Whether you’re launching your own company or working for an established brand, effective and consistent branding is something that every company needs to communicate with their customers.
While branding covers a large scope, the Business Dictionary defines it as:
The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers’ mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme.
Branding has been around for a long time. However, the digital era has meant that social media branding has become a core focus for marketers when it comes to amplifying a brand’s identity, voice, and personality within the digital space.
But before we go into easy social media branding tips you can try, first some interesting statistics:
According to Marketing Sherpa, 95% of online adults aged 18-34 are most likely to follow a brand via social networking sites.
However, according to Smart Insights, while 80% of companies believe they deliver exceptional customer service on social media, only 8% of their customers agree.
From these statistics above, we can see that while there is ample opportunity to promote your brand identity online, it’s important to have a clear branding strategy in place so that your followers receive high-value content.
Read on for seven social media branding tips you can try with ease.
Use your brand kit as a starting point
The most important thing to first consider with any social media branding endeavor is to create a consistent experience for your audience on every platform.
This does not mean that every platform (think Instagram, your website, or Twitter) needs to look exactly the same or serve the same purpose. However, it’s important that the aesthetic and overall voice is aligned for your audience at every touchpoint.
One way to ensure your social media efforts are on brand is to refer to your brand kit. This will help guide the colors, fonts, images, and graphics you use.
A strong example of a brand that has clear brand guidelines is Spotify. Posted online, Spotify provides clearly outlined guidelines that explain the core brand colors, logo uses, and fonts.
Set a clear tone of voice
Similar to a brand kit, it’s helpful to establish a clear tone of voice that you want to use on your social platforms. When establishing your tone of voice, it’s important to consider the type of product or service you offer.
For example, if you work for a finance start-up, you may choose to set an authoritative, informative and helpful tone of voice. However, if you’re marketing a local florist, it’s likely you’ll want your voice to be friendly, bright and approachable.
When choosing your tone of voice, it’s important to consider the type of personality you are wanting to convey, and how this will help build your branding efforts across the wider business.
Create on-brand templates
Social media is known for being a platform that requires creators to be nimble and fast. One way to ensure that you and your team are able to stay on brand—even in the face of breaking news, or a viral meme—is to have pre-made templates that are ready and waiting to be customized with ease.
Whether it’s for Black Friday sales or daily breaking news on Instagram Stories, this will save you plenty of time, energy (and stress) in the long run.
Take advantage of your profile biography
When it comes to social media real estate, your biography is incredibly valuable. With a few words, you’re able to give your audience context about the following:
- Who you are
- The service you offer
- Your unique selling proposition
- Essentially, it’s valuable to look at your social media biography as your moment to shine.
Let’s take a look at some powerhouse brands below and how they’ve done it.
Instagram
First up, Instagram. As we can see from its biography, the first thing you read is the value you will receive from using the platform—“Bringing you closer to the people you love.” The use of the red heart emoji also adds a personal, friendly and illustrative touch.
Apple
Another brand known as an authority for branding is Apple. From its biography, the audience can quickly assess what it offers and the value that they provide—no advertisements and zero commitment.
Use your profile picture wisely
Another valuable piece of real estate for your social media branding is your profile picture. We know that visuals are processed faster than text, and using your profile image as a branding opportunity is the perfect way to market your logo, or your headshot—if you’re building a personal brand.
A logo serves as the face of your company, so it’s important to ensure that it’s recognizable and helps build positive associations with your brand or business.
Outline your brand goals
The purpose of any marketing campaign is to grow your brand. Whether that’s increasing brand awareness, gaining leads, or converting users through a purchase, you want to make sure that prior to starting any campaign, you are able to assess and measure what success looks like to you. Most social media platforms have in-built data systems that will help you measure basic marketing metrics and assess whether your campaigns have been successful.
Using data to help you with branding will also allow you to see what your audience really want to see from you, and how they engage with your content.
Decide where you want to be active
While it can be tempting to want to be active on every social media platform, the truth is, your business may not be relevant for all of them—which then leads to wasted efforts and most importantly, a dissatisfied audience.
When choosing the social platforms you would like to be active on, it’s important to ask yourself the following:
- Do we have the resources? Social media marketing requires a consistent flow of high-quality content. If you’re in the process of building your business, or social media team, it may be better to start off on one social platform until you have the resources you need.
- Would the content be relevant to my business? Different content performs better on various social media platforms. Twitter for example, has become a hub for trending news, Instagram is known for its curated appeal and Facebook is a great source for sharing content of all types.
When deciding on what platform you should be present on, it’s best to think about what content you would post, and whether that’s something your audience would want to engage in.
Stay authentic to your brand
While it can be tempting to want to try and replicate the success of other brands, or your competitors, it’s also just as important to stay authentic to your brand.
By always referring back to your vision, core goals, but and brand kit, you’re more likely to be offering something that is unique to your audience—and thus, it’s content that they are more likely to engage with. Social media branding is about giving your brand a voice and personality and allowing for a two-way dialogue between you and your community.
An example of this can be seen in the cosmetics titan, Lush Cosmetics. Known for its vegetarian products that are cruelty-free, handmade and ethical, the brand has successfully used its social media presence to help communicate the values of the company.
Aside from beautiful imagery, Lush uses their Instagram profile as a place to inform followers of products, highlight customers, and provide inspiring on-brand images.
We hope these tips with help you and your business with its social media success! However, we know how tricky social media branding can be, so with that being said, please don’t hesitate to visit our website or contact us to speak with one of our marketing and social media experts who will help get your business on the right path!