Leveraging Social Media for Brand Marketing

Businesses grow with connections. The more people know about your brand the more they would consider it for buying its products. Getting social is the key to spreading brand awareness. And since we live in an internet drugged era what can be a better way to spread brand awareness than connecting with like-minded people and potential customers via social media?

Many people when they hop on the train of social media marketing consider the ride to be smooth and easy. Alas, it isn’t as simple. It might sound like a piece of cake to get an account up but the running part is where it gets challenging and complicated. Social media doesn’t just demand you to invest your time but your efforts and wisdom too. A wee bit of wit and loads of creativity are also always welcome.

Let’s start with walking through the basics of how to employ social media to talk about your brand, spread the word and bring in profits.

The pillars of the foundation

Think of social media marketing as a structure where your strategies and tactics of how you’re going to weave your way through social media are the base. This base is firm only if it has the following four supporting pillars that are:

•    The knowledge of what your customers want, how they think, what would be of value to them? In short, every single snippet that you can collect on what your customers are looking for.

•    A blog/website

•    Email management services

•    Landing pages

•    Profiles on social networks that are suitable for your business

If you already have a blog which has great content and a dedicated audience, then you are a step ahead. You can use that area on the internet to promote whatever new products that you have come up with.

Decide on which online social platforms are going to work best for you. Don’t jump on every network otherwise, it can get difficult for you to manage all of them and hence make you lose focus. Facebook and Twitter being the most popular right alongside with LinkedIn, you must leverage these two.

Depending on what products you sell, you can select other platforms. For instance, for fashion products which are more on the visual side, experts recommend Instagram and Pinterest. This is why for our latest brand Anna Grace, we primarily concentrate on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

You can consider these points for choosing which social networks would work best for you:

•    Where your target audience is?

•    Does your business depend more on visuals or text?

•    How can you attract an audience and what tools would be necessary for the method you choose?

•    How much time will be needed to meet customers’ expectations on social media?

How does it work on social media?

Getting social in real life always demands a lot. It’s not just about chatting with random people. Because a chat might get what you want to get across but for building relations and connections, you need to say what the other person wants to hear.

Consider the likeable people in your circle. How do they become likeable? They set an example, they make themselves stand out by doing something different, they conduct parties, they set a tone, and they give gifts. They say the right things. Throw in a bit of humor and they get even more attention. This is how they win people over. On social media, it’s more or less the same.

Quality and consistency

For your brand to be memorable, the sort that brings in repeat customers you have to create content that your audience wants to see or read. Something that they find helpful. Maintain a theme for all your posts. You have to maintain consistency. Especially when it comes to the logo. Would McDonald’s have been this recognized if it had kept changing that “M?”

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Also, keep in mind that what works for one social platform might not work for another. For instance, the same images that you use for Instagram aren’t compatible with Pinterest.

For Anna Grace, we keep the font and poster templates consistent. The logo on all platforms is the same. The aim is to be easily recognizable.

Don’t overpromote

Don’t just talk about your brand. Like all other things, promotion should also be in moderation. The people of today have little to no tolerance for brands that have a “BUY ME PLEASE” ideology.

“Be active on social media but don’t have a one-track mind. A ‘me meme, look at us’ approach doesn’t work. Brands have to engage in a way that inspires the audience to get involve and talk about it.” says SEO specialist, Sam Osborne.

Ethics and emotions

Become best friends with SEO techniques to skyrocket the chances of being found. And post content that people can relate to. Tap into the emotions of your customers. Step into their shoes to understand their views. Share your blog posts on Social media and always be careful about copyrights issues. Your visual content must be minimal. Avoid clutter at all costs.

Invest, engage and have patience

Invest intelligently. You don’t just have to put in some bucks but more than that you need to give things time to work out. Social media doesn’t bring overnight success so don’t expect it to go that way.

You need to engage more with people. Not just respond to customer queries and concerns fast but you need to take out time to converse with like-minded individuals. In fact, it’s all the more effective if you make relations beforehand. Social media doesn’t have to start with your business. But it can be the other way around.

Amy Vernon, social marketing consultant and co-founder and CMO of Predictable.ly says, “Don’t wait for launch day to create your social media channels,” If you reach out to people prior to building your actual networks or launching your product, it’s more likely for those individuals to respond as they would already be knowing you. You can’t ask for favors out of nowhere.

To win over customers conduct giveaways, give them valuable content and relate to their emotions. After reaching a goal of a mediocre but engaged audience, you can start asking questions to start conversations.

Social media and its scope are vast. Don’t be afraid to do your own thing. Learn from others and set benchmarks. Remember social media marketing is a correlation between engagement and followers with promotion in the mix. Without one, you can’t get the other, and if you have one, you can easily get the other. Leverage social media, many big brands, online or physical have used it to reach where they are today.