As most small businesses will spend around $75,000 this year on digital marketing, every company is looking for ways to cut back and save cash. With social media branding techniques, you can get the word out about your company and your products while you reach people in a sincere way. The opportunities offered by social media are endless and if you’re not taking advantage of this global town square, you’re missing out.
Here are four of the most important things to keep in mind when you’re branding your business on social media.
1. Stay Choosy
While you might think you should be on every social network and be posting constantly, you should only join the networks that make sense for your brand. Your time and energy have limits, so don’t act as if you have an endless amount of energy to spend. If you don’t anticipate any of your clients to be on a given network, don’t waste your time building your presence there.
Look at where other businesses in your industry are and take up space there. However, if you see that there’s an untapped network where your clients are but your competitors aren’t, get in there now. Any competitive advantage you can get will make you a better business.
If you’re in a highly professional space, you don’t necessarily need to be on Snapchat. But if your market is all about following trends and staying ahead of what people over 34 know about, then you shouldn’t be spending dozens of hours on LinkedIn.
2. Make a Map of Time and Resources
While you might think it’ll be easy to keep your social media updated and relevant, that’s a common mistake you shouldn’t participate in. You can quickly and easily overextend yourself by feeling obligated to be on every single site. Once you’ve whittled down your sites, figure out what percentage of your social media time needs to be spent on each one.
Your company needs a page on Linkedin, first and foremost. Even if you won’t be updating it often, it’s where other companies will look to connect with you. It’s also a great place to post job listings when you’re looking to expand your company.
If you have a brick and mortar location, you need to be on Google My Business. Your presence on the search engine is vital to the survival of your business. If any potential client searches for a product or service even tangentially related to what you do within a 10-mile radius, Google will return you as a result.
Make sure all of your contact and vital information are up to date for this. Other search engines and review sites will use the information on Google to populate their own listings and one wrong piece of information can spread quickly.
Make sure you also have custom URLs on every major social network like Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. These accounts don’t need to be populated now, but you can use them to grow out your network later on.
Now commit to one social media network and give it your all. Once you’ve made a profile, the one that your customers have followed you on the most will be one of your key clues.
3. Complete Your Profiles
It’s essential that when your customers and clients find you that they find profiles that are robust and complete. Coming upon a social media profile for a company that you are new to, which isn’t fully completed, is like coming up upon a building with no sign. This monolithic building might house something great or it might be completely abandoned.
However, in the world of social media, there’s sure to be a competitor who is bigger and louder. They’ll attract your customers’ attention before your understated or empty profile can give them what they’re looking for.
Search engines rely on the fields available on a social media profile to help link users with your company. Even if they are better served by your company’s actual website, they more often they see your company on that first page of results, the more likely they’ll click.
Once they do click, your social media profile can tell your story. New customers love to connect with a company in a special way. If they can see that there is something special about your brand or something unique they can connect with, they could become lifelong devotees.
4. Give Great Content
At the end of the day, it’s your brand’s content that will keep your customers coming back. Building a connection with customers that lasts longer than a single transaction or promotion takes time, but that bond will be hard to break.
Create content that works for multiple social media networks. While you shouldn’t rely on posting duplicate content constantly, great content should work in multiple ways.
Optimize your content for different channels by getting to know the standards for text length on different channels. While hashtags work well on Twitter and Instagram, they’re much clunkier on Facebook and nonexistent on LinkedIn.
The most valuable content can link back to blog posts. Blog posts are great because they offer you the opportunity to communicate with your clients about who you are as a company and what your expertise is. You can answer common how-to questions or FAQs with blog posts and then use your company’s products as the solution to their problems.
Make sure your site’s design is on point and you’ll win devotees with ease. If you want some great design ideas, there’s a lot to view here.
Social Media Branding Takes Focus
If you’re new to social media branding, the learning curve can be steep. However, it can be rewarding in a big way, once you’ve found your brand voice. Social media allows you to meet your clients in a way that they’ll carry with them for years and remember as they spread the word about you and your products.
If you’re looking for tips to create the ideal social media campaign, check out our guide here.
