7 Tricks for Successful Social Media Branding
An essential part of branding a business is developing and maintaining an online presence. Your business probably already has several social media pages up and running. But are they leveraged to brand your business the way you want them to?
Of course, your business’s social media page needs to be handled differently from your personal accounts. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to ease yourself into the process of becoming a professional poster. Below are seven of the best tricks to turn your business’s social media page(s) into valuable parts of your branding campaign.
1. Find Your Followers
Photo by Geralt
If you’re a marketing professional, you probably know who your brand’s target audience is. Your social media campaign is just another way to make genuine connections with this niche, so make sure that whatever you post speaks to your audience. You need to establish your presence on the sites that your target is most likely to use. If your audience skews older, don’t expect them to follow you via Instagram or Snapchat. Instead, learn which sites they sign up for and find them there. If you’re not sure where to begin, investigate a well-established brand in your field to see how they reach their audience.
2. Learn to Keep it Consistent
It’s imperative that your social media presence is consistent; this point applies to several aspects of your branding campaign. Your social media page should match all of your other marketing materials. Make sure that your page features the same logo and color scheme, as well as the same voice, in all of your copy — more on voice later.
Consistency also applies to your posting schedule. You don’t want to overload your followers’ feeds with constant posts, but you don’t want to be completely silent, either. Create and follow a posting schedule so that you stay on top of — and track the frequency of — your social media activity.
Pro Tip: Don’t be afraid to include a spontaneous post every once and a while. If something groundbreaking happened in your industry, feel free to share or post about it. This tactic further proves to your audience that you value interaction and connections.
3. Get Your Audience Involved
Once you have your social media schedule in place, figure out what sort of posts will engage your audience. There’s no formula for this, so you’ll have to find out what will work best for your audience. If you’re part of a larger business or corporation, it might be nice to post photos that highlight a specific staff member working hard or photos of your team doing community service projects. These can humanize what might seem like a business-only business from the outside. You can also introduce thought-provoking articles and discussion-starting questions to get your followers engaged.
4. Be Sure to Talk Back
It’s every social media marketer’s dream to have an engaged and talkative audience. Once this dream comes true, though, many marketers fail to keep the communication going. If one of your followers turns to social media to ask you a question, it’s your responsibility to acknowledge their contribution and thank them for it. Social media is becoming one of the best places for businesses to take care of customer service issues, so sometimes a “thank you” isn’t enough. If you use this new avenue of communication to really talk to your followers, they’ll look at your brand with even more respect than they did before. Who doesn’t want that for their business?
5. Stick to Your Voice
The voice you use on your social media site should emulate all of the other copy that your company shares with its clientele. The social media voice that you use may be a touch more conversational, since you’ll most likely be chatting back and forth with followers who will comment on and respond to your posts. It shouldn’t be jarringly different, though. Your most loyal customers will notice the discord and lose interest in what your out-of-tone social media voice has to say.
6. Share Valuable Tidbits
As mentioned in #4, you’ll want to post what sparks a conversation and keeps your followers engaged. Sometimes, though, they’ll simply want one-sided information sharing, and, if you do it right, they’ll trust you as a solid source of knowledge. Take, for example, the plumbing and drain pros at Mr. Rooter. The company’s website has plenty of information regarding their services. At the very top of the site, you’ll notice that these guys even have a blog. Written from the perspective of the logo character’s wife, the Mrs. Rooter Blog is compiled of several entries with tips to help customers keep their plumbing systems running smoothly. This type of information is not only helpful, but it makes clients feel like they can trust Mr. Rooter: would a sketchy plumber provide pipe-maintenance tips, or hope clients would just call him for every problem?
7. Track Your Progress
As soon as you start a social media campaign, you’ll also want to analyze your success. Google Analytics, among other sites, will tell you how many viewers your site is reaching, and which social media links brought them there. This information can help you gauge how well your campaign is doing, as well as areas that need improvement.
It’s good to have goals for your campaign from the start. If you track your progress, you’ll have a much easier time tweaking your plan along the way. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that no marketing campaign is going to be perfect from the beginning. A well-maintained social media campaign is open to corrections along the way. Stay involved with your customers and your social media campaign will help bring you and your company the success you’ve envisioned.
[image error]
