Social media is essential to building your brand and your business. The best platforms for B2B—LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram—provide you with a wealth of opportunity to engage with your audience while controlling your brand’s narrative, so when others come looking for you, you know exactly what they’ll find.
However, unlike the personal posts we see most often—think cat videos, food and baby pics, and political perspectives—your brand’s social media persona should lead with your brand above all else.
Not sure how to build your brand on social? No problem. IMS360’s team of content marketing experts have developed a list of the top 7 strategies you can use to build not only your brand on social media, but engagement as well to attract more of your target audience.
The role of social media in brand building
But first let’s take a look at the role social media plays in building your brand.
- Enables you to connect with your audience in a more engaging and sincere way.
- Increases the amount of exposure your brand receives and boosts traffic to your website.
- Helps your business develop loyal fans (brand evangelists) and generates leads.
- Enables you enhance business partnerships, reduce marketing costs, and improve sales.
- Provides market insights you can use to make your brand even better.
- Humanizes your brand by enabling you to respond to consumer comments and feedback.
- Gives you an opportunity to reinforce deep connections with your customers.
Top 7 strategies to build your brand on social media
Your audience is made up of diverse people who engage with different kinds of content. Make sure you include content that generates traffic, leads to reactions, increases the engagement of your page, and is easily shareable. Give them videos to watch, posts to thought-leadership pieces on your website, evergreen posts that show off your personality and humanness, and ask questions that start conversations.
1. Update your social media accounts
We begin by taking out the garbage. Delete any old accounts that you no longer use. This includes deleting posts that may be so old they don’t reflect who you are today. Then you can move on to updating the accounts you want to keep with current contact info, messaging, and imagery.
2. Enforce consistent branding across all platforms
Consistency is critical when it comes to branding. If you haven’t already established brand guidelines, complete with your logo, colors, tone of voice, imagery, and how to use them all, then start there. This isn’t just for your social presence, it’s the bible of your brand. Once that’s in place, then it’s time to integrate all your social media profiles. This enables you to maintain a consistent presence and voice no matter where you post.
3. Learn from others
Influencers have earned their name and why not learn from the best. Following their lead means you can learn how to effectively position your brand as a thought leader in your industry. You should also check out your competitors’ social presence to discern what works and what doesn’t and use that to your advantage. Blog posts get a lot of shares? Then do that. Salesy manufacturer-provided content falls flat? Then don’t do that. Follow the companies you admire and emulate their practices. And don’t forget to use hashtags# that matter.
4. Design eye-catching content
Content marketing is a great way to build your brand persona and capture the attention of your target audience. From simple stock imagery and animated GIFs to captivating short videos, your content needs to be as sharp as your brand. It’s best to shy away from images pulled off the internet, and instead invest in creative content services that can give your posts a professional polish.
5. Make your message matter
Your message needs to stand out and accurately reflect who you are, what you do, and why your audience should learn more about you. If you stray off into personal territory, make sure it’s positive. For example, a team member recently became a parent and wants everyone to know so congratulate them and share a picture if possible. On the other hand, if you’re angry about something you saw on the news or social media and want to react, don’t! Save it for your personal account, and not your business.
6. Establish a posting schedule and stick with it
Inconsistency in your posting schedule can affect your audience’s perception of you. When starting out, it may not be such a big deal. But as your brand grows, your audience will have expectations and it’s best not to let them down. Our advice, start small. This is the hardest part of building your brand using social media, and it can be overwhelming. Shoot for consistency instead of a certain number of posts.
7. Become part of relevant groups and forums
This is a great way to practice using your voice and positioning your business as an industry thought leader. Join groups that attract people from your industry or are interested in topics that you have a lot of experience with. It not only establishes you as a leader, but also gives you a platform to connect with others as you increase brand awareness.
We can help
We know this is a lot of information to take in and can seem like a daunting task that leaves you wondering, “Is it really worth it?” It really is, but you don’t have to do it all on your own. IMS360’s team of marketing and creative experts can help you at every step, from assessing your social media presence to discern what’s missing or could be done better to creating captivating content and copy that makes sure your posts garner the attention they deserve.
Take a look at the IMS360 Agency Offerings eBook to learn more about how we can elevate your brand using social media.
