Tips to Build your Brand with Social Media Marketing

Build your brand with social media marketing. Social media is one of the best places to advance your brand-building efforts for three reasons. First, the ever-growing user numbers make it only second to search engines on the list of top marketing channels. The exposure you stand to get from the huge number of active users is invaluable. Secondly, social media humanizes the whole brand-building process. Unlike advertisements, social platforms allow you to engage users through comments, likes, etc. Finally, and most importantly, social media networks now provide brands with all the tools they need to track and nurture them through the process.

With this in mind, a lot of businesses, including global brands, are already investing heavily in social media marketing. You too should consider making this leap.

5 tips to help you successfully grow and build your brand on social platforms

1. Choose the Right Networks

If you want to succeed on social media, the first step is to choose your channels. Don’t let anyone lie to you and say that you can comfortably market on all social media platforms. You can try, but you won’t succeed. Instead, we recommend choosing two or three social networks to focus on. Follow Sprout Social’s social demographics guide to help you choose the right social networks for your type of business.

2. Develop a Voice

This is why a social media marketing strategy is vital. You want your brand’s personality to be reflected in your social media posts. As such, you need a backstory for every single post. To establish a background to your brand building campaign, begin by revisiting your company culture. What does your company stand for? Is it innovation, technology, healthy lifestyles? Once you understand what you stand for, it becomes easier to find your voice.

3. Be Consistent

We can’t stress this enough. According to Brand Channel, it took Nike 15 years of consistent branding to become the giant they are today. During this period, the company made sure that its branding messages were consistent across all products, packaging, advertisement, and customer service. If you want to achieve even 0.1% of Nike’s success, remain consistent across all your social media channels. From colors and graphics to language and posting routines, keep it consistent so that your followers know what to expect.

4. Engage, Engage, Engage

You’re not going to get far on social media if you don’t engage your followers. If all you ever do is publish posts and watch as the likes and comments pour in, any success you experience on any of the social platforms will be short-lived. You must post regularly (observe posting best practices for each social network) and, more importantly, talk to people that are liking and commenting on your posts. Respond to as many comments as possible, follow back as many of your followers as you can, and like their posts too. It’s the only way to keep the conversations going.

5. Promote your profile/posts

Let’s be honest, social media definitely has a pay-to-play aspect to it now. Organic reach is down significantly. On Facebook, for example, organic reach has declined to as little as 2-6%. For your profile and posts to be seen by more people, you have to promote them with Ads. Fortunately, social media advertising costs have been coming down lately. In addition to promotions, we recommend investing in influencers. Influencers give you access to markets you would otherwise not have access to.

Over to You

Obviously, it takes a lot more work to build a successful brand on social media. But, these five points provide the perfect launchpad to get you started, you could even consider purchasing likes on IG or Facebook for an additional boost. Take the leap and remember to be consistent, persistent and authentic.