In this day and age, everyone knows social media marketing can make or break your brand. It’s imperative you have a social media presence to stay active and relevant, however it’s also vital to know your strategy and build a message you can be proud of. The following tips will help guide you in understanding how to effectively utilize social media to build your brand and gain followers, while staying true to your vision and core values. 

Know Your Audience.

What is it you are trying to sell? Are you a pediatrician trying to start an Instagram account? Who is your target market? Chances are, you’re going to be targeting parents, school groups, local clubs and sports, and other similar groups. This isn’t to say your posts shouldn’t also appeal to children and teens. Keep in mind, posts that show your brand and target your ideal customer, while keeping in mind the person who is likely to act on behalf of the customer are more effective in the long run.

In addition to knowing who it is you want to target, do your research. Look at your competitors and see what they are doing right and wrong for inspiration. Explore engagement on their posts to see what is working and who is engaging.

By fully understanding who your audience is, you’ll have a much clearer understanding your strategy for social medial

Build Your Following.

Organic social media posting is great, but it’s also important to expand your reach through paid posting or advertising. Have you ever looked at a pair of shoes online and the next day saw those same shoes on other online platforms? This is retargeting. Through retargeting, you are targeting those who may have shown interest in your service or product but may not have immediately acted. On average, it takes viewing something seven times to fully remember and act on.

Ensure your profiles are fully optimized. Now that you are driving traffic to your pages, ensure your profiles are completely built and brand consistent. Each platform should include your name and business name, business address, and business phone number. Ensure your posts include your logo and appropriate images that encompass your business’ goals and vision.

Engage with your followers. It’s great you’re sharing posts on social media, but take it to the next level by responding to your followers. Seeing an active business helps boost your credibility and customer engagement.

Leverage Video Content.

Offset your static image posts and ads with video content. Not only can video content be more noticeable and engaging, it also tends to be favored on search engines.

To ensure your video content is consistent with your brand, create intro and outro slides for your videos that show your logo and business information.

Start your video posts by sharing your business goals, values, and what services you offer or products you provide. To ensure you have plenty of video content, focus on a different service to promote during each video. Provide tips for customers along with why they should trust you to further their goals.

Pro Tip: Don’t read from a script when recording your video content. Reading from a script often comes off robotic and unnatural. Instead, opt for bullet points outlining your video goals. Bullet points help keep you on track with what you want to talk about in a more natural and confident way.

Create a Schedule.

It’s important when building brand recognition to have consistency. Now that you’re ready to begin posting your brand consistent posts to an appropriate audience, it’s time to build a schedule.

Not only does having your social media calendar planned and scheduled in advance ensure your social media platforms have consistent activity, it helps free your time to focus on other aspects of your business.

Additionally, do your research and learn the best time of day to post based on your audience, service, and goals for your posts. Ensuring your posts have the best chance of converting a new follower or engagement is vital in continuing your goal of building your social media presence.

Have a plan behind what you’re scheduling and when. For example, have a “Tip Tuesday” where you share a tip related to the service or products you offer, “Thankful Thursday” can highlight a customer or client review about your business, or “Flashback Friday” can be a fun fact about your business or past milestones you made. Having a consistent plan for your posts can help ensure you stay on track with creating content since you know what is needed when. 

Optimize for SEO.

Social media and SEO are two major marketing strategies. To ensure you are making the most out of both, be sure to include simple SEO strategies into your social media posts. A few examples of these strategies are naming your image files a sought after keyword prior to adding it to your page, using relevant hashtags on your posts, and always adding a link to your website to help drive traffic to your main business platform.

Use multiple social media platforms for your posts. There are many channels you can use to build your social media following including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn and TikTok. Don’t limit yourself to one avenue as the more content and links you’re building, the more beneficial to your SEO presence, strategy and online rankings.

By staying current with the latest social media platforms, you have a much better chance of connecting with an active audience, gaining followers, and building your brand.

Social media is a major way to build your brand and gain followers interested in your business. By following the easy tips above you are on your way to achieving these goals. Although it may seem time consuming and tedious, having an active social media presence can prove to be highly beneficial regardless of what you are promoting. Every person, company, and product has an opportunity to build their brand, all it takes is a little time and a solid plan.