How to Build a Brand on Social Media

By Zoe Devitto

Social media platforms are ever-growing and continue to be a fantastic place for businesses to grow their brands and do marketing.

Did you know that there are more than 4.5 billion internet users? Of those, over 3.8 billion people are actively using social media. 

This indicates the fantastic potential these platforms offer and why social media marketing is a powerful form of marketing.

A company’s brand is essential when making the most of social media and its opportunities. When done right, branding can drive sales and increase awareness beyond the scope of traditional marketing.

What Is Branding in Terms of Social Media?

Before getting into how to nail branding on social media, let’s first go over precisely what it is.

Branding is about the various elements that come together to create the public image and opinion of a company. With that said, it is more than a Great logo or the font used for the company’s name.

Branding focuses on brand awareness because it’s all about how people perceive companies and their services or products. Getting them to talk about the brand goes a long way towards building a desired image and perception.

It is up to companies to create a brand that people will want to support and buy from. 

Social media platforms are very useful for this purpose. You can even use LinkedIn to build your personal brand. Billions of people use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms, and they can be reached by companies building their brands with a focus on digital and content marketing.

How to Use Branding on Social Media for Your Business

When taking on branding on social media, it’s not necessary to be active on every single platform. Instead, find out which social networking sites are best suited to your brand.

For example, Facebook is most commonly used by 18 to 44-year-olds, and  Instagram’s users are mostly between 18 and 24. If a company’s target demographic is older people, it would be better to use Facebook rather than Instagram.

Research your target audience, build comprehensive personas and use that information to determine which social networks will be the most important for the goals you want to achieve.

Although it is important to have many followers, having millions of them will not guarantee marketing success.

Focus more on creating consistent content and connecting with your audience than chasing unattainable numbers. 

Don’t get caught up in how many followers your brand has. It’s much better to have 2,000 loyal and supportive followers than 20,000 who don’t care much about the brands they follow.

Getting a decent following takes time and won’t happen overnight (or even within the first few months). Good planning and brand guidelines templates can go a long way towards defining your brand and its online presence.

Strategies to Build Your Brand and Gain Followers on Social Media

Now that we’ve determined what branding is and why companies need to get it right, let’s get into the how.

The following strategies are great for forming a foundation to build on and can help you come up with practical approaches to branding.

See them as part of your branding journey. Say you’re starting a recruitment business. You’ll need to research costs and the steps involved before moving forward. It’s the same for effective branding.

You need to know how to go about branding the right way, or you’ll end up wasting a lot of time and effort.

1. Update Your Social Media Accounts

Once you’ve decided which social media platforms you’ll be using, you need to make sure they’re fully updated. 

Delete any networks you won’t be using so that no one accidentally ends up finding them and seeing they’re stagnant and provide nothing of use.

All your information must be accurate, up-to-date, and complete. People who visit your profile must find any information they need without too much effort.

For example, optimized Instagram profiles help to showcase brands in a better light and prevent any undesirable content from causing confusion. This goes a long way towards gaining more followers.

Well-defined social media accounts make a better impression as well and let people know you’re professional.

2. Publish Content Regularly

One of the biggest keys to success in the social media world is consistency. It’s essential that you publish content regularly.

However, that does not mean you should churn out endless content. Doing so will create annoyance and lower the overall quality of your account.

Instead, focus on publishing high-quality content on a consistent schedule. And there’s no shortage of social media post ideas for you to use.

Planning your content ahead will help to achieve consistency without the need for last-minute inferior content creation. 

How regularly you post will depend on the social network you’re using. On Twitter, you should aim to post once or twice a day. On LinkedIn, one post a day should be enough.

While it’s recommended that you post content daily, it’s okay to skip a day or two if you don’t have quality content yet. Instead, share quality posts rather than something of low quality, or something overly promotional just for the sake of posting.

It’s also a good idea to share diverse content. Create video content to post that will entertain your audience while being relevant to your brand, for example. 

Images always do good on social media, but videos tend to drive more traffic and have higher engagement.

3. Join Social Media Communities and Groups

Effective branding requires that a brand become part of the community of its industry. To do that, you need to join all the right groups and communities.

Seek out the most relevant communities and groups and become an important part of them. Use the groups to share knowledge and hear about your audience’s opinions.

It would be best to avoid any sales talk unless it’s explicitly asked for. Don’t use the groups for marketing; use them to form connections with your audience.

Although it could be tempting to join the largest groups, likely, the competition is already there. Instead, find smaller groups with members who’ll value your input and insight.

These groups are also fantastic for establishing and growing your industry authority. They also serve as a good way for potential customers to know your brand and build confidence in what you do.

4. Develop Marketing Personas

Marketing personas were briefly mentioned earlier, and they’re vital for success on social media.

Having insight into audiences is what helps brands to truly connect and make good impressions.

Keep in mind that personas will be different when going from one network to the next. Your audience on LinkedIn doesn’t behave in the same way as your followers on TikTok.

As such, the content you’re sharing won’t be as well-received on all networks, so you’ll have to plan accordingly.

That’s where fine-tuned personas come into play. With the knowledge gained from them, you’ll have better success and create the kind of content your unique audiences will appreciate.

When you understand your audience, the strategies you use will pay off more as well. 

For example, the Covid-19 pandemic could have spelled the end of a service like Airbnb. 

However, the company used clever branding strategies not only to stay afloat but remain relevant.

According to Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, they think of brand marketing as education and investment. You should too.

5. Use Different Accounts for Different Strategies

For the best branding results, it’s recommended that companies have different accounts. That way, they can target the different personas as well as try out varying strategies.

Use every social media platform to test out strategies and learn which ones have the best results. If you are on Instagram and struggling to get the target audience may try to find out about Instagram automation to grow faster. 

You can use YouTube for video content and a video-centric strategy and use networks like Facebook and Twitter to see which audiences enjoy that content the most.

If your company has different product categories, you can even take things a step further and have different accounts for each category. 

Be creative and original, and try out any strategies that make sense for your brand.

6. Humanize Your Brand

One of the most important benefits of branding is that you can show your audience that you’re more than a company looking to make money.

When your audience sees the human side of your brand, they’ll connect with it much easier and on a deeper level.

People no longer want to see brands as big, faceless corporations. They want to see the humans involved in the brand. It’s the best way to create trust and loyalty.

Forget about ‘corporate talk’ and sales jargon. Instead, ‘get real’ with your audience, and you’ll find that they’ll be more eager to engage and connect.

This isn’t just for your potential customers, but also holds true when it comes to hiring on social platforms.

And it’s that connection you want – that’s the point of branding.

Over to You – Succeed at Branding on Social Media

You’ve been given the fundamental tools you need to help create a brand you can be proud of. The rest is up to you; use the strategies learned here to blow your audience away and build a branding strategy that will not fail.

About the Author

Zoe Devitto is a content marketing strategist for SaaS brands like FollowUpBoss, Mention.com and more. Bylines: Ecwid, ProProfs, Score, etc. On the personal front, Zoe is a pho enthusiast and loves traveling around the world as a digital nomad.