Social Media Branding
Social media branding is about making sure that your brand is the same online as it is offline. It’s about creating a constant, consistent, responsive, engaging experience for the customer every time they encounter you on the internet.
Your social media presence is about building relationships with each customer that encounters your brand. That requires:
1) Creating a strategy that supports and strengthens your brand
2) Identifying how to provide value to customers in meaningful ways
3) Humanising your brand to build connections with your audience
Key Ingredients for Your Branding Strategy
Social media marketing is an ongoing process of identifying your audience, engaging them, and keeping them engaged, so that when they need your product or service, they think of your brand. There are five key elements to a strong social media branding strategy that will support this process;-
- What Do You Want the Brand to Say?
Begin with identifying with what your brand is all about:Logo
Trademark colors
Characters and icons
A particular style, look, and/or attitude
Feelings and valuesNow, identify what changes will be made to your brand for social media. (Perhaps you want to be a little bit more casual online, for example.) Keep in mind that in order to maintain your brand’s integrity, your online and offline efforts should be consistent with each other. - What is the Brand Saying Now?
You need to know what your brand looks like online right now. This includes:Seeing what people are saying about your brand on every social network
Googling your brand
Establishing benchmarks for any existing social media tools (e.g. how many Facebook likes you have, or how many visitors your website has per day)
Using analysis tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to provide in-depth dataFrom this information, you can create a picture of what your brand currently says via social media. This should include its public perception, the values it embodies, and its persona. - How Will the Brand Come to Life?
Now, you can devise a plan for how you will create your desired social media brand. This will include building an audience profile, creating a budget, identifying what platforms and tools you will focus on, creating a strategy for building a presence on those platforms, and crafting engaging messages that bring your brand to life. - What Resources Will You Have?
It’s important to be realistic when creating your strategy. Identify the technical resources, budget, and people that you will be able to leverage for your branding campaign. (This information should come from your marketing budget.) Make sure to identify any training or upgrades that might be required, too. - How Will You Evaluate Your Progress?
Finally, develop a plan for checking in on how your brand is doing. This might include:Setting up tools like keyword alerts, Google Analytics, or social media tracking software (like HootSuite or Radian6)
Identifying what metrics to track and how often to track them
What changes will indicate significant progress or cause for concern
Identifying Your Social Media Audience
Building an Audience Profile
Your first step in your branding strategy should be building a detailed profile of your target social media audience. This will help you choose the right forum and messages for your brand, ensuring that it connects with customers and sends the right message.
Building a social media audience profile or persona is very similar to building a traditional customer profile. You will want to find out:
- Who wants, needs, and buys our product or service?
- What do these customers look like, in terms of age, ethnicity, religious preferences, political preferences, ideology, etc.?
- Where do these customers shop, work, live, and play?
- What social media networks do our customers participate in?
- What kind of activities do our customers do on social media?
- What other online activities do our customers do (e.g. reading blogs, watching videos, shopping)?
Choosing the Right Platform for Your Brand
Now that you know who you’re going to target, you can start identifying the forums that you’re going to use to bring your brand to life. Most social media platforms have a unique focus, so consider this in your planning. Here is a brief list of the most popular social networks at the time of publication.
Facebook is currently the world’s most popular network, with about 1.3 billion users. Businesses can create pages, post status updates, share pictures and videos, and communicate with customers. Facebook has also recently added support for hashtags to help users find information and connect with their interests. As well, Facebook apps can add functionality to buy products, request samples, and participate in contests right from the site. Your Facebook page should be an integral part of your social media branding strategy.
Flickr
Flickr is a photo and short-video-sharing site that is owned by Yahoo. Their focus is on making photos accessible and giving users ways to organise them. You can use Flickr to strengthen your brand by uploading images, tagging them appropriately, and linking back to your website.
Foursquare
Foursquare is a location-based social network. Users check into locations on their phone, earning points, unlocking badges, and receiving coupons. Users can also leave tips and recommendations for others.
Google+
Google+ is one of the newest social networks, although previous social media efforts by Google (such as Orkut, Wave, and Buzz) date back to 2004. Google+ allows users to organise people into circles and then share information with each circle. Google+ also includes Hangouts, which allows users to video chat with each other. Many companies have used this feature to connect with customers and create a casual, friendly, approachable brand.
Instagram is a mobile app that allows users to create, edit, and share photos and short videos via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. Businesses can use Instagram to visually promote their brand and create awareness.
LinkedIn is a social network for professionals. Users and businesses can create pages and connect with each other. You can build your brand’s trust and credibility by hosting groups, answering questions, and creating a page that provides value to readers.
Launched in 2010, Pinterest is among the most popular social networks. It allows users to pin websites, recipes, photos and maps to virtual pinboards. These boards can be accessed by other users via a feed or search, or boards can be kept private. For businesses, Pinterest offers the opportunity to showcase products, share ideas, and provide incentives. Companies like Etsy, Kraft, L.L. Bean, Lowe’s, and Nordstrom have been particularly successful in using Pinterest to promote their brand.
Quora
This question-and-answer website is crowdsourced, providing a great opportunity for businesses to establish credibility and provide value to its users.
Snapchat
This mobile app allows users to create ‘snaps’ of photos, videos, and text and shares them with recipients. These snaps are only available for one to ten seconds before they are deleted. If you want to establish a brand as young, hip, and fun, this is the place to be.
Tumblr
Tumblr allows users to share whatever they want (photos, music, videos, text, etc.) from the Tumblr website or mobile apps. It’s a great tool for establishing brand awareness since pages are highly customizable. It also gives users a central place to share things from.
The world’s second largest social network allows users to post 140-character updates (tweets) which are shared with their followers. Businesses can use Twitter to post news, share links, answer questions, interact with customers, and much more. Hashtags allow users to organise information and find information that they’re interested in. Twitter should be a part of your branding strategy.
Vine
Vine is a mobile app launched in 2012. It is now owned by Twitter. It enables users to record and share six-second videos. Brands like Dunkin Donuts and Columbia Records have used it to connect with a younger demographic.
Vimeo
Vimeo is a video sharing site that focuses on high-quality, creative videos. They were the first video sharing site to support high-definition videos. They also offer more video customisation and editing tools than other video sites (such as YouTube).
YouTube
Owned by Google, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and the biggest video site on the internet. It allows users to upload and view videos on virtually any topic. Videos are an essential part of establishing your social media brand, whether you offer helpful how-to videos, chats with experts in your industry, vlogs, or fun cartoons.
Looking at the Platform Options
Here are some ways that these platforms could be used in an example of a value-oriented fast food chain, for instance.
- Showcase logo with profile picture
- Showcase key products with cover photos and albums
- Strengthen image of brand as family-friendly with stories, photos, and videos from families enjoying the product
- Strengthen image of brand as fun with offbeat questions and polls that engage target demographics
Google+
- Create vibrant, fun landing page that matches landing pages on other platforms to ensure brand integrity
- Give posts a more adult feel to focus on young professionals
- Focus posts on healthier options and community projects to enhance brand image
- Engage younger demographic with pictures of people enjoying the food and activities in the communities
- Use custom and popular tags to establish brand values
- Link to Facebook and Twitter to enhance demographic reach and brand impact
- Create company page that highlights the employees’ achievements to promote company brand
- Offer support and advice to leadership and entrepreneurship groups to create trust for the brand
- Encourage employees to link to the company page
Quora
- Enhance brand’s family focus by answering nutrition questions (not necessarily those that promote the product)
- Increase community presence by answering tourism questions for the areas that are served
- Create vibrant, fun landing page that matches landing pages on other platforms to ensure brand integrity
- Use custom and popular tags to establish brand values
- Be active in following and retweeting others
YouTube
- Create vibrant, fun landing page that matches landing pages on other platforms to ensure brand integrity
- Create and share videos of people enjoying the food and activities in the communities (particularly fitness activities)
- Create and share videos showing people how to make some of the recipes at home