Develop Your Brands Social Media Strategy in Five Simple Steps

Develop Your Brand’s Social Media Strategy in Five Simple Steps

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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.

The post Develop Your Brand’s Social Media Strategy in Five Simple Steps appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

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June 16, 2019 at 10:27AM