Social Media for Building a Brand. Courtesy: www.linkedin.com

We all love Social Media. We love everything about it. It gives an amazing platform to keep up with friends and relatives. We can read excellent content and easily share our thoughts, knowledge and ideas to the people across the globe. Social Media is a very powerful tool; so powerful, that it can unite a mother and daughter after a wait of 44 long years. It can comfort a person who had lost a loved one.

Isn’t it miraculous ?

In my previous article, I have discussed techniques to launch the product using Social Media. I now request you “to read the fine print” as I have shared my thoughts on igniting Social Media Branding and ways by which you can enhance your brand persona on Social Media.

Modern-day marketing has changed drastically from being product centric to its concentration on building brand awareness.Traditional mediums like radio and television are quickly getting replaced with social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest etc. These channels allow you to devise a brand strategy. It further allows you to share stories, interact and communicate in order to build a strong relationships.

Brands, big or small requires a very strong presence on social media. Being a brand on Social Media is not easy. You may think that your organization is doing everything right in order to built a brand strategy or you might have utilized almost every social media channel by posting regular content and infographics. However, if you have not clearly mapped out or established a way to present your brand on social media, you are selling your brand short.

Key to social media business is to craft a brand persona.

                           Social Media: A preferred tool to Build Brand Loyalty. Source - www.digiclayinfotech.com

As social media is a preferred tool to Build Brand Loyalty, people care more about getting connecting to each other rather than a logo or a company. It pose a great challenge in front of corporates to build an impressive communication strategy. A brand persona is an organized term used to present your company online. Brands are required to have a persona that is well represented in their image, effective in conveying the message and working well on social media.

In order to ensure that your brand offers best possible impression through effective social media communication, follow these steps:

1. Access Your Purpose and Set Goals

Whenever you are developing a brand strategy, you should always ask yourselves some questions like What are you doing on Social Media and Whom to interact? It is important that you understand that How this foray into social media will prove beneficial for your brand image? It is essential to understand what your brand wants to convey to your audience. Are you using social media for tackling customer service, brand awareness, selling your products or educating the prospective customer about latest offers? It is impossible to reach out to the right place when you have a doubt or miscalculation. Sit back with your team and advisers, plan and have thorough discussions early in the process.

2) Culture Assessment

Look internally and analyze the culture of your brand. Understand, what makes your brand different from the competitors. Developing a Brand Identity and Brand personality is to be ascertained. Just like the human personality, social persona of your brand should be well-rounded. It should be informative (Product), clever and creative (Marketing), compelling (Sales) and leadership interest (C-Suite).  

3) Audience Assessment

There are various Social Media Monitoring tools available over the internet. These tools help you analyze and ultimately reach out to the highest level of social media business intelligence. Once you are well-aware of your community, their like and dislikes, you can always find a way to connect to such topics and win over the hearts and minds. This will also lay the foundation of an effective two-way communication. Chances of wanting them to connect and personalize will be higher.

4) Social Media Expansion

                An Infographic showing use of social media to define brand persona. Source blog.gearlaunch.com

Once you have set the goals and done the proper audience assessment, it's time that you should focus on expanding your brand persona through the voice of social media. Audience Assessment will aid in better understanding and implementation of your social media strategy. What themes are best suited? When to launch a Social Media Campaign? What kind of content and articles are to be shared? Analysis of Social Expansion will result in drawing people and engaging them to your campaign.

5) Consistent Performance

Consistency is the key to success. Till now, you have figured out, your personality traits, carried out brand and audience behaviour assessment and started garnering and expanding your efforts using Social media platforms. What more is required? You need dedication and consistency. You can post comments and funny photos, create background images that showcase your product or a brand image, use user-generated content, setting up a teaser campaign, asking questions and what not. Idea is to keep doing the brand marketing consistently.

Never Forget…

• Involve your audiences and followers
• Be relevant
• Always lay emphasis on the emotions and experiences that are linked to your brand

Creating a brand personality over social media might take a lot of time, but you very well know  “All good things take time”. How did you find the article? How did you promote your Brand Persona on Social Media? Do let me know...