When
it comes to social media, it isn’t just enough to be on it. You need to know how to be
effective with it. If you're not using social
media to build your brand, you are missing out. Globally, a third of all
digital consumers follow brands on social media, according to a 2016 report from
Global Web Index. Assuming you don't want to ignore a market of that size, you
should be asking yourself: How do I build my brand on social media? Here are
seven ways I’ve found from working with Coaching clients that make
the biggest difference:
1. Pick the right social media platform.
There are literally hundreds
of platforms, and more spring up all the time. Not all of them are right for
all brands, lead generation software company Wishpond notes. Facebook is by a wide
margin the biggest and most-used network, so most brands will have some kind of
presence there. However, if you sell to other businesses, LinkedIn may be a
better choice. Likewise, young consumers are more likely to be active users of
Snapchat or Instagram. See what kinds of people participate in the major social
networks and dedicate your brand building efforts to the ones that are popular
with your customers.
2. Be active.
One of the most
well-established rules of social branding is that you must be consistently
active if you are to effectively build your brand. A once-weekly Twitter post
or monthly Instagram photo are not going to accomplish much, if anything. For
this reason, it's best to focus on two or three carefully chosen social
networks and try to be active on them, rather than posting sporadically to a
half-dozen.
3. Engage.
Posting nothing but blurbs
about your brand's features and benefits is not likely to lead to engagement,
according to Convince
& Convert President
Jay Baer. Your brand's social media feed must include a healthy portion of
posts about interests that your customers have but that are not merely promoting
your brand. For instance, a food brand could post recipes or a financial
services brand could post household budgeting tips. And make sure your
engagement is two-way. In addition to posting your own content, like, share and
reply to others' posts.
4. Be visual.
Posts that include photos get much higher
engagement rates than
text-only posts. So include images whenever possible. Video, in particular, can
encourage engagement. And don't be afraid of using color to help you stand out
in the stream of postings.
5. Be consistent.
Create a strategy for your
social media brand-building efforts, advises Sproutsocial,
maker of social media management tools. And make sure that every post you make
supports that agenda in some way, even if it is not a straight-up plug. Avoid
random posts that don't connect to your overriding goal of customer engagement
with your brand. If you use colors, select the ones you will use in advance,
making sure they harmonize with and amplify your brand logo. And always use
your logo and brand name the same way, just as you do with your branding
message.
6. Get influencers to help you.
Starting a social media brand
from scratch can be labor-intensive and take a long time. If you can piggyback
on already-established social media participants, it can greatly shorten the
time, energy and other resources the task will consume. So share, like and
reply to posts from well-connected participants, and be sure to thank them if
they share, like or reply to one of yours.
7. Use social media for other types of
communication that help your brand.
Social media is increasingly
important for customer service and support. When customers are happy or unhappy
with an experience they have had with a business, today they immediately turn
to social media to report that to, potentially, millions of other users. The
good part of the way social media has become so important for posting customer
reviews is that businesses can also see the communications from satisfied or
dissatisfied customers. This provides an unparalleled opportunity to very
publicly thank a happy customer or solve an unhappy customer's problem. In the
process, it's possible to demonstrate to countless other customers and
prospects that your brand is dedicated to customer satisfaction.
Social media has become a
major communication channel between customers and the brands that serve them.
It has its own rules and brand-builders who want to succeed on social media
need to know those rules. But if a brand follows the social media principles
for success, social media is one of the biggest, most powerful and accessible
channels available for brand-building.
-Michael Noice