How to Increase your Brand Influence on Social Media
Social media may be a marketing powerhouse, but from a business perspective, it might also make you want to pull your hair out.
You may find yourself marveling at the companies that have millions upon billions of followers — and then proceeding to refresh your company page to see if you gained any more likes on the photo you posted 12 minutes ago. But the world’s leading brands were there once, too. They all started from ground zero and found what worked best for them.
The key to smart social media marketing is differentiating your content. Let’s say you’re a brand that sells protein bars. Sure, your products might taste better than a competitor’s — they may even boast more health benefits, too. But without a social media presence, and an effective one at that, consumers have nothing drawing them to purchase your product over the one that was half-off at the store that day.
In this article, we will touch on some ways your company can drive brand awareness through social media marketing. This will be essential knowledge to help you create content that resonates with your consumers.
Branding, Branding, Branding
Brand image, brand voice, brand identity — you’ve heard it all.
There’s a good reason you’ve heard the word brand circulating around in regards to establishing a social media presence. One of the most important goals in marketing is to build brand recognition. This all starts with your company’s logo, mission statement, slogan and values —and it continues to show through your company’s messaging.
Creating branded content not only connects your consumers to your brand, but it allows you to maintain consistency in all your content — from social media posts to website updates to print marketing materials and everything in between. It ultimately makes your company more credible and recognizable to the public.
Think of your favorite brands for example. Chances are, you probably know their logo, slogan and maybe even their mission statement. Why are they so memorable to you? Is their product photography spectacular? Is their social media content engaging?
It’s because they’ve worked effortlessly to create a consistent brand image for themselves. Below are two steps you can take that will help you dial in on a branding strategy.
• Generate Brand Guidelines
If you haven’t already done so, your company should create guidelines to help dictate the “look and feel” of your brand. This includes everything from typography, fonts, product photography style and imagery to logo usage. Brand guidelines and style guides ensure your company’s content is consistent across all platforms — social media related or not.
• Find your Brand Voice
Think of social media as a tool that reinforces your company’s beliefs. That means your content should exhibit a behavior and tone that mimics your goal as a company. Upon creating content for social media, you should ask yourself: “Does this accurately reflect our CEO’s view of the company?”
According to Sprout Social, consumers have preferences in behaviors they look for in social media content. Their most sought-after behavior is honesty, followed by friendliness and helpfulness. The next leading behavior is humor — which can either work for or against your company, depending on the message you intend to send.
By defining the type of social jargon you want to use — whether that be short and snappy, or long and technical — you can easily weave your brand voice through all of your marketing content.
Keep up with Social Media Trends
Why is it that new, trendy micro brands create so much appeal, while some of the most tried-and-tested products are struggling to sell themselves?
Consumers, especially millennials and those that fall in Generation Z, continually seek products that scream “young” and “exciting”. Brands that enter the market nowadays are aware of this notion — and they are curating content with a younger consumer base and new social trends in mind.
This doesn’t mean that companies have to be new to gain more recognition on social media — they simply need to appear new. There are the consumer favorites like Oreo and Pepsi with enormous social media followings. Although they were established long before the era of social media, they have managed to evolve their marketing strategies to succeed in a digital space.
Companies are always capitalizing on emerging social media trends, including social chatbots, live streaming content, e-commerce and influencer marketing and story-like content. The best way to stay up-to-date with these trends is to look to the experts. Subscribe to social media blogs and join LinkedIn groups to educate yourself on current best practices in social media. Another way to learn about popular trends is to observe the behavior of competitor brands on social media. Whether it is product, food, service, or whatever, see how their creative teams have positioned them on the various platforms.
Know your Audience
Are your consumers super health-conscious, or are their purchasing decisions driven by convenience or getting the bang for their buck? Whoever your target audience is, it is important to integrate that knowledge into your marketing strategy. If you know what your audience values, you can easily curate content that will win them over.
You can do this by creating associations between your brand and your consumers’ values. Buzzwords like “eco-friendly”, “plastic reduction”, and “organic” will resonate with the environmentally-conscious millennial. If your target audience consists of savvy shoppers, they will be captivated by buzzwords like “extraordinary convenience” and “low prices”. These words will ultimately help you leverage your brand positioning, which determines how your offerings differ from your competitor’s. Start by asking yourself a few questions about your desired audience
What are their likes and dislikes? Their hobbies?
What kind of content draws their attention?
What are their favorite product attributes? Their favorite brands?
How often do they use social media, and which channels?
The list goes on and on, but you get the point.
It also wouldn’t hurt to invest some time into conducting primary research of your target audience. Resources like the Pew Research Center help you analyze how and where your audience spends their time online. It also shares information on public opinion toward certain types of content and social media in general.
As mentioned before, a shortcut to identifying your target audience is evaluating your competitor’s social media content. What makes their content stand out, and what social media are their followers receptive to? Knowing the demographic and psychographic profiles of your audience will help you strategically direct your marketing to specific social media outlets, which we will touch on in the next section.
Use a Multi-Channel Approach
When it comes to social media marketing, a “one size fits all” approach will generally not suffice. While Instagram may be a marketing powerhouse for one brand, it may fall short in promoting another.
Posting content on multiple social media channels ensures you reach all members of your target audience. If you’ll be investing time, money and effort on reaching your consumers, it pays to be absolutely certain they are engaging with your content. According to Adweek, a jaw-dropping 91% of retail brands use two or more social media channels.
Now that you know you should leverage multiple social media outlets to share your content, how do you go about choosing the best ones? This all comes back to knowing your audience. Here’s a breakdown to help you gain an understanding of the most commonly used platforms.
Decor, fashion, recipes and wedding inspiration dominate the Pinterest landscape — where mom bloggers and brides-to-be congregate for inspirational content. But the picture-dominated platform has helped many other brands, e-commerce and retail products gain traction.
The key to marketing on Pinterest is the use of boards, which are domains that house certain categories of pins. By creating boards with eye-catching titles, consumers can easily find content that’s relevant to their needs and interests. Because pins can link to your company blog or website, you’ll drive traffic to those channels as well.
A brand that has capitalized on Pinterest’s board feature is Kraft Recipes. Their Pinterest account doesn’t focus on promoting specific products. Instead, the company has over 80 themed boards with recipe ideas that just happen to include Kraft’s ingredients. Genius, right?
The model for all social media platforms that came after it, Facebook is the go-to channel for most businesses including home goods, apparel and big box brands.
Boosting a post is one of the most useful features for businesses looking to grow their audiences. When one of your posts performs well, you can choose to pay $5 to leverage that post — and hopefully have it seen by new eyes. You can customize the audience you reach with your boosted post, whether that’s existing contacts or prospects that align with your business page’s current audience.
Facebook continues to introduce new features to help businesses drive brand awareness. These includeFacebook Live, with videos that garner three times the engagement as traditional video content, and Facebook messenger chatbots, a form of automated messaging software that uses artificial intelligence to provide timely responses to consumers.
Micro-blogging dominates this platform, where each post is limited to 280 characters. It is a great home base for businesses related to sports, politics, entertainment or marketing.
Twitter is a sea of short snippets of information, so you need to ensure you construct your tweets with enticing content. This could include short videos, gifs, memes, polls, quotes or statistics. With the nature of its limited character count, Twitter is the go-to medium for customer service and addressing consumer concerns. Hashtags help brands tag their tweets and enter social conversations relevant to their content.
A photo is worth a thousand words, right?
This social sharing platform is all about visual content —we’re talking videos, photos, illustrations and any other graphic elements. It has emerged as a trendy platform popular among millennials, with its main interface showcasing visual snapshots from brands, celebrities and everyday individuals.
Instagram has a slew of helpful features for businesses. Like Facebook, Instagram gives you the ability to directly message users as well as live stream content. And similar to Twitter, content you post on Instagram is searchable through hashtags — giving you the ability to reach consumers that may be interested in your brand.
Cross-promote your brand
Sure, you may have some loyal Facebook fans following your company’s page, but are they aware you also share engaging content on other platforms? Adding social links to your profile biography will help direct users to other mediums where your company is active.
In addition, you can significantly increase your brands traction by including social icons in your other marketing content including emails, websites and event pages. When consumers are scrolling through your website or email campaigns, they’re able to click on social media icons directing them to your brand’s profile on each medium. It’s an easy addition to your existing digital marketing efforts, and it’s the perfect call to action to drive traffic to your social media channels.
The Bottom Line
Social media marketing isn’t an easy gig. A lot of trial and error might be involved in creating engaging content that reflects your brand. Establishing a consistent brand image, staying on top of social media trends, doing thorough research of your target audience and cross-promoting your brand on several social media platforms will help you gain the recognition you deserve.
And it never hurts to work with a content creation and branding studio that specializes in these areas.