How to Grow Your Brand on Social Media

Social media platforms are powerful tools for reaching and communicating with potential customers. With an effective social media branding strategy, your business can successfully stand out from the crowd and convey value to its target audience. 

These social media branding tips can help familiarize your business with the often confusing world of social media.

When you start creating business profiles on social media, it’s not easy to know where to begin. With dozens of prominent platforms and significant competition, many business owners wonder if the effort is worthwhile.  Social media platforms attract millions of users each day, there’s definitely an opportunity to gain exposure.

However, your success on social media is directly proportional to your social media branding efforts. 

How well you present your business on social media plays a significant role in the results you’ll see from these platforms. We’ve put together this Grow Your Brand on Social Media eBook to help you better understand the brand presence and how it relates to social media.

Here you’ll learn:

• What social media branding is
• How social media affects branding
• What you should know before getting started with branding
• How to build brand awareness on social media

Social Media and Branding 

Social media branding is the process of connecting with a target audience across social media platforms by boosting brand awareness. 

A social media branding strategy allows you to connect with potential customers in an optimized way, increasing your chances of getting noticed and achieving your business goals.

We know it’s tough to get started. We made 10 FREE Earth Tone Ready-to-Publish Instagram Posts to jump-start the process.

This branding needs to be applied to every social media platform to ensure you don’t waste your time and energy on ineffective methods. 

How Social Media Affects Branding

As a business owner, you’re already familiar with the general concept of branding. However, you might not be confident about branding in the age of social media. The ubiquity of these platforms greatly influences how businesses go about establishing a brand presence and boosting brand awareness. 

In 2020, an estimated 3.6 billion people were using social media. Never before have businesses had such easy access to this many potential customers. While this number is promising, keep in mind that 77% of small businesses are competing for attention in this space. 

You can benefit from social media exposure and reach by using online networking branding.

It also helps you distinguish yourself from the competition. Even businesses outside of your niche can grab the limited attention of your prospective clients. 

What To Consider Before Social Media Branding 

Before you can start developing a social media branding strategy, there are some important factors to consider. 

Your Brand 

It’s not possible to focus on social media branding before you have a firm grasp on your business’s brand — at least not effectively.

This understanding will influence everything you do related to branding on social media. If you haven’t yet fleshed out this portion of your business, take some time to perform market research, and create a brand. It might be tricky initially, but this information will simplify all of your branding efforts moving forward. 

Your Audience

The audience you’re trying to reach is another major component to consider before diving into social media branding. You need to think about what they’re expecting to see from your business, how they’ll react, and what they prefer to see. Learning about your target audience can provide you with key information that will inform your social media branding strategy. Here are some things you should know about your audience:

• Their age range
• Their likes and dislikes
• What companies do they already interact with
• What kinds of problems do they face

When you have a clear idea of your business’s brand and your target audience, you can start concerning yourself with social media branding. 

Branding Yourself On Social Media

• Complete your social media profile
• Use the best social media platforms for your brand and audience
• Develop a posting schedule
• Interact with your audience
• Integrate your website into your social media presence

Branding yourself on social media is all about getting in front of your target audience and communicating effectively about why your business is worthy of attention. Let’s take a look at some ways you can build your brand presence on social media. 

Make Sure Your Social Media Profile Is Complete The first step to branding on social media is outfitting your profiles with brand-related content in the form of images and links. 

Social Media

Profile Picture

Your profile picture is a relatively basic piece of your business profile, but it plays a major role in social media branding.

You need to ensure all social media profile pictures sport your business’s logo. Your logo will create a sense of uniformity across all platforms and make it easier for users to identify your business in search results.

Social Media Bio

This section should feature a concise summary of your business and what it offers to customers. It’s short, sweet, and to the point but it still gives users an accurate idea of what we do. Some social media platforms offer more space for your bio than others, but you don’t want to overwhelm visitors when they first get to know your business.

Try to limit your bio sections to two or three sentences. 

Website Link 

To complete your social media branding strategy, you need to bridge the gap between your social media presence and your website. One of the easiest, most effective ways to accomplish this goal is by providing a URL link in your profile.

We use a link on all of our major social media accounts. By connecting users on social media with your website, you’re further illustrating the reach of your business’s brand. While a homepage link is always a good option, you could also feature landing pages or recent blog posts. 

Use the Best Social Media Platforms for Your Brand 

With dozens of active platforms available, many businesses don’t even know where to begin with their social media branding strategy. Instead of spreading your time, energy, and investments thinly across too many platforms, it’s much smarter to find the social media platforms that play to your business’s strengths.

For example, if you’re selling beautiful homemade jewelry, a social media platform that relies heavily on visuals will work best for branding purposes. In this case, Instagram and Pinterest are great choices. However, a business offering tax services might not have much visual content to share. In this instance, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other dynamic platforms are better options.

Consider each social media platform’s advantages and disadvantages and decide which suits your business’s needs best.  

Develop a Posting Schedule

After you’ve chosen social media platforms that complement your business’s strengths and filled out your profiles, it’s time to develop an effective posting schedule. Your posting schedule will dictate several things, including:

• What kinds of content do you post
• How often do you post
• What time of the day do you post
• What’s included in the post

While these factors will vary between platforms, it’s essential to optimize your posts to reach as many users as possible while still staying true to your business’s brand. Remaining consistent — in your posts’ frequency and type of content — will help develop your business’s branding in the eyes of your users. 

Interact With Your Audience 

Many business owners don’t see results from their social media branding strategy due to a lack of, well, socializing. It’s not enough to build a great profile and post helpful content consistently. You need to interact and engage with your audience regularly.

Social media companies design their platforms to promote interaction.

The more active you are, the more likely that these platforms will promote your posts. Furthermore, interacting with your audience shows current and potential followers that you’re responsive, trustworthy, and credible. Here are some ways you can become more engaged with your audience:

• Reply to all of the comments on your content
• Share content produced by users on your profiles
• Comment on the profiles and posts of your target audience

Integrate Your Website into Your Social Media Presence

Both brick-and-mortar and e-commerce stores rely heavily on the power of websites to conduct a variety of business processes. To maximize your brand presence on social media, you have to find ways of integrating your website into the platform.

While social media offers some selling functionality, your website will remain the superior converting tool. As we discussed before, the first strategy businesses can take to integrate their website into social media profiles is by sharing a link in the bio.  

Buy our eBook Grow Your Brand

Connecting your social media audience with your website:

• Share blog posts regularly on your feed
• Take advantage of other link opportunities on each platform
• Include a call-to-action to encourage users to click these links
• Offer a discount code or coupon for users who visit your website

Social media platforms are powerful tools for reaching and communicating with potential customers. With an effective social media branding strategy, your business can successfully stand out from the crowd and convey value to its target audience. Following these social media branding tips can help orient your business in the often confusing world of social media.

For Professional Marketing Brand Materials visit our shop.

Kate Putnam

In order to improve online customers and client retention, Putnam Marketing empowers organizations to recognize their inherent skills through Brand Archetypes.

putnam.marketing.com

Bridging the Generational Gap Together

What would you say to Abraham Lincoln if you had to explain the Internet to him?

When introducing a fundamental digital notion (such as “do you know what email is?”) to a man who wasn’t born in the mid-1800s, hadn’t been living in a cave, and boasted about how much “marketing” expertise he has, that was the only parallel I could think of.

Cue an eye roll

You can imagine my surprise when the world wide web and the word search results turned his smile into a quizzical, huh? When I Googled “how do you explain a marketing plan to Abe Lincoln 2021”, web pages generational gap, 2021 vs 1860 marketing strategy, and there were memes, jokes, and stand-up comedy routines based on that exact question.

When it comes to marketing, Abe Lincoln was a man ahead of his time

He’s one of the few people in history to have successfully campaigned for public office under his name without any previous political experience.

Lincoln was the leader our country needed in the 1860s

He was open to new ideas, progressive, and forward-thinking. His dreams and visions for the future of our country changed the landscape forever. Surprisingly, he is also an excellent analogy for what businesses face today. They try to wade through all that is happening in internet services, digital marketing, and basic marketing research.

You’re probably familiar with Abraham Lincoln’s claim to fame: he’s the president who led the Union through the Civil War, kept Congress from breaking up the nation, and freed the slaves. But do you know Lincoln’s stance on the invention of the steamboat? Or his thoughts about tariffs?

Bridging the Generational Gap Together

Or this: Does Lincoln have anything to teach modern-day business owners about leaving their fear behind and embracing the “new normal”?

I’m not sure where you live, but if it’s in the United States of America, I guess that men who look like Abe Lincoln (body type excluded) are still making business decisions with the bravery of Simba. And if you’re in the 30% not led by white old men, give yourself a pat on the back.

When it comes to marketing, Abe Lincoln was a man ahead of his time. He’s one of the few people in history to have successfully campaigned for public office under his name without any previous political experience.

Not bad for a guy who spent most of his working life as a traveling salesman selling cheese, hats, and other sundries until his dad decided to make him a lawyer. Even a traveling salesman understands that search engine optimization SEO is how to communicate with potential clients.

For the sake of argument, if 90% of America is accepting one type of currency, making collecting payments i.e. online payments why not put your hands up and roll with it? Here we step back in time, not accepting online payments in 2021 is corporate suicide. And, these ladies and gentlemen are the fear-filled leaders of today.

These cowboys don’t even know what WiFi is, let alone unite a nation

When I hear “do we really need a freelancer” to design our social media marketing, search engine optimization, or online product services;

I think, what century is this?

Lincoln would have not only jumped on the opportunity to collect money a decade ago (that’s an educated guess (traveling salesman)), but would have understood the concept of marketing today whether he’d been introduced to the hardware or not. A simple comparison of a sign in a store window and a landing page; your website is the first impression you can make with a potential client.

You’d think that a guy who kicked off his political career by running for Congress in 1846 would fit right in with today’s politicians.

But when it comes to an understanding of social media, online marketing, and SEO 10 Things to Expect from Your SEO Content Creator, Abe Lincoln would have been just as lost as any of us in the 21st century. And as we’ve done here at Putnam Marketing for years, let’s use Abe Lincoln to illustrate what those terms mean then and now.

When you go to a website through a web browser like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc., the computers send each other messages through an application called “HTTP,” and the message says “listen to this website.” So, regardless of what someone is using to access the internet, they all send and receive information.

When you click on a browser, you send a message to a server, but the server sends it back to the browser. So, when you’re on Putnam Marketing, you click on a map, and the server sends information about the address. The server is like the database of all of the information on websites. When you access a website, you are requesting the server to give you information about it.

The internet collects all of these millions and millions of servers sending messages back and forth.

You have heard of AI

How is this a news flash to anyone under the age of 75? You read the same articles, watched the same news outlets, and somehow missed the 13,000 articles regarding the Patriot Act?

Yes, 20 years ago, the leaders of our country passed the Patriot Act, and you forfeited your right to privacy. They have been data mining your information for two decades. No, Google isn’t listening to your phone; they are running analytics on the most probable outcome of behavior based on past events. The concept of SEO isn’t complex. Marketing is not scary or confusing.

The basic premise of marketing is emotion

Human emotion because humans are not rational when their feelings are involved and more likely to purchase when selling. It isn’t confusing. Marketing is basic propaganda and persuasion that leaders have been using since the beginning of time.

Unless you’re giving your credit card number to a guy you’ve never met, or a full-blown hacker, you can go ahead living your life, and marketers like us will go ahead and be sure that product placement is correct where you’ll see it.

Kate Putnam

In order to improve online customers and client retention, Putnam Marketing empowers organizations to recognize their inherent skills through Brand Archetypes.

putnam.marketing.com