companies should consider their core values, the product or service they offer, and their target audience’s likes and dislikes.
Stay consistent
Most brands create accounts on multiple social media platforms because it helps reach more people and increase brand awareness. While being present on more than a single platform is not a problem, companies should stay consistent everywhere. This involves using the same cover photo, the same profile photo, the same bio, and also the same handle or username across sites. Using different photos or taglines on different platforms can confuse people and make it hard for them to identify the brand.
Consistency also applies to the tone of the brand. For instance, if a brand uses upbeat and quirky captions for their social media posts, they must stick to that approach almost all the time. Although it may not seem like a big deal, using a consistent tone is one of the best practices for social media brand management.
Choose the right platforms
Brands do not need to be present on all social media platforms. While doing that is possible, it can be quite exhausting. Not to mention, it is almost impossible to create new content for so many platforms constantly. So, when integrating social media into brand strategy, it is advisable to stick to a few relevant platforms and focus on better content creation.
Choosing the right social media platforms requires thought. Some platforms are popular for visual content, like pictures and short videos, while others are known to allow users to post short messages. So, brands must pick platforms depending on the type of content they want to share. It’s also critical to choose a site that is popular among the target audience. Selecting a platform may require research, but it is a necessary step for engaging audiences on social media.
Leverage influencer partnerships
If done correctly, influencer partnerships can be the most effective social media marketing technique. In this method, brands partner with social media celebrities or individuals with a massive online follower base. They ask these individuals to promote the business on their social media accounts and increase awareness.
Brands must work with influencers who share the interests of their target audience. Finding the right influencers to partner with the brand might be challenging. However, once that challenge has been conquered, business owners can leverage this relationship and convert more leads.
Use social media tools
Businesses that use social media must learn to use social media tools. The top social media tools for branding make it easier to run online campaigns and measure social media branding success.
Scheduling tools
These tools take away the laborious work of toggling between various social media platforms and manually uploading each post or campaign at odd hours. Teams can use scheduling tools to schedule social media functions to be carried on automatically at a later date and time.
Monitoring tools
Monitoring tools analyze a marketing strategy and let the brand know if, when, and why it needs improvement. They also help track the performance of an ongoing social media campaign.
Listening tools
These tools help businesses evaluate what’s being said about them online by reading through comments, posts, tweets, and reviews. Assessing this information can help the business realign its marketing strategy if necessary.
Engagement tools
These tools help measure how effective a social media branding strategy is. They notify the team about the number of likes, views, comments, and similar statistics.