Social media is a
powerful tool for businesses. It’s also an overly saturated place with everyone
vying for a piece of the profits. Developing your brand’s social media strategy
is a complex process, but here are five simple steps you can take to improve your
social media presence and elevate your brand.
1 —
Authenticity Wins
Brands often
think that they need to create a prepackaged “voice” to sell to consumers. This
is a mistake. Your voice should reflect who you are as a brand and you should
create a style guide to keep it consistent; however, authenticity wins in the
social space.
How can you use
authenticity to craft your brand’s voice and choose appropriate captions,
hashtags, and references? Consider what makes your brand unique. What is your
mission statement? What is your purpose? Consider your target audience. What
kind of language do they use and will they respond to best?
Building an
authentic voice on social media is about 1) defining your brand goal and what
makes your brand special and 2) being consistent with the voice that you have
chosen.
2 —
Image Requirements / Dimensions
Do you ever
wonder about the size of your logo on social media platforms? Too many brands
forget that social media platforms have strict image upload requirements. You
want to make sure that when your logo is viewed on a smartphone, it is legible.
If you have too much text on your logo (or details that are difficult to
decipher on a small scale), you may need to create a secondary logo design for
social.
Secondary logo
designs often remove elements that can be difficult to read on a miniature
scale. The smallest image found across the most popular
platforms (between Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn) is the 180 x 180 px
profile image on Instagram and Facebook. If you find the pixel ratios confusing, a logo designer can send you several
mock-ups at the right pixel dimensions to use with social.
Always take a look at your finished
social media images
after they post to make sure that your
images are readable. If not, you can always make a quick edit to ensure your
logo displays as intended.
3 —
Consistent Posting, Curated Topics
Your social media
strategy should include content curation. Your social media posts need to be
relevant to your brand. Sometimes that means sharing your content and sometimes
that meets sharing relevant content that fits within your industry. You want
your brand to be seen as an authority in the marketplace, but you won’t get
there if your posts are too scattered. Keep your social media posts on point
within your industry.
Find relevant
videos, blog posts, images, statistics, memes, and other content to share with
your social media audience. Use a publishing tool to schedule your content
so that you have consistent posts. Nothing will convince followers to leave
faster than erratic posting schedules. Keep things scheduled and keep things
curated. Your followers need to know what to expect and when to expect it. You
want them to rely on you for industry information.
4 —
Design Ads Using Your Brand’s Style Guide
Using your brand’s
style guide to design ads is one of the best ways to ensure
that your brand is
recognizable. Brand recognition can help drive profits, and increased touchpoints lead to greater sales. Even social media
influencers need a brand style guide, reports Forbes.
So how do you
create a style guide? What is in one? Your style guide might eventually end up
as a complex document, but it’s okay to start with a simple blueprint for your
brand. Your style guide should discuss what your visual guidelines and your
language (or editorial) guidelines are. List out the ways that your brand must
be represented visually and list out the ways that your brand’s voice should be
used.
One aspect of
working with your brand’s style guide should include detailing the types of
visuals allowed, as well as your color palette. You might think that your logo
design is your color palette, but actually, your color palette should include
all the colors that can be used when creating new graphics (including social
media ads and social media posts). When choosing additional colors to add to
your color palette, it’s best to work with a logo designer who understands not
only design aesthetics but also the color psychology behind branding.
5 —
Make Social Media Profiles Accessible
Accessibility is
key when creating a social media strategy for your brand. You need to make sure
that your social media profile gives customers all of the information they need
to learn more about your brand. Your bio should be completely filled out with
links to your website. Your profile section on each social media outlet should
have a link to your site as well as a contact number for your brand.
Let people know
what your brand does (products and/or services). Make it easy for people to
learn more about you or contact you. Strive for a social media profile that is
simple, but
knowledgeable. It
should be your goal for consumers who visit your page to be able to get everything
they need in a few seconds: your mission statement, what you do, how to contact
you, and how to visit your website.
At the end of the
day, you decide what makes your brand stand out on social media. Following
these five simple steps will make sure that your brand has its moment to shine.
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