A strong social media branding strategy has become an important part of a digital marketing strategy.
From business branding to personal branding, everything needs social media branding strategy.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Tik Tok have deeply affected our way of living.
The presence of 3.5 billion people on social media networking platforms gives us a hint of their popularity in modern times.
We use social media for socializing. We use social media for reading our news. Not just that, we also use social media to interact with all those brands that matter to us.
It’s a change that has affected our culture deeply and it’s here to stay as far as we can see in the future.
Social media is powerful and including it in your marketing plan makes your plan stronger and more effective. One of the vital areas of marketing strategy is branding strategy.
This is what defines who we are and why we are here. Let’s see how we can expand this to even other social media channels.
What is a Social Media Branding Strategy?
Branding is the process of building a strong identity of a company that reflects a positive perception of the company and its offerings in its customers’ minds.
Expanding the concept of branding to social media is known as social media branding.
Social Media Branding means building a powerful image of your company on social media that helps you to differentiate yourself from others and also, creating positive audience perceptions about your company. Click To Tweet
What is Instagram Branding?
Creating and managing your brand image on Instagram is known as Instagram branding.
It defines how you want your Instagram followers to see you and what to think of you.
Moreover, it defines how you are going to win the trust of your audience and build a unique and authentic image of yourself.
In the end, it’s all about how you are going to stand out in the crowd of so many businesses already present on Instagram.
What is Facebook Branding?
The concept of social media branding strategies is not limited to just Instagram.
Any social media platform that can be used by your customers to connect with you will need branding.
Facebook branding is crafting the identity of your brand on Facebook.
It is about what kind of image you want to reflect there and what kind of message you want to communicate with that image to your customers.
Similarly, the same concept can be expanded to any other social media channel.
If you are on Twitter, you have to start doing Twitter branding.
If you are active on Linkedin, you should implement a LinkedIn branding strategy.
Why do You Need a Social Media Branding Strategy?
How do social media users feel about your brand?
Do they think of you as a trusted and good brand? Or do they ignore you?
Can your audience tell who you are by looking at your social media?
What are the five words that come to your audience’s minds when they look at your social media profiles? Are those words positive, healthy, and empowering for your brand or not?
There are many such questions that need to be answered to understand the importance of a social media branding strategy.
If the answer to any of these questions is not what you have expected, it’s time for you to start taking your social media branding strategy seriously.
If you have no clue about who your audience is and what they feel about your company you can contact us for marketing research services.
Just in case, if you are still wondering why social media branding strategies are so important, here are the two main reasons to convince you.
Key Benefits of a Strong Social Media Branding Strategy
Social Media Branding Gives You a Competitive Advantage
Social media branding affects a company in many ways.
Moreover, it builds a brand out of an ordinary company.
It gives rise to Coke in the market of soft drinks.
As can be seen, if it’s not because of strong branding, Apple would not have been ranked as the biggest brand in the world right now.
Having a unique brand can make a huge impact on your business and can give you a much-needed competitive edge. Click To Tweet
Social Media Branding Shapes Your Customers’ Perceptions
The brand you are trying to build has some strengths and also, some weaknesses.
Additionally, a customer’s experience of your brand can completely change the way they perceive your brand.
These customers’ perceptions can be positive or negative.
So this becomes the task of social media branding strategies to correct any of those negative customers’ perceptions if they exist.
For example, some customers can perceive Apple as the provider of the best laptops in the market while some can perceive it as the ridiculously overpriced laptops.
But most people perceive Apple as former because of its strong branding.
5-Step Process for Creating a Strong Social Media Branding Strategy
Keeping the importance of social media branding in mind, crafting a compelling brand strategy should be at the top of your to-do list. Here are the elements that make a social media branding strategy powerful.
Step 1) Develop Your Social Media Brand Identity
Social media branding starts with existential questions like:
-
- Who are you?
- What do you do?
- What’s your personality?
- How do you think you will describe yourself to people who are meeting you for the first time?
Once you have understood your brand personality in the form of answers to these questions, you can make sure that all the customer interactions with your brand are reflecting that.
Step 2) Work on Your Social Media Brand Voice
Social media brand voice defines your communication style for all your social media presence.
You have to figure out what kind of voice your brand will have if it’s a real human being. Is it going to be sarcastic? Funny? Friendly? Caring? Or something else?
Once you have identified your social media brand voice, you have to make sure that it is consistent on all the social media channels.
Undoubtedly, you can’t mix and match.
You can’t have an authoritative voice on one social channel and a loving voice on another social channel.
Because it is going to just end up confusing your customers and weakening the brand image that you are trying to build.
So, start with identifying the tone of voice of your brand.
Step 3) Decide Your Social Media Brand Promise
Remember your brand mission is more important than you imagine it to be.
You have to make sure that the brand promises you have made in your mission statement are getting fulfilled even on your social media platforms.
To give an example, if your brand mission talks about great customer service.
Then, your customer service should not be restricted to just the physical store.
A customer expects the same service even online and when you deliver on that, you make your brand image stronger.
Step 4) Create Your Social Media Brand Experience
The major difference between offline branding and online branding is that offline branding is way more experiential.
In the first place, everything present in your store creates a brand experience – furniture, lighting, staff members, colors, decorations, and all the other elements.
Unfortunately, when it comes to social media, providing a full experience of being in your store is not possible.
Your audience can’t touch or feel your products.
But that shouldn’t stop you from creating a better customer experience even on social media channels.
Social media experience will be created by the types of visual assets you have there.
So pay attention to the images and videos that you add there.
Interactive ads are another good way of bringing to life your offline brand on social media.
If you need help with interactive web advertising, time to contact us.
We have helped many big brands with highly effective and engaging interactive ads.
Step 5) Do Social Media Brand Research
Branding is not a one-time thing.
It is not something that you can do once and then forget for the rest of your life.
Branding is a continuous task.
Never forget that you are dealing with human perceptions as a part of branding.
The first thing to remember, human perceptions are not constant.
They change a lot.
They change very fast.
What your social media audience is thinking of you now is not going to be the same as what they are going to think of you after a few months.
Not to forget, strongly established perceptions are tough to change. Consequently, you should try to change any negative perception your customers have at the earliest. Before those perceptions end up becoming hard beliefs.
Also, it’s less time-consuming and more result-generating that social media audience research and analysis should form a part of your social media branding.
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Key takeaway: Social Media Branding
Branding should always be the first thing that a business owner does.
You want to shape the perceptions of your audience in the starting stage.
A point often overlooked, it’s much harder to change the existing perceptions than to form new ones.
Moreover, you don’t want to let your audience decide your image and then call that image your identity.
As it can harm your brand in the long run. You want to build your own identity.
And then use that identity on social media to create, manage, and grow your customer relationships.
What kind of branding challenge are you facing on social media?
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