How To Use Social Media To Increase Brand Awareness
Over three billion people actively use social media. This is just one of the reasons it’s an effective way to increase brand awareness. Other benefits of using social media to get people to notice your brand is it’s cost-effectiveness and ease of use.
Add to that the fun of using social media to raise awareness, and you have a great solution for how to spread the word about your business. But how do you go about building brand awareness using social media?
In this guide, we’ll take you through the steps to maximize your social media success.
Increase Brand Awareness: Getting Started
The first step to making the most out of your social media marketing efforts is choosing the right network or networks. Spend some time doing research to see where your ideal clients are active on social media.
With hundreds, possibly thousands, to choose from, choosing one or more networks can seem daunting. It might be best to start with some of the biggest:
- YouTube
You may also decide to look into some smaller networks if your target audience is active there. The larger the social network, the more work it takes to get noticed. However, if you do get noticed on one of the above five, you’ll be in a powerful position to boost your brand awareness.
Once you’ve set up your social media profiles on your selected networks, do some more research to find the top brands in your industry or niche. Follow them and engage with them.
Brainstorm some unique hashtags you can use to set your brand apart and help users find you. The hashtag should convey your brand’s message while being short enough to avoid confusion.
Put together a strategy for influencer marketing. What’s your budget? Which influencers and micro-influencers will you invite to partner with your brand?
What To Post
Now that you’ve got your social media profiles set up, you’re following the top brands, and you have strategies in place, it’s time to start producing content. This will be the meat of your social media experience, so you can expect it to take the most time.
The most important tenet to keep in mind when posting on social media is to focus your efforts on creating community, not selling your products or services. While sales may be one of your goals, social media is most effective when your top priority is engaging your audience.
Think of it this way: Your goal should be to create content that’s easy to consume and offers something relevant to your audience. You should aim to engage, educate, or entertain. Better yet, try to hit two or three of those.
How To Engage Your Audience
Social media brand awareness campaigns will fall flat if they don’t entice your community. What posts engage people the most? A good place to start is to think of how you would have a conversation with someone.
Ask a question. If your company sells luggage, maybe you might ask your fans and followers where they’d travel if they could go anywhere in the world. You might ask them to share a picture from their last trip.
Invite your community to share your posts. This can make people feel like they’re part of the conversation. But also make sure to keep your requests inline with the social network you’re on. For example, on Pinterest, you might ask someone to “repin” your post, but on Twitter you’d ask them to “retweet.”
Start a social media contest. People love the opportunity to win things. You can ask them to share a post, follow your brand, visit a landing page, caption a photo, or use a hashtag to enter the contest.
You can offer a complimentary demonstration or product sample. Another way to engage your community while posting about your products or services is to share how they work. This boosts social proof.
Sharing content posted by others in your community shows you are engaged with them. Engagement can work a lot like respect–sometimes you have to give it to get it. Sharing others’ posts also tells your community you care about more than just pushing your own content at them.
Pop culture and posts about trending topics can help increase community engagement. These posts show your brand is as much a part of the world as your community is.
When To Post
Social media marketing to increase brand awareness isn’t just about choosing the right networks and crafting the right posts. When you post matters to. Ideally, you want your posts to blast out when your community is most active.
There are tools you can use, both native to social media networks and externally connected, to help you determine when your community is online. No matter what time of day your posts go live, make sure you’re sharing valuable content every day.
You’ll also want to make sure you post the right number of times. This will depend on your community and may require some trial and error. However, what you want to avoid is posting too much branded content.
For example, the average number of branded posts on Twitter in 2017 for businesses with 10,000 to 100,000 followers was 3.61 each day.
Additional Social Media Best Practices
By now you’re practically a social media branding pro! Before you get to posting though, we’ve got some extra tips for you to help you boost your brand on social media.
- If you’re posting on Facebook, boost your post to reach your community.
- Share high-quality content on all your social media accounts to reach more people.
- Craft content designed for the network you’re posting to.
- Respond to community members’ comments to show you engage in social customer care.
Conclusion
Let’s do a quick recap. Social media can help you increase brand awareness by providing access to a targeted and interested community. By crafting engaging, educational, and entertaining posts, you’ll not only boost your brand’s online presence, but will encourage others to become brand ambassadors.
To find other ways to help get your business off the ground, check out our blog.
