Ask three persons around you; how much time do they spend scrolling through their social feed? Their answers will be enough for you to understand the significance of social media in an average person’s life. To be honest, we all can’t help checking our news feed after short gaps. However, these are not just people that we get in touch with. Other than that, social media allows us to engage and interact with the brands in a way we have never done before.
By the same token, social media is no less than an untapped opportunity for all the emerging businesses, who haven’t embraced the powerful medium yet. Social channels are being used for a variety of purposes, whether social selling, content marketing or advertisement, social media provides you a perfect opportunity to reach, engage and influence your target audience.
Equally important, with so many competitors vying for the same eyeballs on in the digital sphere, you need a pitch-perfect and well-proportioned branding strategy that can instantly click with the audience eventually gets your business recognized in the market.
So if you really want to emerge as a distinctive brand in the sea of the same, first you need to understand the formula of ‘perfect social media branding.’ This blog is going to walk you through 4 of the most useful tips and tricks that will help you promote your business across various social networks.
Create a Persona and be Consistent with It
Think of your brand as a person. Now think of the personality traits your brand possesses.
- What’s your brand’s name?
- What are your brand’s values?
- What’s your primary brand message?
- In what tone your brand speaks to its audience?
Once you are acquainted with all these characteristics of your brand, you are good to go to make it known to the audience. Needless to say, there is no better way than social media interaction to get this job done.
When you are interacting with your audience, you want to appear as a personality which is firm, captivating and consistent throughout various platforms. If a brand does not know how to deliver their message in a uniform tone with consistent visuals, that means it has failed to build a persona in the digital sphere. On the contrary, a consistent, well-planned and well-executed brand message will get you recognized quickly in the market.
If each of your social profile looks as if it is owned by a different firm, it will sever the connection between you and the user. This is why you want your branding to be consistent across all the networks.
Believe it or not, people tend to give more attention to a message which is being continuously transferred in a consistent tone. As per the study, almost 60% of the millennials prefer consistent brand experiences on social platforms. Consistency can be reflected through multiple elements which you choose for your social branding, for example, your color palette, style of visuals, imagery and the list goes on.
All your social media posts should be able to reflect the original look and feel which is obvious from your web design, your physical storefront, your custom logo design, and other branding collaterals. Henceforth, your social branding should be able to recall your original brand identity on which your branding efforts are based upon.
Develop a Voice
Like we have said earlier, your brand’s personality should be reflected through your social media posts. How will you make it possible? Simple, you need to establish your voice first.
- How do you want to come across?
- What image do you want to establish in the eyes of the audience?
This is something known as your social media brand voice. Developing your brand voice may take some time. However, it gets easier when you are aware of the following aspects.
- Your company’s culture
- Your target audience
- Your company’s culture: Your company’s culture refers to your special and exclusive feature. Something that sets you apart from the crowd. For example, you may find loads of athletic equipment and fitness wear in the market so why would you opt for the Nike? It’s because of their brand messaging strategy and voice that they have set. When you see Nike’s Swoosh, you know what it denotes. It signifies; power, athletics, motivation, and fitness. Upon going through the social media accounts of Nike, you will get a clear idea of how they have established a robust image with their intense yet thought-provoking brand voice.
- Your Target Audience: You cannot set your brand voice until or unless you don’t know about your audience. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it’s your first step that you should get done with before embarking on your marketing journey. You must know what your audience wants and what tone will be suitable for them? For instance, if you are a makeup brand you must know what’s popular with this audience and where do they spend most of their time online, like Instagram tutorials and YouTube makeup videos. In short, you know which type of content they prefer. Keeping things in mind, you will optimize your social media tone and strategy accordingly.
Customize Your Content for Each Social Platform
If your social media strategy involves creating a single post for various social platforms, shooting it across all the networks and call it a day, then you are doing nothing good for your brand. This approach is going to make you look like a lazy brand who doesn’t even care to treat their audience with something new. Trust me nobody wants to see a stale post again and again on different social platforms.
If you really want to emerge as an authentic brand, you need to include tailor-made posts for specific social channels. Not to mention, social platforms have their own style of presenting content to the audience. For example, the audience at Instagram prefers beautiful images both filtered and unfiltered, Twitter brings a whole another experience to them as a microblogging site, on Snapchat people loves to see raw BTS content, Facebook again prefers images, long written posts, videos, while Pinterest caters with infographics and stuff like this. In a nutshell, each platform is built to bring a whole new and unique experience to its users.
It’s better for you to understand the unique native functionalities every social network brings to its users. Make the most out of it and try not to waste the opportunity you have with these social networks. Modify your content by keeping the specialty of each platform in mind, alter your message before you send it across. This way you will attract more followers in half the time, and the audience will consider you as a legit brand who puts considerable time and effort in their social strategy.
Make the Most of Your Bio
Your bio/profile section is an opportunity for you to write a clean, crisp and straightforward introduction of our company and what you do. Many businesses who are not familiar with the importance of the field leave it vacant, thus forgo the opportunity of sending a compact yet effective brand introduction. Prominent brands like Nike and Red Bull have the privilege of writing short slogans in the bio as they have established their name and people already know enough about them. However, not all companies are fortunate enough to do the same.
Treat your bio as a golden opportunity and craft a short yet eye-catching and easily understandable description of your brand. Don’t beat about the bush while writing your profile; no motivational quotes, no unnecessary hashtags, no bullshit. Keep it simple, keep it straight with relevant hashtags wherever needed. Here is an example how your bio should look like.
Key Takeaway
Social media plays a vital role in building your influence in the digital sphere. Over the last decade, social media has been transformed into the most interactive platforms for the brands to convey their voice across the target market. Consistency is the key when it comes to social media branding, be it visuals, topics or overall campaign, consistent and frequent messages, sent with a well-developed brand voice will get you identified quickly and effectively, no matter which network you are using. Each of your posts should be tailor-made for the platform it is being designed for, nothing should be sent casually as if you post it just for the sake of posting. Lastly, your profile should be able to describe the whole idea of your business in a nutshell. If you get the grasp on the above mentioned social media tips and tricks, you will be able to leverage the social media platforms to make the best of it for their brand recognition.
