Developing and representing your brand effectively on social media is one of the most important tasks to consider when jumping into social media marketing. By doing so, you bring brand awareness and cohesiveness to your audience to build familiarity and trust. Representing your brand on social media is fairly simple, as long as your business has its ideals and image secured. On multiple platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, you’re able to upload cover photos. It’s important to use the same concept of design in each cover photo for visual brand cohesiveness. Though some dimension variations of the photos have to be taken into consideration due to the sizing limitations of each network, having the same graphic concept will help people remember your brand. It’s called “Social Branding.” Make sure your logos are consistent across the profiles, as well.
The next step is ensuring your brand’s “voice” is heard throughout the text of the page, as well as in the posts. If your culture is corporate, you shouldn’t be using slang terms and Internet abbreviations such as “LOL” and “JK.” Establish a voice that clearly defines who you are as well as culture of your company. Remember, social media is essentially your online persona and face; let it represent who you are.
Having a cohesive social content strategy is another facet to strongly consider. What are you posting? How often are you posting? Are you posting the same content to specific profiles? Take a step back and decide how and what you want to post. Social media is about being social. You never want to bombard followers with promotion after promotion after promotion. Ask them questions; find out their opinions. Engagement is key. Talking at your followers rather than talking to them is the quickest way to lose your following.
Here are some important social media do’s and don’ts to keep in mind:
Do:
1. Engage your followers with contests, questions, comments or provoking thoughts.
2. Post on a regular basis.
3. Choose what type of content is most appropriate for your brand, and limit the confusion of posting anything and everything.
Don’t:
1. Over promote yourself. Remember, if you were talking to someone face to face and all they did was promote their business to you, it wouldn’t go over well. The same goes for social media. There is a healthy ratio we like to follow of 60 percent conversation/engagement and 40 percent promotion.
2. Over post. It’s great to share quality content on a regular basis, but don’t post every hour. Remember, these posts show up in people’s news feeds and can be seen as “spam.”
3. Trash/criticize other brands on social media. It’s important to keep your brand’s online reputation and image seen in a positive light. Trash talking your competitors will only hurt you and turn your followers away.
Ben Laube is president and founder of POLR Marketing, a growth marketing technology company. Through the use of content writing, pay-per-click, ethical SEO practices, web design and development graphic design, and strategic planning, POLR Marketing offers the services you need to help grow your business to the next level. To learn more about POLR Marketing, visit www.polrmarketing.com or call POLR Marketing at (407) 712-4836.
