7 Steps to effectively use social media to grow your brand
Whether you are a person or a brand and need to sell products, gain subscribers or persuade followers. Before you start all this, your customers need to know who you are.
You need to build a strong brand identity before you can start selling. And to create a strong brand identity, you need to be very active on all savvy social media channels. In social media, it's not just enough to be ‘on' it. You need to know how to make it ‘effective.' If today, you're not using social media to build your brand, you're missing out on a whole lot of opportunity.
Here are few ways to make an effective impact:
1. Choose the right Social media platforms:
Find platforms that suit your brand image.
Facebook is by far the best platform for promoting brand awareness. It has a very different user base and hence can be used by any nature of the brand.
Twitter, with its 140 character limitation, is a great tool to express yourself precisely. But it is good for brands who are more in customer services as a part of their company. Or even celebrities, who like to keep it short and straightforward. If you are a brand who likes to keep it crisp, Twitter is definitely for you.
Instagram is a great platform for clothing companies and retailer brands that rely heavily on images. Google+ didn’t take off as expected, but its primary audience is men. Men interested in Technology. So if you are a company talking about or promoting technology, Google+ is for you.
Pinterest is a female oriented platform. 85% of the audience is female which makes it easier for jewellery and fashion brands to reach out to their potential customers, females being the larger target audience. Linkedin is an excellent tool if you are a B2B company. It is a great platform to connect with influencers.
2. Be active.
The most important and obvious rule of Social media is to be consistent and active to build your brand. One or two posts a month will not accomplish anything. For this very reason, you should choose your social media channel very carefully. You can choose one single platform, but make sure to be very active on it.
3. Engage.
The key to building your brand on Social Media is Engagement. Don’t just keep posting about your brand and your services. Do a mix of your interests and services along with your customers’ interests. Only then, you can engage your customers.
4. Be visual.
The attention span of a person is diminishing. Posts with images get higher engagement, especially videos. So put pictures/videos whenever possible. Even a simple GIF image can do wonders. Keep it visual, keep it colourful.
5. Be consistent.
Create a strategy for your social media and stick to it. Your content should not be going haywire else your audience will lose interest. Keep a colour, a style and keep repeating them in your posts. Make sure your usage of colours harmonizes with your brand/logo colours.
6. Provide content that is of value and will be shared.
It goes without saying that you should create content that is of value to your audience and they can or will share it. Go visual, since it gets more impressions compared to just text. Go different, so your audience will not be bored and will share your content. Create an impact on the mind of your consumers.
7. Create social campaigns to promote content.
In recent times where the organic reach is diminishing and paid campaigns - run through native advertising platforms – is one of your easier options for making your brand visible on social media. Brands run contests and campaigns to increase visibility and generate leads. Take advantage of this, encourage your audience with incentives for participation.
Social media, in this era, is one of the biggest, most powerful and accessible channels available for brand building, if a brand follows the social media principles and rules for success. Social media is the bridge to communication between the brand and its consumers/audience. If you share great content and are consistent, your efforts of building your brand will pay off in the long run.
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