Why is having an online brand presence important?
A strong online brand presence helps a brand gain credibility and trust. This will help the brand differentiate itself from competitors in the market, and customers are more likely to trust the brand before purchasing a product/service. One of the ways through which brands can build a strong online brand presence is social media marketing.
According to Oberlo, the average time people spent on social media channels was 30 minutes. Moreover, 54% of social browsers use social media to research products. (Source: Pitney Bowes)
What is social media marketing?
Social media marketing refers to online marketing activities carried on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. The advantages of social media marketing include increasing brand familiarity, engagement with the audience, sharing updates about new products and offers and encouraging the audience to purchase products/services from a brand, and reaching a wider audience than traditional marketing alone.
This blog post will cover the eight strategies for social media marketing that can help you create a strong brand presence.
1. Write a social media bio that best describes what you do
The social media bio is the audience’s first impression of the brand. It defines what the company does and what the customers can expect from the brand. Therefore, it should accurately describe what the brand stands for, its main product/service offerings, the brand’s tone of voice, and the contact details of the company/individual.
These are some elements of a good social media bio:
Social Media Display Name: The social media display name must be the company's actual name or the individual's actual name. Social media users can discover your business profile by entering this name in the search bar on Instagram.
Social Media Display Link: The social media display link redirects the user to a specific website or other social media links that are relevant to the business.
Social Media Profile Picture: The social media profile picture can be the image of an individual or the logo of a specific company.
2. Determine the characteristics of your audience
Determine the characteristics of your target audience. You can look at factors like the audience’s age group, their interests, their location, and their main pain points that can be resolved through the product/service.
If you wish to efficiently target your audience, take a look at the spending habits and interests of your target audience that already purchases products/services from you.
3. Determine your tone of voice
Determine the tone of voice that your brand wishes to use to promote its products/services.
Here are examples of tones of voice:
Positive and inspiring
A positive and inspiring tone of voice can be used by brands that encourage users that sell products/services which help their target audience achieve specific goals. For example, Nike’s ‘’Just Do It’.
Humorous
A humorous tone of voice enables brands to form an emotional connection with your audience. For example, Netflix writes humorous tweets related to its popular Netflix shows to engage its audience.
Aggressive
An aggressive tone of voice focuses on portraying a brand personality signifying confidence, strength, maturity, etc. For example, BMW does this by using copies like “Powerful. Agile. Intelligent’’ in its advertisements.
Emotional
An emotional tone of voice is used to establish a sense of emotional relatability with the brand’s target audience. For example, Cadbury uses emotion-based marketing in its advertisements and emphasis on the sense of belongingness in a family.
Exclusive
An exclusive tone of voice can be used to promote products/services shown as unique. Luxury car brands like Mercedes, BMW and Jaguar are examples.
Simple and Direct
A simple and direct tone of voice aims at talking to a prospect in an easy-to-understand manner. For example, Uber uses simple messaging like ‘'Peace of mind whenever you ride’’ in its marketing communications.
4. Create a content strategy
A content strategy plays an important role for each brand. It represents the brand’s personality and the type of content used. Content strategy is a well thought strategy which is consistent across communication points, i.e.marketing collaterals, social Media, advertisements, and other touch points.
Keep in mind the following content brackets in mind while creating a content strategy to promote your brand:-
Product/service promotional posts
Testimonial/review based posts
Engagement and meme-based posts
Educational posts
Festival/social event based posts
Product/service based awareness posts
Entertainment-based posts
Facts/figure based posts
5. Create powerful visual content
Powerful visual content encourages your audience to engage with your social media posts through likes, comments, etc. Powerful visual content refers to visual content which showcases a specific clearly and utilizes the right text, colours, colour contrast, etc. You can create attractive social media graphics for your social media channels.
6. Engage with your audience
Engage with your target audience on social media. If your target audience engages with your audience, it means that they wish to form a bond with you and are hence more likely to purchase your product/service. Moreover, if your audience engages with your content, it sends across the message to social media platforms that your content is good. This means that your social media posts will be shown to a wider audience, helping you increase your reach with a high level of engagement.
Look for hashtags related to your main products/services to discover related accounts. Comment, like, and share their social media posts, which can increase the discoverability of your social media posts on platforms.
7. Run targeted social media advertisements
Strategic social media advertisements can be run on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc. The targeting on social media is based on multiple parameters like location of the target market, the age of the audience, the interests of the audience, etc.
To run targeted social media advertisements, you need to ensure that your content in the advertisements (headline, primary text, description, meta-description, etc.) makes the target audience curious about the product/service that you offer.
8. Measure the results of social media marketing efforts
You can measure the results of your social media marketing campaigns like conversions, engagement rate, etc.
Conversion: Social media conversions refers to actions that a user completes after landing on your social media platform, like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. The conversion rate refers to the total conversions that come from social media, that can be expressed in the form of a percentage.
Engagement rate: The social media engagement rate refers to the total number of public interactions with a post divided by the number of account followers multiplied by 100. The total number of public interactions with a post are the sum total of post likes and comments.
Reach: Social media reach refers to the number of users who come across a piece of content on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Conclusion
We hope that you now know how to create an effective social media marketing strategy and social media marketing advantages for your brand. Click here to learn more about the services we offer.