Want to know vital ways to build a strong brand using social media?
Visibility and branding of a business have always been a major factor to profiting and success in any business since the ages, the internet and social media just made it a lot easier for us all.
It is very vital for a business to not just join the gang of social media page owners but also utilize it to the point of industry domination.
This is because social media is now a major determinant in the purchasing decisions of people all over the world as can be seen in this report by Businesswire.
So in this report, we show you 6 ways to build a strong brand on social media.
Table of Contents
Choose The Right Networks
In case you didn’t know, there are over 100 social media networks in the world.
It’s an enormous thing to even consider joining all the social media networks you know.
This means that you need to choose the right fight if you need to join the hustle.
To choose the right networks, you need to consider:
- Your Capacity. Is it just a one-man business or do you already have a full media team or probably at the verge of recruiting one. It goes a long way because to do the necessary as a one-man army, you can at the most be involved in three networks.
- Your Budget. Managing social media accounts can be costly as it involves getting pictures, writing posts, buying data and at times paying for adverts.
- Your Time. Managing a business social media account is not the same as chatting with friends and scrolling through friends pictures. It’s a lot more complicated and requires more detail and time.
After you have considered all these options, you now look at the best places to pitch your tents.
Facebook: By far the most successful and popular social media network boasting of over 2.27 Billion users worldwide.
The beauty of Facebook is that you can host any business type on it due to its diverse nature and it promises the greatest offer due to its largest market.
Instagram: This is most suitable for picture related businesses like eateries, clothing brands, and graphics designers. The greatest peck of Instagram is that it has this ability to showcase your posts to people otherwise not none to you due to its hashtag feature.
LinkedIn: This is an un-tapped gold mine for Africans. A very beautiful platform for business to business related institutions. It’s great for connecting with industry leaders and people that normally seem un-reachable and gives high-quality leads
Twitter: Most people consider it as the best network for clawbacks and trolls but your business can greatly profit here especially if your business is in the media industry or businesses that give information in short breaking news format (or if you’re feeling lazy to craft a whole post).
While these are the great options available, other platforms like WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Pinterest are worthy of note.
READ ALSO: How To Do Successful Marketing For Your Small Business
It really depends on the type of business you run and the factors earlier stated.
This chart by Likeable Media shows the uniqueness of each or for more in-depth study, look at this demographic.
Give Value
The reason you’re reading this is that you’re looking for value.
You have questions that require solutions and it led you to this blog (we do hope you get the value and come back though).
High flying and successful social media accounts are accounts that give value. You might need to read that again cause it’s very important.
No matter the category of lead you encounter, giving value can never go out of style.
People naturally want to get value from anything they get involved in even when they are not consciously looking for it.
So someone logs into facebook looking to relate with friends and family but then sees a post that will make his life better, he unconsciously stops to know more and eventually gets hooked after which he gets to a point where he patronizes you.
Customer Experience Insight shows us some really great ways of giving value to your customers.
Post Regularly
Being consistent is very key to getting and maintaining your social media followers.
It shows that you are serious and trustworthy which is one thing your customers are looking for in any brand they engage with.
Posting regularly as has been recommended by experts gets you more followers and leads though small businesses can afford to post fewer times and still achieve the same result posting regularly is the key.
If you can post as much as 10 times regularly a month as a small business, you will in no time achieve great results.
Google or whatever platform you joined will take you more serious and their algorithms will help you when they notice you’re frequent or consistent, thereby giving you more traffic and better ranking.
Engage With Customers
You might get overwhelmed by the amount of responsibility and work managing a social media account requires and then decide to automate the whole process.
It’s not bad but you must realize that people want to get a feel of you.
The reason they joined your page is not just to get information, they also need guidance and practical advise and an automated account can’t give them that.
Stories like this abound where companies automated their accounts and got reverse effects from doing so.
After automation, you still need to make out time to reply messages, start industry-related conversations or join in one as it keeps your memory in their head and increases brand awareness.
Use Influencers
Influencers are people that have a large following in social media especially in a certain niche say fashion or health.
How this work is that they say a thing or two or make a post about your business and social media account to their followers thereby giving you visibility.
This is especially useful if you’re a new brand and want a very fast way of getting your brand story across to as many people as possible and getting industry related leads fast.
READ ALSO: Personal Branding And Why You Should Bother About It
A great example of influencer marketing is this picture where Christiano Ronaldo is advertising Nike products in his social media account.
Most times, it requires that you give the influencer something or pay in cash but you could also get someone who does it free for your brand.
A popular story on how successful influencer marketing can be is seen here.
Paid Campaigns
Social media campaigns are POWERFUL.
I have been involved in some highly converting campaigns and I can tell you that it works like gangbusters especially if done right.
Social campaigns are scenarios where you pay the social media network involved to promote your brand to people initially not aware of your brand or product.
Recently social media networks have been cutting down on post reach drastically and it’s not funny for we social media managers.
Well, we can say that the reason why they are doing is to increase people paying them to get their posts across to people.
You can use contents and free giveaway’s in campaigns but for the best of social media, you need to actually make payments.
Most digital marketers feel anyone not using paid campaigns is not really serious about business and while it may not be the full truth, it’s very close to the truth.
To have a very successful campaign, you need:
A Well Defined Plan. Why exactly are you doing a campaign?
You need to define your market into segments. Who are your core customers?
Do they already know or are you new to the scene?
Do you want to give value or sell first?
All these are things that you must consider before engaging in one
Then you need to structure this strategy online.
Facebook can help you in this as it clearly distinguishes the types of campaigns possible.
It lets you determine if you want to achieve awareness, conversion or consideration which is pretty good.
It’s futile to do paid campaigns and not analyze it to know what worked and what did not work.
You need to know when to scale and when to pause, places and factors that affected it positively or adversely.
You also need to be able to calculate your ROI (Return On Investment) due to very clear indicators that must have put in place.
Do social campaigns live up to the hype? Check this or non-monetary stories.
Social media has become a great way of building your brand in this 21st century.
Social networks have millions of users from your target audience who are eager to socialize and discover new brands every day.
I would really love to hear about your experiences with creating a brand online or questions you will love to be answered about social media for business. Share them with us in the comments section!