SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING – THE RIGHT APPROACH FOR YOUR BRANDS
Social media is a powerful tool to build a brand for detailed market segmentation as well as effusion communication with your various audience groups.
But more people do not effectively harness the power of social media for brand building. Because they fail to take a systematic approach.
In this blog, we are going to see five steps to improving your social media branding whether you are doing it for personal reasons or business purposes.
Step 1: DETERMINE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND WHAT TYPES OF CONTENT INTERESTS THEM THE MOST
Many people do not take the time to contemplate sufficiently who their various target audiences are. If you represent a business this does not mean only your customers or your potential customers. It also means your employees, suppliers, market influencers, regulatory agencies, and maybe even your competition. If you are an individual, building your personal or professional brand then your audience will include your current employees, your potential employers, and maybe even your past employers as well as your co-workers, your various mentors and potential mentors, and the people who will be recommending you to the other and providing you with networking opportunities.
After you have identified those various audiences, take the time to get to know them well enough to understand the types of content that interest them the most. This is a crucial step. Because this will determine your primary social media platforms. The content you will create, curate and share, and then the nature of the content. If Possible identify similarities or consistencies across your audiences that will allow you to create efficiency in your content production and content delivery.
Step 2: CHOOSE THE ONE, TWO, OR THREE BEST PLATFORMS TO REACH THOSE AUDIENCES
The “best” means the overlap of the best for them as well as the best for you. For example, If they tend to like visual imagery but you don’t have the skills to stick with a platform that focuses on static imagery instead of moving or dynamic imagery. If they want audio but you’d rather write than audio. Consider a platform where you can hire a voice-over professional to turn your content writing into audio. The key is to find the platforms that your audiences and this use as well as the platforms that fit your set of skills and resources.
Step 3: CREATE CONTENT THAT IS BOTH RELEVANT TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE NEEDS & TAILORED TO THE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS YOU’RE USING
“Relevance” means the information has to be what your audience needs and wants; the format and the delivery of the content need to be developed in a manner that resonates with your audiences and the situations in which they will consume your content. Don’t try to twist the platform’s norms to meet your desires.
For example, if long-form written content is the best method to provide your messaging. Don’t try to squeeze Instagram or Snapchat or Tik Tok into a long-form written content platform.
Step 4: CONNECT WITH YOUR AUDIENCES & START BUILDING COMMUNITIES
One of the great advantages of social media marketing is the ability to build community across a wide span of Geographic areas. Not only can it bring people together from different locations but it can also unite people of different backgrounds, incomes, environments, etc because they have similar or common interests in a topic or issue. Gone are the days that your community building was Limited to a particular City or Geography region. So how do you build communities?
Talk to them, listen to them and encourage them to communicate with each other? The idea is not for you to drive the conversation. But for you to participate in the conversations when truly appropriate. In other words when you have something valuable to add to the discussion and don’t forget to compliment and encourage those community members who take the time and effort to engage. Because in essence, they are helping you to build this community in the long run. It’s their community as much as it’s yours. Keep aware at all times of opportunities to build your brand subtly, while you support and facilitate your community interactions.
Step 5: STAY ACTIVE BY POSTING & INTERACTING CONSISTENTLY
Depending on the platform your audiences and the nature of your community engagement will be placed. This will be once or twice a week it could be even multiple times per day. That knows its rules on what works best and anyone out there who tells you. Otherwise either do not understand social media or they are just plain miss leading you. To find the sweet spot of how much interaction is the right amount. You will need good old-fashioned trial and error. What works for someone else for a chosen platform may not work for you. Because you have a unique audience and a unique set of contributions to your community and be careful not to overpost or overreact.
The key is to spend more time listening than talking. When you do communicate actively, bring others into the conversation. Think about who else can add some insights or answer questions. Spend as much time connecting audience members as you do messages to your audience. Post and interactions or not just about you and your brand they are about building a community around your brand.
If you follow these five steps you will be on your way to building your brand using the power of social media.
