What is Social Media Branding?
It is the act of adapting & managing your company’s brand image/identity and market position, across social media platforms, so as to create an awareness, connect & engage with your target audience/customers.
Branding on social media platforms has become vital for business growth in our fast paced world and has the potential to increase revenues substantially.
Why Social Media Branding?
- Social media branding (when done correctly):
- makes your company/product/services memorable
- increases customer engagement and loyalty
- tells your potential consumers that their brand is active and focused on thriving communication with consumers
- helps you stand out from the crowd/your competitors
- gives you credibility & authority in your industry
- makes you relatable
Did you know that around 75% of small businesses use social media branding to attract new customers.
Are You?
Let’s break this down for you in 5 actionable steps, shall we?
Step 1 – Cover the basics:
Have a consistent logo, bio/description, handle, post color palette & design, across all social media platforms.
Action steps:
- Do an audit across all of your accounts to ensure logos, cover/banner images, bios, posting cadences and handles are consistent with your brand guidelines.
- Layout a consistent posting schedule for each platform and ensure that your content aligns with the look and feel of the branding you’ve established.
Step 2 – Enhance your branding with visuals:
So now that you have a consistent brand identity across social media platforms, it’s time to enhance that even further.
Action steps:
- Layout your visual brand guide to include fonts, their uses & color schemes
- Create branded templates for different type of posts
- Create photos and videos that keep your brand’s aesthetic and color palette/scheme in mind. The posts should flow seamlessly into each other.
With this process and with time, your customers will see the consistency in posts and begin to recognize when a post is from you without seeing your brand’s logo or social media handle. This type of brand recognition should be the ultimate goal for your social media branding efforts.
Step 3 – Develop your target audience marketing persona:
Your marketing personas will vary across different social media platforms and if you use the same content across all platforms, there is a chance that it won’t resonate the same way it does on the other.
Action steps:
- Create multiple audience marketing personas based on the social media platform you will be using.
- Examine each social media platform’s different demographics or you can setup listening queries if you need to understand your audience
- Create content based on the different marketing personas.
Step 4 – Establish your brand voice & tone:
Captions and copywriting are the next important part of social media branding. This should lay focus on details like brand persona, company catchphrases, personality traits and vocabulary. The smallest of details, like whether you use the term “clients” or “customers” will help you keep your writing consistent.
Action steps:
- You need to develop and write out your brand voice and tone guide. If required, use social media listening tools to validate some of your writing style decisions.
- Audit your social media posts to see where and how you can improve in voice and tone.
- Make sure that your entire team, including social media experts and customer support, is writing new posts with this voice and tone guide.
Step 5 – Be consistent, listen attentively & take appropriate actions:
Every branding & marketing strategy needs to be measured, without which will be running around like a headless chicken.
Pay attention to the important metrics & insights across the social media platforms, use third-party tools where required and change strategies accordingly. Ensure to engage & respond to all engagement activities.
