Social media runs the world.
And as a business owner, you can’t ignore this fact.
If you want to build a strong brand, you should do it using Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media apps. You don’t have to pay for ads to build a strong brand either – you could start advertising on Twitter organically if you wanted to.
Don’t worry.
You don’t have to be a digital marketing expert to develop a social media branding strategy that will work for your business.
In this article, we will explain what steps you should take to build your brand on social media and retain high profits in the long run.
Step #1 – Analyze your current social media branding situation
If you want to develop an effective branding strategy, you should analyze different aspects of your business first.
You should conduct research to find out whether your brand and your products are a good fit for social media.
To do that, answer the following questions before branding yourself on social media:
- Are the products related to your niche represented on social media?
- Do your closest competitors market their products on social media? Which platforms do they use the most?
After that, you should research your target audience and find the answers to a few more questions:
- Do your customers use social media? Which platforms are their favorites?
- If your customers are active Reddit users, which communities are they a part of?
- How much time do your customers spend on each platform every day?
- At what specific time of the day do your buyers use social media more actively?
- What types of content related to your products (e.g., how-to videos, behind-the-scenes photos) engage the audience the most?
Once you collected all data necessary, you can decide what social media platforms to use for building a brand.
Additionally, consider what type of content to create and at what time of the day to publish new posts.
Step #2 – Create business profiles
The next step you should take when branding yourself on social media is to create catchy business profiles.
Here is a short guide for you.
- Use your brand logo as a profile picture across all social media platforms. It will help you to create a consistent visual brand identity and make your brand logo recognizable.
- Write an intriguing bio. Your bio may contain the motto of your brand, as well as the mission and vision of your company. Besides, a bio may include a description of your products and shipment information. If you find it challenging to describe your brand, use may use writing services like Studicus and TrustMyPaper, or hire freelance writers via Upwork.
- Come up with a unique branded hashtag and put it in the bio. Encourage your customers to use your hashtag and spread the word about your brand on social media.
- Add essential contact information. Make it clear for social media users where and how they can buy your products.
Step #3 – How to use social media segmentation for business
In some cases of social media branding, it’s not enough to have one business profile on a chosen social media.
If you target a few specific groups of buyers, you have to walk the extra mile.
This means segmenting your target audience and creating two or more accounts.
Let’s say you sell two different groups of goods: men’s clothing and home decor items.
To appeal to each specific group of buyers, you should create two separate Instagram profiles.
In the first account, you will share men’s fashion tips.
In the second account, you will publish interior design ideas.
Do you want to build an international brand on social media?
Then you should understand that your social media and branding must be accessible not for native English speakers only.
For example, if most of your customers come from Japan and China, you should create two additional social media profiles specifically for these regions.
For an effective branding strategy that targets these markets, your content must be written in local languages, and it must resonate with the local audience.
Step #4 – Create content that adds value to your target audience
Now let’s talk about how the quality of social media content matters when building a brand.
If you want to build a strong brand, you should publish engaging, relevant, and useful posts on a regular basis.
You should tell your followers more about your company, your key employees, and founders.
And, you should discuss the values and principles your brand promotes.
If it’s right for your brand, consider posting user-generated content (UGC), too.
L’Oreal is a great example of building a brand on social media.
Between glossy studio shots and product highlights, they include staff features like this one with the hashtag #weareloreal.
These posts show the human side of an enterprise, letting people relate to the organization more while creating a holistic brand image.
“Brand building is not about using intrusive marketing to get short-term success. It’s about gaining trust and making lasting customer relationships in order to achieve long-term success.”
Hilary Burns, a social media writer at SupremeDissertations
It means you shouldn’t publish too many posts that market your products.
Instead, an effective social media branding strategy means you should share posts that provide valuable information to your customers.
Step #5 – Maintain branding consistency across all social media channels
To achieve the best results in branding on social media, you should keep the language and tone of voice consistent across all platforms.
So before you start working on content production, you should decide what style and tone of voice you will use to engage your audience and present your brand in the most favorable light.
Your tone of voice can be professional, educational, serious, friendly, conversational, entertaining, flirty, or even sassy.
Your language can be simple and informal or industry-specific and formal.
Additionally, you should decide whether you will or will not use slang, internet acronyms, professional and scientific terms, and shortenings.
Step #6 – Interact with your customers on social media
The great news when it comes to social media and branding is that modern customers do like to interact with brands on social media.
So once you create business accounts on social media apps, be ready to monitor the comments and direct messages.
For building a successful brand, you should answer all the messages, whether they are positive or negative ones.
You should say “thank you” to your happy customers for choosing your products.
And you should say “sorry” to your unsatisfied customers and try to fix the situation.
Wrapping up: Final thoughts on social media branding
Today, you have all the tools necessary to understand how to use social media for business success.
So, nothing can hold you back from developing an effective branding strategy and bringing it to life.
Use this article as a guide and you will avoid the mistakes that your competitors tend to make.
About the Author: Marques Coleman is a blog writer at Bid 4 Writing and GrabMyEssay. He specializes in marketing and copywriting. Moreover, he is an avid traveler and always tries to learn something new.
