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Social Media Branding: 5 Best Practices to Create a Strong Identity

Social Media Branding: 5 Best Practices to Create a Strong Identity

Are you looking to stand out in a crowded marketplace? Almost every marketer agrees that you need a strong brand identity to be recognizable. One of the most powerful marketing tools for breaking through the noise and getting your brand to stick out is social media branding. 

That’s because it works no matter if you are running a small business or large corporation. You can find your audience on social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. By building a strong social media branding, it can help advertise your products and services. Especially since 54% of social media users are actively browsing and researching products on the platform.

However, brand identity is more than just a logo design or ad campaign. To help you develop a memorable identity, here are 5 best practices to inform your social media strategy.

1. Outline your social media personas

Having a target persona is a must for every marketing effort, and this goes without saying for social media branding.

That’s why the first step is to research and identify the group of people likely to buy your products. You can start by analyzing your company’s existing customer base. Learn about their demographic patterns such as age, gender, location, occupation, education, and income level. Understand them deeper by learning about their behaviors like their desires, pain points, and what social media they use?

The more details you have about your ideal customer, the more effective your brand messaging can be. This is because you create content that speaks to your audience. Take Notion as an example. It is an all-in-one workspace popular among users looking for better organization or productivity boost. Its Twitter feed embodies this entirely. It is full of productivity hacks and project management templates, as well as this article that shares how a user managed to achieve his dream through using Notion to be organized.

Notion

2. Build a brand style guide

Behind every strong branding is a great brand style guide. The key to having your audience recognize and remember your brand is establishing brand consistency. This means having defining rules and instructions about essential brand elements that every marketer in your company should follow. This is the only way to build consistent brand messaging. You can create a PowerPoint presentation to ensure everyone is on the same page when it comes to brand guidelines.

Your brand style guide should cover everything that can represent your business. This includes image style, color palette, boilerplate, and even your social media captions. While considering all this in your brand guideline, understand how your competitors are branding themselves. Then, find a way to differentiate yourself from them.

A quick tip here is forming a unique selling proposition (USP). The one feature or perceived benefit that makes you better than the rest of your competitors. For instance, Domino’s Pizza has a promise that sets it apart from other pizza parlors. That is a guarantee that it will deliver its pizza in under 30 minutes, or you get the next pizza for free.

3. Post content and engage regularly

There’s one thing that could kill your branding efforts on social media, and that is if you are not posting regularly. Your audience will likely forget you if you just post to Facebook or Instagram once a month. Plus honestly, it will take you more than one or two posts to leave a brand impression on your target audience — let alone convert them into a customer. As a rule of thumb, Hootsuite recommends the following posting frequency:

  • Facebook: 1 to 2 times a day
  • Twitter: 1 to 5 tweets a day
  • Linkedin: 1 to 5 times a day
  • Instagram: 3 to 7 times per week

However, keep in mind that these numbers should only serve as a guide. Every social media account is unique, so test and analyze your results to find your perfect frequency.

Still, remember that brand awareness is a cumulative process. Refer to the buyer’s journey and create a different mix of content types for your target audiences. Different social media audiences might be at other parts of the customer journey. Some might still be learning about your brand, while others may be ready to purchase. Curate your social media account with various content to avoid repetitive content. This will also make sure your content adds different values and captures your audience’s attention.

A quick tip is to develop a social media calendar to be on top of your posting strategy. Keep a lookout for seasonal holidays, and plan different content. Posting and engaging with your audiences regularly can also help you boost more organic traffic as they will have something to look forward to every week.

4. Track your strategy and optimize

When it comes to analyzing the effectiveness of your social media marketing, avoid looking at vanity metrics. For example, the number of followers or likes. Understand that just because you have a strong social media presence doesn’t necessarily mean you will generate a lot of sales.

An effective way to make sure your social media activities become part of the shopping experience is through tracking social media ROI. This can be done by setting your social campaign goals and tracking how the post has worked. Measure the conversion and engagement rates for this. Use these metrics to find answers to questions like what are the best days to post, what are your user’s favorite content, and so on.

5. Create multiple accounts for different focus

For larger companies that offer various products and services, consider setting up multiple accounts for social media efficiencies. The advantage of having different accounts is that it will allow you to hyperfocus when planning your marketing strategies. Thus, create content relevant to specific audiences.

An example of a business using this approach is the used car retailer Carmax that has set up multiple Facebook accounts based on location.

Conclusion

Ultimately, having a strong social media identity is important to get your brand in front of more people quickly. So make sure you apply these social media branding practices to build an unforgettable identity that stands out in the crowd.

 

 

 

Author Bio - Adela Belin is a content marketer and blogger at Writers Per Hour. She is passionate about sharing stories with the hope to make a difference in people's lives and contribute to their personal and professional growth. Find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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