New technological alternatives are now replacing business and marketing practices that have been around for decades. Where you might have been able to rely on print and broadcast advertising in the past, it is no longer the most effective method of promoting your company’s presence worldwide.

You must now include social media in your marketing plans as part of your overall branding and marketing strategy. The reason for doing so is that it is where the majority of the population is spending their time. It is estimated that half of the world’s population is linked to a social media account, and in order to reach that target audience, you must increase your social media presence. 

If you don’t, your competitors will, and they will get more business than they can handle.

What is Social Media Branding?

To define this in simple terms, it is using social media in the right ways to attract your target audience to your website and products. It is a fancy term for social media marketing.

Once you understand that, you can use social media outlets to market your wares. All you are doing is creating awareness of your brand, company, and products among your target audience on social media.

Then just like traditional advertising, you can create brand loyalty, create repeat customers and reach your new target audiences.

How To Improve Your Social Media Brand

There are four steps you need to take to help make social media users aware of your products, your business, and what you can do for them.

1. Know Your Business

Your brand is your identity. If you do not understand your brand and how it differs from similar firms, you will have difficulty explaining who you are and what you do.

This is the step at which you discuss your objectives, policies, and so on. The more specific you can be with these, the easier it will be to craft your social media branding strategy.

2. Know Your Audience

This is very important. You need to know who you are trying to reach with your social media branding. Also, you need to know their needs, problems, and provide solutions to both.

3. Produce Great Content

In order to make your brand known to the public, you must be well-versed in the subject matter. Having excellent content on your website should compel your website visitors to make a purchase. Print, videos, photos, and other forms of design can help you create content that is superior to your competition.

4. Have A Great Look

Colors, designs, shapes, etc., all play a role in attracting visitors to your content and motivating them to buy.

Why Is Social Media Branding Important?

Social media marketing is critical. Simply because that is where you are going to find the people you want to be your customers. Here are the reasons why this move to modern technology and its marketing prowess is so important:

1. You Can Reach A Bigger Audience

Building your brand and making more people aware of your existence means you can reach more people with your message. Also, you get brand recognition from more people.

2. Engage More People

You can develop a consistent message and experience using different social media channels. This consistency is very attractive to younger audiences, and that aspect boosts engagement.

3. You Increase Your Chances of Success

One thing about reaching a larger audience, you get more opportunities to make more sales. As a result, your business can grow and your efforts will help make your business a success.

4. Humanize Your Brand

The potential to make human connections is unlimited through this media strategy. The more people you connect with, the better the odds they will do business with you.

5. Increase Website Traffic

This is critical since it is the equivalent of generating foot traffic in a traditional business setting. The greater the amount of foot traffic a business receives, the greater the likelihood that customers will make a purchase. The same notion holds true for social media branding as well.

The greater the number of individuals that visit your website, the greater the likelihood that someone will purchase one of your products.

6. Generate More Leads

These visitors may not buy right away, but they will leave you their e-mail or other contact information. With that information, you can contact them with sales, special deals, and other important information.

Having leads helps you with #5 above. The more leads, the more chances you can make a sale.

7. Your Sales Go Up

This is what marketing and branding are all about. It doesn’t matter if you use traditional methods or social media branding methods, the goal is the same.

You do it because it will boost sales and make your business a success.

8. Helps Build Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

The more you partner with influencers and other social media accounts, the more your products and brand are promoted to others. Word of mouth marketing is the best way to build your brand and social media users can help you do that through great business partnerships.

9. Promotes Your Content

You spend a lot of time researching and writing the content or pay someone who does that for you. Building your brand and getting more visitors to your website increases your content readership and develops brand loyalty.

That trust helps build sales as your visitors see that you know what you are talking about.

10. Your Brand Goes Viral

The term “viral” simply refers to something that has become extremely popular. Everyone is talking about it, and that is one of the purposes of social media branding: to get people to talk about your business. The greater the number of individuals who share your content and website, the better it is for you and your company.

When everyone knows your name, you will attract more visitors to your website, increase your chances of making purchases, and establish yourself as a respected figure in the business.

11. Better Customer Service

Having a social media brand and presence, allows you to conduct better customer service and help your customers with their questions. That, in turn, builds your reputation and the domino effect takes place.

Better customer service equals better business reputation which equals more visitors to your website and more sales.

12. Helps You Monitor Your Business

With better customer interaction, you can see flaws in your system and make refinements, so your operations go smoother and create more happy customers.

Getting rid of the flaws takes increased interaction with the customers. Then you can see where you need to improve. Listening to what your customers are saying helps you fine-tune your business and make it better.

How A Poor Social Media Presence/Branding Can Make Customers Go Away

Social media users in this technology age are more fickle than conventional clients were previous to the advent of social media platforms. They are constantly on the lookout for the next best thing, and if you do not have a strong social media presence, they will swiftly move on to your competition.

This is something you cannot allow to happen, and just like traditional businesses, you must keep up with the latest trends, as well as the demands and needs of your clients. Customers will avoid you if you have a weak social media presence.

Here are some examples of what you should not do when you are trying to create a social media brand:

1. Post Product Images Only

Not very exciting and can be very boring to your social media followers. Share informative content, engage with your audience, and only sprinkle the page with product photos.

2. Use Blurry Or Hard-To Grasp Images

These are big turnoffs to your website’s visitors and create a very poor social media presence. They also will send your potential customers to your competitors.

3. Be Boring

If your content looks the same every time you post it, your followers or potential website visitors will not get motivated to visit your website. Use a variety of styles and designs to capture your audience’s attention.

4. Look Like Spam

When you post the same hashtags or other links over and over, it looks like you are trying to spam your audience. This is not good and it is part of a poor social media brand presence that sends your potential customers away.

5. Doing The Same Old Thing Every Time

It is something that turns off people and you will lose your audience. To get away from this poor presence, you need to vary things up, add new features, and have some fun with your content and design.

6. Ignore Your Visitors And Customers

This is a huge sign that you have a poor social media brand. When you ignore the people you count on to make your business a success, you will only drive them away.

Engage your audience in the right way to attract more visitors and build up positive word-of-mouth marketing.

7. Over-Post

This makes you look desperate and can annoy your visitors because you are filling up their feed with useless images. This provides a spammy effect that is a big turnoff.

8. Don’t Tag

If you do not include tags for friends, family, and other aspects of your life, your social media will not receive much attention. You will not get the level of visibility required to maintain a prominent presence on social media platforms.

Aside from that, tagging irrelevant persons or locations will not aid your cause and will make it appear as though you do not understand what you are doing.

9. Over Comment Or Over-Caption

This has the appearance of being over-aggressive and will turn off many social media users. You will have a poor social media presence and brand when that happens. Watch what you write.

Don’t Believe The Myths!

To build a strong social media brand and presence, you cannot fall victim to the myths that permeate the internet. Here are some of those myths that may derail your efforts and create a poor presence or brand on social media outlets:

1. Being On Social Media Will Make Your Brand Popular Overnight

It takes time to build an excellent social media brand and presence. Too many people and businesses try to get popular overnight but life just doesn’t work that way. They fall victim to the many risks that come with trying.

To build genuine followers, you need to take your time, get trusted, and do your homework.

2. Create An Account On Every Social Media Platform

When you attempt this, you can lose your focus and start sending out poor messages or content. Your effort to attract everyone usually ends up attracting no one. Instead, pick the outlets that are popular and focus on them.

Also, your time is limited and you can’t possibly maintain all your accounts and do them justice.

3. Your Business Needs Hundreds Of Thousands Of Followers

Not going to happen unless you are extremely lucky and extremely good at creating top-quality content, designs, and so on. You really do not need this many followers to be a success.

Besides, most of those followers won’t be buying from your store. Focus on building genuine customers that will become repeat buyers. Less is more in this case when they are loyal customers.

4. Set And Forget

Not practical or even realistic. You have to be an active member to make your brand look good, get awareness and build your customer base. You also need to be active so your visitors can see that you care and can be trusted.

Your activity will show your visitors that you think they matter. A little effort can bring big dividends.

Social Media Branding Strategies To Build A Strong Brand

1. Pick The Most Important And Most Appropriate Social Media Platform

This helps you build a positive image and reputation. Test the different outlets out to see which one will be best for you and your company.

2. Be Consistent

Your message or content needs to be consistent if you are going to build trust in your visitors. Therefore, you need to create the right content for your different messages.

3. Post Consistently

You need to be active and post frequently to keep your brand in front of social media users eyes.

Having a poor social media presence and brand is the difference between being a success or just another business that tried. The technological age has changed the way companies do business and to stay ahead of your competitors, you need to have a strong social media brand.

A weak presence will not be of any help to you as your potential customers will flock to those companies that know how to use social media to their advantage. Evaluate your social media presence and see what you can do to improve your brand and get it known.

If you too are struggling with your social media branding and not able to build brand loyalty or attract enough visitors to your website, get in touch with us to know more about our services and how we can help you!