2.34 billion.
That’s how many social media users there are today. If your business isn’t on at least one platform, that’s a whole lot of revenue you’re missing out on.
For your business to succeed, you can’t make a profile and leave it. It needs to be nurtured, just like any other business aspect.
In order to represent your business in the best light possible, it all begins and ends with branding. To ensure you’ll be on the right path, we’ll go over useful social media branding techniques to help you out.
Ready to know what they are?
Let’s dive in!
Choose the Right Platforms
With so many social media sites to choose from, it’s tempting to just join all of them. That would be mistake number one.
Joining too many social media platforms means you won’t have the time to tend to them all. Some will fall to the wayside while others will be forgotten about completely.
To prevent this, join ones that align with the type of business you have. If you’re a photography business then Instagram will work as it’s a visual platform.
Another way to choose the right social media sites is to find out where your target audience is. You want to be where they are so it’ll make sense to join those sites.
Pick a couple (two to three to start off with) and make them a priority. No one wants to follow a brand that stays silent every day.
Fill Out Your Profiles
When you create your profiles, fill them out completely. Don’t create them and say you’ll come back to them later—chances are you won’t.
Make sure you put your logo as your profile picture and fill out the bio explaining what you do and who you are. Set your location (especially if you’re a local company) and start following people. Preferably, you want to follow people who’ll eventually end up being a customer.
Have Strong Visual Branding
Once you start posting pictures or graphics, make sure they align with your brand. Putting one image out in cyberspace that’s not cohesive will confuse followers.
Take Coca-Cola for example. They’re consistent across all platforms they’re on.
There’s not one photo that doesn’t have the color red in it. As for their logo and cover photos (for Facebook and Twitter), it’s all the same.
Follow suit and make your profiles consistently the same. Don’t think of it as making your business boring. It’s instilling trust with visitors to know they’re interacting with the same brand they saw on a different site.
Develop Your Tone of Voice
Another part of branding is the tone of voice for your business. Do you want it to come across as professional, witty or formal?
How you interact with potential customers is important. Think of your business’ culture, its audience, and authenticity as it’ll help you develop your brand voice.
Whichever tone you choose, remember this: always be honest. Honesty is an essential trait for any business, so make sure you keep that in mind.
Be Consistent
Once you complete the steps above, now comes the most difficult part of social media branding: remaining consistent. Without consistency, you’ll confuse your audience and your brand will be hard to trust.
To be consistent is to ensure everything is (nearly) the same across all of your profiles. That means using the same logo, same bio information (different wording is okay as long as it creates the same picture), and similar content.
An easy way to remember all of your branding choices is to create a style guide. This holds all of your color palette choices, design elements, logos, and selected tone of voice. Refer to this whenever you’re stuck.
Or, if you don’t have the time, learn more about hiring an agency to do that for you.
Interact with Others
After creating all your social media profiles, it’s time to have some fun! Social media is more about posting stuff relating to your business. After all, it includes the word “social” for a reason.
It’ll feel awkward at first to post from a business account. But don’t let it deter you from getting your name out there.
Remember that you’re a business and to implement your tone of voice. And don’t be afraid to engage with other businesses as well. Instead of being your competition, they could become your supporters.
As long as you keep that balance between playful and professional, you’ll soon start to see more interaction on your social media profiles.
Post Regularly
When you join social media, think of it as a binding contract to always post regularly. Nothing kills a brand faster than an empty feed.
We’re not saying you have to post something every day, it’s more about staying consistent. For starters, create a schedule. What are the best times for you to post?
If you don’t think you can keep up with a large number, set it around twice a week. That’ll give you plenty of leeway to develop a larger number later on.
To help you out, you can always automate what you post. Publishing tools give you access to set a schedule of when your content will be published. This is beneficial, especially when you don’t have the time to sit down every day to think of content to post.
Pay attention to analytics tools as well. These will let you know when your followers are most active, giving you better engagement rates.
Social Media Branding Techniques for the Win
Social media is overwhelming, especially when you’re new to it. But following our social media branding techniques will help guide you down the path to success. Just remember to always be consistent, honest, and engaging.
Looking to master social media overnight? Check out our tips and tricks today!
