How to Create Social Media Strategy for Branding That Works

In order to properly promote yourself online, you need to create a social media strategy for branding. Whether you are running an online shop, or you simply want to promote your product and/or services, having a decent social media presence is a must. While doing so is far from easy, there are a couple of tactics that you can use, and practices that you can implement in order to take care of your branding and marketing properly. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at what social media branding is all about.

Create a social media strategy for branding – a basic guide

The guide we are about to outline will give you the basics of what it takes to create a social media strategy for branding. As you will soon learn, this task has multiple aspects to it, some of which take weeks if not months of preparation. Therefore, while we will give you the basics, we strongly advise you to continue your research and educate yourself on what social media marketing and branding is all about. The more research you do, the less costly mistakes you are going to make.

Step 1: Developing a brand

Developing a decent brand is, arguably, the most important step in creating a marketing strategy. No matter how complicated, or well developed your plan is, if it is going to work, you need to have a decent brand. Your brand will be the core message that you wish to convey to your customers.

Whether it is a message of reliability, safety, or simple fun, you need to do your best to convey it in a clear and straightforward way. This is why people usually struggle when creating a brand, and why a good brand is memorable and easy to promote. So, if you want to do yourself a favor, think long and hard about what your brand will be about. Along with your brand, you will need to develop a logo and ensure that your website is in accordance with it.

Step 2: Spread your online presence

With your brand developed, you can start spreading your online presence. Ideally, you should have a website dedicated to your business. But, if you choose to only work with social media profiles, so be it. The first step is to figure out which social media platforms you would like to engage in. Our advice is to pick the main platform that is best suited for your content and then put the rest at a backburner.

To pick the main platform, try to study your customers and see what platform they prefer using. The more you can study your customers, the easier it will be to address them on social media and come up with the right type of solution for any marketing problem that might come up.

Step 3: Pick the right content to post

The next step is to pick the right type of content. Every major social media platform is suited for a specific type of content:

• Facebook – professional posts with words and images.
• Twitter – short written posts.
• Instagram – photos and images.
• TikTok – videos.

So, once you pick your platform, you need to figure out what your posts will be like. Yes, you can pretty much post any kind of content on every platform. But, know that people expect a certain kind of content from their social media platforms. So, the more you can go with the flow while presenting your brand properly, the better.

Step 4: Stay consistent on social media posts

Keep in mind that once you start posting you need to be consistent. This means that every post should have the same feeling and the general idea behind it. If you start posting in a professional manner and you want to emphasize that your business is all about safety, stay with it. Every post needs to have a professional tone. And every post should have some mention of safety in it. Remember, your goal here is to give your customers the same feeling every time they visit your profile. Just like Coca-Cola gives you the idea of happiness, and General Motors gives you the idea of reliability.

The second way in which you need to be consistent, especially if you are a small company dealing with marketing. is with regular posting. If you post once per day, do so frequently. If you post once per week, again, stay frequent. Posting whenever you feel like it is highly unprofessional and is a sure way to drive customers away from you. Of course, if you have promotions or some important news, you can break the regular post schedule. But, do not make the catastrophic mistake of going silent for more than usual. That is something that most companies don’t come back from.

Step 5: Hire professionals

In order to keep track of their social media, along with SEO management and website maintenance, most companies opt for hiring professionals. Unless you have the necessary knowledge and experience, this is a smart thing to do as it saves you a bunch of time and energy. But, keep in mind that you, as the owner, have to create a content calendar that they will follow.

As we mentioned, your content needs to be consistent in both quality and quantity. So, ensure that the company helps you out know what your branding is like and what schedule you expect.

Step 6: Long-term and short-term marketing

Finally, in order to create a social media strategy for branding, you need to consider both long-term and short-term marketing. In order to break the ice and get the necessary traction, you need to develop a short-term marketing plan. This will usually require financial investment, along with following the current social media marketing trends. Then, to utilize this kind of exposure, you need to develop a long-term marketing plan.

For long-term marketing, you need to study your customer base and see how they interact with social media. The professionals helping you will be more than valuable when it comes to dealing with these aspects. But, keep in mind that it is up to you to ensure that they work.