What is Social Media Branding?

The birth of Facebook over a decade ago has changed the way marketers view social media as a marketing tool. It used to be that branding was focused more on print media like newspapers, magazines, and flyers, broadcast ads, and email/website banners. While social media presents a channel for brands to connect with their customers, it also adds to the challenge of brand consistency.

Brand consistency is crucial across all marketing platforms. Unfortunately, many companies struggle with it, becoming more difficult with new social networks adding to the growing list of marketing channels. Each social network caters to a specific audience looking for a specific type of content. How can you ensure that your brand reflects the same vibe on social media as your TV ads and printed materials?

Don’t fret! We’ve come up with a quick guide that contains 4 actionable social media branding strategies you can implement on your social media.

 

How to Brand Yourself on Social Media?

 

Developing Your Persona

As we’ve mentioned earlier, each social network caters to specific demographics, demanding different content types. For example, TikTok appeals more to the younger generation as compared to Facebook and LinkedIn. To overcome this hurdle, it is best to create multiple marketing personas according to your audience segments.

The truth is, you don’t need to be on every social network. You just need to find which ones your audience visits frequently. Unless you are an ecommerce brand that offers products for all from kids to seniors, then go ahead and create multiple accounts. 

Otherwise, if you are catering to a niche audience, you want to pin down which social networks are actually relevant to them. This would also prevent you from wasting resources trying to maintain multiple accounts that don’t really contribute to your business goals.

The first thing you need to do is to analyze and identify your customer base and classify them according to their age and possible interests. This data would provide you enough information as to what social media channel they’re most likely active in. Once you’ve narrowed down your options, you can start creating personas and assign the social networks that match. 

 

Setting Up Your Profile

As we’ve always told our public, branding is not just about your logo or having a staple set of color palettes to use in every graphic. But it does play a valuable role as a visual cue for your audience to recognize your brand. 

You want to use the same logo, company bio, and user handle across all of your social network profiles. You may need to adjust the size of your images accordingly or shorten company bios depending on the character limit—but one thing’s for sure; you want people to instantly recognize your brand wherever they are, online and offline.

When it comes to choosing a banner or cover photo, you want a design that matches your logo. The color palette should be the same as this helps get your brand recognized across social networks. To stay consistent, most brands would use the same design in all of their profiles and resize them according to guidelines.

Should your banner contain text, it is not required to use the same typeface as your logo but you have to make sure you’re using the same font across all networks.

Do note that Facebook allows videos in replacement of cover photos. If your audience uses this network more than others, explore animating your standard banner and increase video views.

 

Creating and Designing Your Graphics

Now that you’ve dressed up your profiles accordingly, it’s time to plan out your posts. Images and videos are the most popular content types on social media as these immediately capture attention. Humans are naturally visual creatures and are likely to pay attention to any visual content they find online.

Make sure that your brand colors and fonts are reflected on your graphics, images and videos. Use a template for your graphics so it stays consistent. Use the same filter for your images and videos and make sure to maintain your brand’s aesthetics and color choices. 

Over time, your followers will be able to recognize a post coming from your brand even if you don’t put your logo in it. 

 

Establish Your Brand Voice

Captions are the next important piece when it comes to social media branding. We all know how noisy social media feeds can get so riding on with the trends is not often the best idea. Your brand can easily blend in with other content publishers if you try to sound like them.

Stay true to yourself and use the voice you use in all marketing collateral you have. To ensure you’re keeping up with the times, use a social media listening tool and gather data to see which trend or writing style aligns with your brand voice. Then, create a set of guidelines for your brand which should include details like persona, catchphrases, character traits, and lingo. 

 

Takeaway…

Building brand recognition takes time whether it be on social media or other platforms. This is why it’s important to regularly audit your social media profiles. This helps you obtain a better understanding of how your public interacts with your content and your page and how you can maximize your profiles’ use for business growth.