No matter what industry your business is a part of, social media is a cost-effective way to connect and build relationships with your intended audience. If done correctly, these relationships are mutually beneficial—your customers can receive the service or product they desire, and your brand could see an uptick in website traffic and potential conversions. PWC reports that “social networks are the biggest source of inspiration for consumer purchases with 37% of consumers finding purchase inspiration through the channel.”
But social media does much more than drive traffic to your website. Social media also effectively helps your business create a consistent brand that allows your business to gain credibility, enhance brand visibility, and highlight what makes you different from competitors. Of course, this key feature isn’t only limited to social media but it does play a huge role in helping others figure out what your business is all about.
Like content marketing, social media marketing can be crucial to creating interesting stories and cultivating strong relationships that boost brand awareness and loyalty—both of which are highly invaluable for your company.
In this blog, we’ll show you 5 simple yet powerful ways you can use social media to increase brand awareness for your business.
1. Be consistent with your brand across all social media.
Consistency in brand awareness is everything. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, your audience should be able to navigate through all your social media accounts and recognize your brand in all of them. Keeping your social media channels consistent allows your audience to understand your brand and that they’ve searched for it in the right place. Studies have proven that keeping a consistent theme across all social media platforms can increase consumer trust in your business
How do you maintain consistency on social media? When creating and updating your profiles, make sure to use the same logo, tone of voice, profile photos, banners, and other promotional materials. You should also ensure that each profile is clean and well-optimized so that your audience can look through your social media at a brief glance and know exactly who you are.
2. Create an engaging brand voice.
Along with consistency, you should also develop a long-lasting and unique brand voice that fits your brand. To do this, you must consider your audience, their age, interests, and other important details that’ll help you learn more about them. For instance, if your company targets a younger demographic, it makes sense to interact with your audience with a more casual and entertaining tone.
Of course, your brand’s voice must also fit your business’s industry. Therefore, you should also consider what products and services you’re offering to your customers and how to best conduct these conversations through your posts. Make sure you’re also answering your customer’s questions and concerns as consistently as possible.
3. Don’t only promote your products or services.
Your social media posts should be a myriad of different topics—not just promoting your products or services. Your content must also include interactions with your customers and relevant news about your company. You may also include user-generated content, share comments, or even share fun facts about your business’s history. For instance, if you run a restaurant business, you may decide to create social media previews that link to your latest blog post or share some light-hearted quotes that fit your restaurant’s theme. This can ultimately help boost your audience’s engagement with your posts and establish your brand as an expert in its industry.
If you aren’t entirely sure what type of content to create, try looking at your competitor’s posts. As Aaron Agius at Entrepreneur writes, one of the easiest ways to create content on social media for your brand awareness efforts is to see what types of posts others have been successful with and put together your own, better versions.”
4. Join conversations with others in your industry.
Be sure to take part in your industry’s community on social media. This includes having a polite yet engaging conversation on social media (like Twitter) or a chat in the comments section on Instagram. Social media discussions that directly relate to your company further improves its positioning as an expert in your industry. It can also improve your brand’s credibility and awareness. The better your business stands out, the more your audience will engage with your brand online.
To join relevant industry conversations, you may try searching through hashtags or trending pages in each social media platform. It’s also important to be polite and understanding throughout these interactions. However, you should also not be afraid to be opinionated, especially if your brand offers an educational standpoint on a topic. This does not mean you need to respond with outlandish opinions or alienate your audience. Instead, you must be able to stand by your brand, its principles, and core beliefs. Doing so can help your brand stand out against competitors who parrot what everyone else is saying in conversations.
5. Experiment with your captions.
For some visual social platforms like Instagram, captions are a secondary aspect to regular social posts. However, you should take into consideration what type of captions you’re writing in each of your posts. Captions, in their own way, are another opportunity to build brand awareness because you can directly exhibit your brand’s voice. Here, you can communicate using emojis or quirky humor that compliments the high-quality pictures you post.
Captions are also a chance to speak with your customers and enhance their interests in your products or services. You can also use the captions to promote discounts or special offers or invite audiences to join your latest giveaway or livestream.
Building brand awareness can be a strenuous task. Your brand consists of various elements. As such, brand awareness strategies usually take lots of planning, time, and effort before it’s officially implemented into an overall marketing plan. Social media can provide that extra boost that your strategy needs for its success. Some tips may work better for your brand than others, but the main trick is to try each one and evaluate those that perform best. Implementing these tips into your brand building strategy can create the foundation for a memorable brand that your customer will be proud to shop from.
Check out our blog, How Amazon Has Changed the Ecommerce Industry and Digital Marketing to learn more about how Amazon impacts your business.