If you are looking to raise brand awareness and bolster your company’s online presence, you should definitely rely on the power of social media marketing. However, that is easier said than done since everyone else seems to think so as well.
According to statistics, there are 4.2 billion active users on social media worldwide. That’s almost twice as many as there were only five years ago. And they aren’t just looking at memes because more than 85% of marketers maintain that social media has increased the visibility of their brands.
In order to get your brand noticed on social media, you’ll need to get a little creative, sure. But in most cases, you won’t need to reinvent the wheel.
Instead, you should focus on getting the basics right, such as being consistent when it comes to posting, as well as creating content that people find interesting, helpful, and/or educational. That’s what drives most of your user engagement, and if you are smart about it and put in some elbow grease, you can raise your brand’s social media game to the next level in no time.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some surprisingly simple (but effective) methods you can implement into your marketing strategy and turn your brand into a social media success story.
1. Make an Effort with Your Profile Pages
Sure, every social media platform provides you with a page that is based on a template that doesn’t allow for major design alterations. But there are still plenty of things you can do to make your brand stand out, especially when it comes to its visual identity. Here are some of the most effective things you can do:
- Make sure that the visuals are consistent with your brand’s message, service, and products. Red Bull’s Facebook account, as well as all of their other accounts, feature profile and cover images and content that promotes speed, extreme sports, racing, and flying. All of these have become synonymous with the brand over the years.
Source: facebook.com - Establish your brand’s identity through colour. Urban Skin Rx’s Instagram profile does this brilliantly. Most of their posts feature turquoise, which is the colour of the brand’s logo, along with peach and violet, all of which appear on their website and product packaging.
Source: instagram.com - Adapt your design to match the platform. National Geographic’s Twitter profile not only ticks both of the above boxes but also publishes content that fits the design of Twitter itself. For example, Instagram videos are usually filmed in portrait orientation, while Facebook seems to favour landscape orientation. Twitter has a good mix of both, and National Geographic also throws in some videos with square aspect ratios.
2. Be Smart and Ethical About Leveraging Existing Content
Being consistent and posting on a regular basis is the key to engaging your audience and growing your brand’s following on social media. However, unless you have a huge marketing budget, posting frequently is usually too much for just one person or a small team of people to handle.
Fortunately, you can give your social media team a break every once in a while by reposting content from other accounts. Just make sure that the content you repost aligns with your brand messaging and that you credit the original author of the post instead of trying to pass it off as your own.
Anytime Baseball Supply maintains a great Instagram profile that utilizes this tactic really well. Even though the brand offers a wide variety of baseball supplies, they don’t focus solely on their products on Instagram but rather repost useful content from other Instagram profiles that are dedicated to baseball. It can be anything from videos on how to pitch better, short snippets from the most recent games, or simply funny and interesting baseball memes. Of course, they always make sure to mention the original posters, which is a feat in itself on Instagram since sharing is not quite as simple there as it is on Facebook.
And if Twitter is a social media platform that is relevant to your brand, then you might want to allow your social media people to take a breather by retweeting some posts that they think are useful and relevant. Etsy’s Twitter account posts not only great videos that show off their hand-crafted products but also retweets DIY content and tweets from their followers quite often.
3. Turn Support Requests into Marketing Opportunities
It’s highly unlikely that each and every one of your customers will be absolutely delighted with your product or service. Whether they are disgruntled or just want additional information, they will most likely voice their complaints and questions on social media. Instead of viewing it as a disaster, you can turn it into a win for your brand. How so?
Well, you can start by responding in a timely manner and adopting a friendly, conversational tone in every situation.
You can also make use of social media listening tools, which will pick up on all the mentions of your brand. This is especially useful since some customers might not bother tagging your profile. For instance, Starbucks’ Twitter team responded to a user’s question regarding the brand, even though their profile wasn’t addressed directly. Even better, the customer solved their problem by accepting the brand’s advice.
But, even before there is a customer support request on one of your social media profiles, make sure to set aside some time in the day to engage with your followers and respond to their comments and mentions. You can even follow up with a question in order to keep the conversation going and boost audience engagement. That way, you will demonstrate a genuine interest in your followers. Your customer support efforts will come across as authentic, even when you are dealing with difficult customers.
4. Create Communities around Your Brand
Whenever a brand launches a great product or service, pretty soon, it has people talking about it. And thanks to social media, engaged consumers can easily form communities online. But, instead of having them talk about your brand on forums or Reddit, why not simply build them a community where they can interact with your brand and establish a more human connection?
There are two ways you can go about it:
Create a Facebook group where you will cater to the needs of your target audience. Now, the goal of this group shouldn’t be to pitch your products or service to your followers but rather to provide them with useful information that addresses their needs and pain points.
What’s in it for your brand?
Well, apart from boosting awareness, the value here comes from being associated with the community and providing help. It’s similar to a company blog that posts content that is educational as opposed to promotional.
Alternatively, you can even create a community that is built specifically around your brand. Have it act as a space where your customers can discuss your products, share their experiences, and provide tips on how to make the most out of them. This also encourages user-generated content, which can be really valuable for your brand in terms of social proof.
The Somnifix community on Facebook is a good example of the latter, where people can discuss pretty much everything about their mouth strips and share how effective they were at solving a common problem. But, the brand takes it one step further and uses the community to answer questions and provide customer support, which is great.
5. Integrate Social Proof into Your Profile
Social proof is worth its weight in gold, especially if your brand is relatively new on the market. There are several ways in which you can get your customers to leave a review.
If you already have an active community that revolves around your brand, all the work has already been done. All that is left for you is to cherry-pick the best reviews and user-generated content.
In case you don’t have an active community, then you can simply enable customer reviews on your brand’s Facebook page. This allows customers to leave a star rating and a written testimonial about your brand, product, or service. An even better option would be to get your customer to record a short video talking about their experience with your product or service. You can encourage them to do this by offering a discount on their next purchase, for instance.
Slack provides a fantastic example of utilizing user-generated content as social proof. They created a separate Twitter account on which they retweet users’ love for Slack. You don’t need to create a separate account, though, as you can simply retweet all the positive shout-outs on your main profile.
6. Create FOMO by Showcasing Your Products
FOMO, which is short for “fear of missing out,” is a very powerful marketing tool. It is also one of the main reasons why we all click to buy that product because it’s on sale or because it’s available for a limited time only.
Now, creating FOMO might be tricky because it depends on your industry and niche. It usually works best for businesses whose offers are non-essential – think luxury or leisure brands, where people want to get products at a discount price. They may not need it and may not otherwise buy it but they wouldn’t pass up a chance to buy the luxury item at a reasonable price point.
The most effective way to create FOMO would be to show your product actually being used in a real-life situation. Use images and video to showcase each of its features, as opposed to just shooting it inside the studio against a white background.
If you need inspiration on how to showcase your products, check out Overland Junction and head over to their Instagram profile. The images show their rooftop tents being used in just about every configuration and every setting imaginable, and you get a pretty good idea about what they are like and whether they would suit your needs or not.
The more attractive your product appears, the more likely your followers are to buy it, especially when it’s paired up with an active or luxurious lifestyle.
7. Create Educational Content
Producing educational content for your social media account is the long and slow way to go about establishing your brand. But it really pays off in the long run, and its effects will be felt even after you’ve stopped publishing it.
Now, in order to gain any real traction with that type of content, you are looking at a minimum of six months of hard work and regular posting. It will be at least a year or more before you are able to reap the full benefits.
It certainly beats posting occasionally and expecting it to go viral. Plus, it generates traffic, raises brand awareness, and provides value to the customer by addressing their problems and pain points without expecting anything in return.
A great example comes from Golf Cart Tire Supply and its YouTube channel, which features plenty of educational video content on how to repair or upgrade your golf cart. The following video shows how you can change seat covers on your golf cart, and it works for any model:
Another great example of educational content on social media is Gary Vaynerchuk’s Instagram. It features short video snippets that are packed full of practical information on business and marketing coming from Gary V himself. We are big fans of this particular video in which Gary tells you in just 45 seconds how you should go about dominating social media in 2022:
View this post on Instagram
Social Media Marketing Is a Long Game
Growing your brand on social media is all about doing hard work and checking all of the basic boxes. In fact, you are playing the long game, and everything that happens on top of that, such as your brand going viral, is just a welcome bonus. We hope that you have found these tips helpful and that you will use them to boost your brand’s social media game. Good luck!
About the Author:
Natasha is a web designer, lady of the keyboard and one hell of a tech geek. She is always happy to collaborate with awesome blogs and share her knowledge about IT, digital marketing and technology trends. To see what she is up to next, check out her Twitter Dashboard.
Sarah Kaminski is a business manager and social media marketer. She works with a number of small businesses to build their brands through more engaging marketing and content. Twitter – 
