When you start creating business profiles on social media, it’s not easy to know where to begin. With dozens of prominent platforms and significant competition, many business owners wonder if the effort is worthwhile.
Considering that social media platforms there’s definitely an opportunity to gain exposure. However, your success on social media is directly proportional to your social media branding efforts. How well you present your business on social media plays a significant role in the results you’ll see from these platforms.
We’ve put together this guide to help you better understand brand presence and how it relates to social media.
Here you’ll learn:
What social media branding is
How social media affects branding
What you should know before getting started with branding
How to build brand awareness on social media
Social Media and Branding
Social media branding is the process of connecting with a target audience across social media platforms by boosting brand awareness.
A social media branding strategy allows you to connect with potential customers in an optimized way, increasing your chances of getting noticed and achieving your business goals. This branding needs to be applied to every social media platform to ensure you don’t waste your time and energy on ineffective methods.
How Social Media Affects Branding
As a business owner, you’re already familiar with the general concept of branding. However, you might not be confident about branding in the age of social media. The ubiquity of these platforms greatly influences how businesses go about establishing a brand presence and boosting brand awareness.
In 2020, an estimated 3.6 billion people were using social media. Never before have businesses had such easy access to this many potential customers. While this number is promising, keep in mind that 77% of small businesses are competing for attention in this space.
Social media branding lets you take advantage of the reach and exposure of social media. It also helps you distinguish yourself from the competition. Even businesses outside of your niche can grab the limited attention of your prospective clients.
What To Consider Before Social Media Branding
Before you can start developing a social media branding strategy, there are some important factors to consider.
Your Brand
It’s not possible to focus on social media branding before you have a firm grasp on your business’s brand — at least not effectively. This understanding will influence everything you do related to branding on social media. If you haven’t yet fleshed out this portion of your business, take some time to perform market research, and create a brand.
It might be tricky initially, but this information will simplify all of your branding efforts moving forward.
Your Audience
The audience you’re trying to reach is another major component to consider before diving into social media branding. You need to think about what they’re expecting to see from your business, how they’ll react, and what they prefer to see.
Learning about your target audience can provide you with key information that will inform your social media branding strategy.
Here are some things you should know about your audience:
Their age range
Their likes and dislikes
What companies they already interact with
What kinds of problems they face
When you have a clear idea of your business’s brand and your target audience, you can start concerning yourself with social media branding.
Branding Yourself On Social Media
Complete your social media profile
Use the best social media platforms for your brand and audience
Develop a posting schedule
Interact with your audience
Integrate your website into your social media presence
Branding yourself on social media is all about getting in front of your target audience and communicating effectively about why your business is worthy of attention.
Let’s take a look at some ways you can build your brand presence on social media.
1. Make Sure Your Social Media Profile Is Complete
The first step to branding on social media is outfitting your profiles with brand-related content in the form of images and links.
Social Media Profile Picture
Your profile picture is a relatively basic piece of your business profiles, but it plays a major role in social media branding. You need to ensure all social media profile pictures sport your business’s logo.
Your logo will create a sense of uniformity across all platforms and make it easier for users to identify your business in search results.
Social Media Bio
This section should feature a concise summary of your business and what it offers to customers.
Take a look at our Instagram bio as an example:
It’s short, sweet, and to the point but still gives users an accurate idea of what we do.
Some social media platforms offer more space for your bio than others, but you don’t want to overwhelm visitors when they first get to know your business. Try to limit your bio sections to two or three sentences.
Website Link
To complete your social media branding strategy, you need to bridge the gap between your social media presence and your website. One of the easiest, most effective ways to accomplish this goal is by providing a URL link in your profiles.
We use a link on all of our major social media accounts.
By connecting users on social media with your website, you’re further illustrating the reach of your business’s brand. While a homepage link is always a good option, you could also feature landing pages or recent blog posts.
2. Use the Best Social Media Platforms for Your Brand
With dozens of active platforms available, many businesses don’t even know where to begin with their social media branding strategy.
Instead of spreading your time, energy, and investments thinly across too many platforms, it’s much smarter to find the social media platforms that play to your business’s strengths.
For example, if you’re selling beautiful homemade jewelry, a social media platform that relies heavily on visuals will work best for branding purposes. In this case, Instagram and Pinterest are great choices.
However, a business offering tax services might not have much visual content to share. In this instance, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other dynamic platforms are better options.
Consider each social media platform’s advantages and disadvantages and decide which suits your business’s needs best.
3. Develop a Posting Schedule
After you’ve chosen social media platforms that complement your business’s strengths and filled out your profiles, it’s time to develop an effective posting schedule.
Your posting schedule will dictate several things, including:
What kinds of content you post
How often you post
What time of the day you post
What’s included in the post
While these factors will vary between platforms, it’s essential to optimize your posts to reach as many users as possible while still staying true to your business’s brand.
Remaining consistent — in your posts’ frequency and type of content — will help develop your business’s branding in the eyes of your users.
4. Interact With Your Audience
Many business owners don’t see results from their social media branding strategy due to a lack of, well, socializing. It’s not enough to build a great profile and post helpful content consistently. You need to interact and engage with your audience regularly.
Social media companies design their platforms to promote interaction. The more active you are, the more likely that these platforms will promote your posts. Furthermore, interacting with your audience shows current and potential followers that you’re responsive, trustworthy, and credible.
Here are some ways you can become more engaged with your audience:
Reply to all of the comments on your content
Share content produced by users on your profiles
Comment on the profiles and posts of your target audience
5. Integrate Your Website into Your Social Media Presence
Both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce stores rely heavily on the power of websites to conduct a variety of business processes.
To maximize your brand presence on social media, you have to find ways of integrating your website into the platform. While social media offers some selling functionality, your website will remain the superior converting tool.
As we discussed before, the first strategy businesses can take to integrate their website into social media profiles is by sharing a link in the bio.
Here are some other helpful strategies for connecting your social media audience with your website:
Share blog posts regularly on your feed
Take advantage of other link opportunities on each platform
Include a call-to-action to encourage users to click these links
Offer a discount code or coupon for users who visit your website
Social media platforms are powerful tools for reaching and communicating with potential customers.
With an effective social media branding strategy, your business can successfully stand out from the crowd and convey value to its target audience.
Following these social media branding tips can help orient your business in the often confusing world of social media.
If you want to make the most out of your social media branding, you should think about building a website.