Top Tips On How To Build A Social Brand

Social media marketing is booming and with the increase in multi-device usage, many brands have had to create new social media platforms in order to capture their audiences’ attention wherever they are.

Social channels like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Twitter have proved to be very effective in promoting companies’ services and products via increased engagement. However, it is important that these platforms are handled separately with tailor-made content that fits with the audience and tone of the environment.

So, what are the best ways to promote your company using social media?

• Content curation and marketing:

The first element that needs to be considered when building a social brand is to create unique and relevant content, following a consistent marketing schedule. The ideal schedule should take into account seasonality, the launch of any products or services, company news or announcements and industry events that are relevant to your audiences. Once you have ‘mapped out’ your yearly schedule and broken it down by month, you will need to match your future content distribution to the best-suited social channels. Not all content will ‘fit’ with all your social platforms. However, for content that can be distributed via several channels, it will be important to convert it into the correct format: post, tweet, articles, etc.

Frequency of content submissions will also need to be planned ahead to make sure all submissions are consistent (such as ‘re-tweets’ for instance).

This simple plan will allow consistent brand visibility and top of the mind recall amongst your target audiences. Do not hesitate to use a variation of vehicles such as interesting whitepapers, infographics, presentations, checklists, cheat sheets, blog posts and, most importantly, share your content across your social channels regularly.

• Community outreach:

Get involved with some of the best community outreach programmes on your target social platforms or blogs. Start building long lasting relationships with key bloggers and supply them with fresh ideas that they can share and credit back to you. Outreach can translate into social responsibility, enabling society to do better through literacy campaigns, food distribution or creating below the line employment. Outreach can effectively increase the brand visibility both online and offline.

• Co-branding:

Co-Branding has proved effective for many businesses, leveraging other brands’ social networks in order to establish a new relationship with like-minded audiences. In the new social online world of brand building, more companies come together to form strategic partnerships or alliances. The key is to target audiences that have a very similar profile (and demographic) to your target market.

• Incentivising engagement:

Identifying loyal brand advocates can have far reaching benefits. Look at what they have to say about your brand, as this can be invaluable information for your content strategy. Do not hesitate to incentivise the most loyal advocates with appropriate offers. It will also create a halo effect with more advocates trying to promote your brand online with incentives in mind. Incentives can be a physical give away, access to discounts before the sales period starts or a preview of your most recent research report.

• Advertising:

Promotions on social platforms can directly boost your audience’s size, reach, traffic to your site and increase your brand visibility. The great thing here is that you can test the effectiveness of various messages, offers and tone, as results are trackable. You will be getting direct feedback from your target audience in the form of ‘likes’, comments, ‘shares’ and tweets.

• Q & A:

Sharing your knowledge on Q & A sites is a brilliant way to build credibility for your brand. For instance, Quora allows your to identify questions from your on-line audience and answer intelligently with appropriate solutions. By return, more users can start following you enabling better brand visibility and trust.

[box]Author Bio: Andy is working in leading brand and web design company in the UK. He has written many articles on multitude topics and specialises in various forms of design services. He is well known for his creative designing skills and has ability to solve new design challenges with his own bright ideas.[/box]

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