In this day and age, building a successful brand has a lot to do with leveraging the power of social media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other networks became some of the leading brand shaping strategies.
Connecting your website with social media platforms and interacting with your audience is key to promoting your business online.
Both small start-ups and large corporate companies can benefit in the same way from creating different social media profiles.
No matter how big or small your business is, making a social media marketing plan is not as complicated as it sounds. You can always start small and boost your online profiles steadily.
Let’s take a look at our top 9 brand-shaping strategies for social media.
1. Understand The Role Of Social Media In Brand Shaping Strategies
Social media platforms started as a way of connecting people and easing online communication. However, they surpassed this and became one of the key tools in promoting an online business.
Companies that use social media to shape their branding strategies show better SERP rankings and attract larger audiences.
If this is a part of your marketing plan, here are some steps you’ll need to take:
Build a profile that stands out – the visual concept will be one of the biggest brand-shaping strategies.
Find your target audience – if you decide to hire a marketing expert, they will do the research and help you with this task.
Promote your brand and your logo – these two should be recognizable and memorable.
Make a plan for each social media platform, so you should find the one that works for your business.
Connect your social media profiles – by connecting your Facebook, Instagram, and other profiles, you will get more people to find your business.
Attract a larger audience and engage them – by creating a social media marketing plan, you will see an increase in the number of your followers.
Build quality content – this is one of the most important brand-building strategies.
Create a social media content plan – you can plan to post daily, weekly, or at any other interval. Make sure to ask your experts for content marketing tips on the best strategy for your business.
Use SEO techniques – SEO is one of the best techniques to improve your website’s rankings.
2. Build A Recognizable Profile
One of the most important brand-shaping strategies for social media is building an online profile that people will like. In order to build a profile people will recognize, you will have to rely on both textual and visual content. When building a social media profile, make sure to state basic information about your company. Besides, stating your company’s achievements and long-term goals will also make your brand stand out. In other words, if you want to build a recognizable profile on social media, you will have to think about what people want to see. Your profile should be visually appealing, so make sure to include banners, cover photos and other content with your brand’s logo.
Online marketing experts usually perform a social media audit, which helps with making further plans. Once you know how you can improve your profile, you can start thinking about interacting with your audience and creating satisfying visual content. A logo, banner, and a short description of your company’s goals will help you build a profile that attracts wider audiences.
Before building a recognizable profile on a social media platform, you should have another thing in mind. You’ll have to adjust your content accordingly.
For example, Instagram will require a constant flow of visual content, while a LinkedIn profile will work best for connecting with other entrepreneurs and companies.
3. Find with your Target Audience
This may sound like a complicated thing to do, but there are strategies and research techniques you could use. For example, marketing experts use parameters like gender, age, interests, career and lifestyle to determine which focus group will be interested in your brand. If you are running an online business, you can make a list for a group of people you want to target.
However, different social media platforms work in different ways. This is why you might want to contact a marketing expert to research for you. This process will help you increase your chances of attracting the right audience for your website.
4. Promote Your Brand Name And Logo
No matter which social platforms you choose to use, your brand will benefit from a recognizable logo and a brand name. Combining them will help you build a strong identity for your company.
Moreover, the visual aspect of your brand and logo will be the thing your audience remembers after visiting your page. Professional digital marketing companies offer creative branding services , and they could help you create a memorable visual identity for your company.
Incorporating your logo and brand name into your social media content will help you promote your company and build a strong brand image.
When it comes to using your brand and logo on social media, there is another thing you should have in mind. While posting daily or weekly, you should make sure that your posts stand out from different ads and other content. For example, Facebook and Instagram rely on visual appearance in the posts, while Twitter uses textual context. Depending on which social media platform you’re using, you should adjust your brand promotion strategy.
5. Learn How Each Social Media Platform Works
Making a universal plan for running social media profiles will never work for businesses. Since they all work in different ways, you will need to learn the specifics and make sure to make a plan in advance.
Spreading the word about the services you provide or a product you’re selling can be done in many different ways. Since Facebook relies on pages and groups, these will be the best way to gain more people to follow you. On the other hand, Twitter relies on making statements which are limited in the number of words you use. On this platform, you will have to make your posts short and up to the point.
On the one hand, creating quality textual and visual content might be perfect for some platforms. But on the other hand – connecting with the right audience will also have a lot to do with your success. This is why you should research and learn about the best way to run your online profiles.
You could incorporate hashtags and your business’s promotions on most of the posts that you share.
6. Attract A Broader Audience To Follow Your Social Media Profiles
The main goal of building the finest social media profiles is to attract broader audiences to your services or products. To achieve this goal, people who see your profile should do more than just adding views to it.
Your social media profile is there to make people subscribe, follow, and want more content.
If you make a solid content plan and post regularly, this should be easy to achieve. Here are some tips that will help you engage your audience on social media.
Create content that is valuable and meaningful.
Make your audience interested by creating contests, offering discounts, and similar actions.
Use hashtags to connect to related profiles.
Make a weekly plan for posting your content.
Interact with your audience – this is one of the most important brand shaping strategies for social media. Don’t forget to reply to comments and direct messages.
Connect your social media platforms. This action will make people follow you on various profiles and see more of your content.
7. Build Quality Content
This part of the plan will take a lot of time. To build quality content on social media profiles, you will need to have a few things in mind.
First, do your research and check out some of the most visited profiles. These could be your competitors or other inspiring profiles in your niche.
Second, the content you post should be unique and visually appealing. You can recycle some previous posts you shared, but you should never copy any content from other profiles.
For people to react and want more of your posts, you should do the following:
Think of a pattern that will work for weekly posts.
Make your page easy to read – it will boost interaction.
Your quality content should be not too short or too long.
8. Build A Social Media Engagement Plan
Communicating with your audience will be a big part of your plan. If the only thing people do is to check out your profile, you may not achieve your goals.
However, if you build an engagement plan on your profile, your audience will take your business way more seriously. Comments, tweets, hashtags, and reposts are just some of the ways to interact with your potential clients. For example, when promoting a new line of products, you could create a pole and make people vote on the best design. Also, if you want to promote an event or an opening of a new store, streaming a live video will be a great idea.
Your answers to your audience can be formal but polite. Keep in mind that just a simple “thank you” will make people feel heard. Furthermore, this will be the best way to attract people to respond to your brand.
9. Apply SEO Techniques
As one of the biggest allies in building a successful online marketing plan, SEO became a great way to improve online ranking.
If you want your business to improve your search engine ranking, you should apply SEO to your social media accounts. If you use the right keywords, social media platforms will recognize the connection between your profile and interests of your viewers. These keywords could be used in your “general info” section, as well as in your daily posts.
This is one of the best brand-shaping strategies you could use, and it is not as complicated as it may seem. There are many online guides for using SEO in the most effective ways.
Optimizing your social media profile will help you create a strong online presence and make more people hear about your business.
Takeaways
Building a recognizable social media profile for businesses has become one of the leading brand shaping strategies.
Regardless of the nature of your business, connecting via social media will help you create a memorable online presence and build a strong brand identity.
Whether you are selling a product or providing services, you can benefit from these platforms in many ways. All you need to do is create a social media marketing plan and start creating a profile step-by-step.
With regular posting and appealing content, your business will reach success in no time. For the best long-term plan, you should consult experts in digital marketing and let them handle your business’s social media accounts.
Author Bio:
Travis Dillard is a business consultant and an organizational psychologist based in Arlington, Texas. Passionate about marketing, social networks, and business in general. In his spare time, he writes a lot about new business strategies and digital marketing for DigitalStrategyOne.