There’s no doubt about it, social media is here to stay and it’s power to both connect as well as drive business success continues to grow.
For some company’s their social media branding presence has even more power to drive sales than their print and other physical media advertising combined. Social media is continually evolving and growing. No longer is there just a few platforms to engage with new or existing followers. Sure, there are a few standouts which are the staple outlets to reach the lionshare of people such as facebook, instagram and twitter. There are over 100 various outlets that you could be listed on, however most are usually not worth the time or effect to be a part of. Although 2 years ago, who ever heard of TikTok? Now that is quickly growing to be the largest social media platform in 2021.
Of course, effective social media branding is much more than simply hosting a Facebook page and posting cute content articles on Instagram. Effective social media marketing needs to be targeted and strategic. This is even more true for small businesses that need to connect with new customers as well as relying on repeat sales from loyal customers.
It starts with consistency throughout your brand image as well as your social media interactions. This includes things like generating content in the same tone and voice, throughout all your platforms, as well as in your e-mail marketing.
Your company’s brand image is more than just graphics and strategic logo use. It is also the experience your customers enjoy when they interact with your company or connect with your social media platforms. On a basic level it is how your company makes your existing and potential new customers feel, on a consistent basis.
For a small business to pull off in an effective and cost-efficient social media brand strategy, you need to address the following points.
Be Consistent On All Levels
There are a lot of nuts and bolts details that go into developing your brand. You need to make sure that your logo, your color palette, boilerplate, fonts, images, product photos, and descriptions are all just as consistent on all your social media platforms as they are in your physical location.
Not only does this make your company more recognizable, and thus easier to stand out from the competition, but it also sends a confident message to consumers that you aren’t going to change any time soon.
Of course, it’s easy to say you’re consistent on paper, but making sure you are consistent goes far beyond writing up a simple action guide for employees and social media managers. To ensure your branding is consistent on your website, eCommerce site, and social media platforms, you need to perform a thorough audit.
Having that social media branding audit performed by an outside third party firm might help catch consistency issues that you have become accidentally blind to. Then make it a point to perform regularly scheduled audits monthly or quarterly, with occasional spot checking in the interim to catch any bad habits in advance.
Be Prepared To Enhance Your Visual Branding
Once you are sure that all the nuts and bolts details are consistent throughout your online presence and social media branding, you can consider taking them up a notch. Please note that this is not a redesign, but rather an enhancement. It’s about adding videos where graphics used to be, and applying consistent filters to give your new and existing customers a robust experience. All without straying away from the consistent style of your established branding.
Enhancing your visual branding can be a difficult balancing act at first, as you don’t want to make such a profound change, yet still make minor upgrades. It helps to have a clearly defined style guide that all social media managers and content curators can follow. Then make sure the enhancements are being audited or spot checked first.
Develop A Unique Marketing Persona For Your Social Media Platforms
Different platforms tend to attract different demographic audiences. One example would be the way TikTok tends to attract younger consumers than Facebook. Twitter tends to offer up more digestible small bites than Instagram. Make sure that your company’s persona and voice are tailored to each of these platforms demographics, while also making sure to stay within the boundaries of your existing brand image and attitude.
If you have a dedicated content curation staff or social media managers, make sure to assign dedicated individuals for each platform. This ensures that you have the same individual using a consistent voice and style that will be more on-target throughout your presence on that platform.
Create Multiple Accounts For Different Platforms & Focus Topics
Larger companies have the benefit of being able to diversify their voice and presence across the wide spectrum of social media platforms. Creating multiple accounts allows you to focus on specific niches within your company’s established brand. This further helps you stay on voice, while also offering up relevant content for your audience.
Be Consistently Active On All Your Social Media Platforms
Social media has become so diverse and has such a high volume of users that it is all too easy for your content to get buried. The temptation here is to post frequently to make sure that even if your audience happens to scroll past your message that it will popup again in their feed or their notifications again.
Though there is such a thing as posting too much on any single social media platform. Overdoing it with a dozen posts a day per platform puts you at risk of annoying your audience or coming off as a new company that is desperate for attention and sales.
The happy middle ground is to make sure that your company’s branding persona is posting to each social media platform at least once per day, but not more than twice per day.
Offer Up Fresh Content
Just like how google assigns a lower rank to repetitive content on a website, your social media message is likely to get lost or buried in a user’s feed if it is little more than a retread of the previous day’s message.
Ideally, you want to be producing fresh content on a frequent basis. Even if this means taking a previous message and “Spinning” it with fresh wording and updating the graphics. You could even take messages from one platform and spin them for another platform. Just make sure to update the content and voice for the demographic audience.
Conclusion
Social media has developed into one of the most effective vehicles for attracting new customers and building brand loyalty with existing customers. With consistency in your brand image, tailored personas for each platform and fresh content, you can stand out from your competitors while setting your company up for future growth.
