Building brand awareness through social media is the easiest way to get your brand name out there. And why shouldn’t they? Modern technology has put a great tool at their disposal. Social media is all the rage now. From social selling to influencer marketing, the potential of these apps is boundless.
Traditional marketing methods are restricted in their reach due to budgets. A TV ad, billboard, or any other form of print media can be very costly when you want to reach millions of people. Even some digital marketing strategies like PPC can be heavy on the pockets. But social media is free. This is why marketers and brands are turning to them to build brand awareness.
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What is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness is a term given to how familiar your audience is with your products and brand. It is the degree to which people recognize a brand when they hear its name or see its logo. It’s a crucial concept because every brand wants its target audience to recognize them.
It is a marketing concept that is heavily related to trust. In the modern age, research and word of mouth are vital factors that affect buying decisions. But once you create a bond of trust with your audience, research and WoM won’t matter anymore. Your audience will make repeat purchases because they trust your brand.
Brand awareness is all about forming a long-lasting relationship with your audience. And as we all know, interactions are the basis of relationships. How you interact with your audience will affect how deep your relationship will be. This is why customer interactions are a big part of marketing strategies.
Marketers who want to build brand awareness are always looking for channels to interact with their customers. And social media is their answer. Social media platforms give them the power to interact with people at a more personal level. But how do they build brand awareness on these platforms? Read on to find out!
Building Brand Awareness Through Social Media – Tips
Know Your Audience
Before you start working on your brand awareness, knowing your audience is critical. The question is, “Who are you talking to?” If you haven’t already identified your audience, then you need to create a buyer persona.
Who is your product for? Since we’re now talking about social media, you need to adjust your goal a bit. Your question will now be; “Who is most likely to interact with and like our content on social media?” Answering this will give you an idea about your target. Are these older people or younger? Which gender will engage with your content?
Then research your social media platforms for this audience. The best way to do so is to treat these platforms as search engines. Search for hashtags and trends. Or, observe the pages of your competitors. Who interacts with them the most? Doing so will tell you how to create your buyer personas.
Choose The Right Platform
What platform you plan to use will significantly impact how your social media strategy performs. Every platform is different, and not every piece of content will perform well on each of them. For example, Instagram is a visual platform. On the other hand, Twitter focuses more on textual content.
You need to give ample thought when choosing your social media channels. The most important factor here is your audience. What does your audience prefer? The younger generation prefers those that focus on images and videos. So study your audience and choose one where most of them are present.
Another factor is the number of profiles. The more profiles you have, the more challenging it will be to manage them. Your need for social media managers will also increase. This will, in turn, increase your expenses. Two to three channels where most of your audience is present works best.
Optimize Your Profile
Now that you’ve chosen the best social media platform for your brand, it’s time to get working on your profile. You need your profile to stand out on these platforms and outperform your competition. Obviously, your content will help do this. But your profile is also a great factor here.
Your profile includes its name, picture, and description. Some platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to add other elements like background pictures, contact details and links. These are all essential information that can help attract your audience. Fill your profile with all the necessary information and leave nothing out.
You can use your profile to give a unique and coherent image of your brand. For example, Adidas has its original three-stripe logo on its Facebook profile picture. The logo makes it clear that it’s Adidas’ profile.
Customize Content
When creating content, think of it as taking a vacation abroad. You’ll have to consider the norms and culture of the foreign country. You’ll also be buying the local currency. Social media is the same. You have to cater to the platform you’ve chosen.
Start by researching what kind of content works best on each platform, just as Brazil’s currency won’t work in France. Content curated for Twitter won’t do well on Facebook. Every platform has its own rules and restrictions. For example, Twitter has a character limit of 4000. In contrast, other platforms have none.
You need to consider these rules if you want to succeed. Images on Facebook perform much better than textual posts. Reels are preferred over normal videos by the algorithms on Instagram. Always consider the algorithm when creating content.
Create Engaging Content
‘Content is king,’ as they all say. In digital marketing, content holds a place like no other. And that remains true for social media as well. Create engaging content for your social media to compel audiences and grow your profile.
On social media, engagement is the top dog when it comes to metrics. You want people to like and share your content. But if your content is state and boring, people won’t give it another glance. Social media users don’t bother with posts that don’t catch their attention.
Your content should be able to capture a user’s attention instantly. Only then will they stop scrolling and pay attention to what you are saying. Hence, your content must be interesting and engaging. Researching the interests of your buyer persona will help you design better content.
Provide Value
You can create engaging content for social media by providing value. Not everybody is looking to kill time on social media. Many people use social media to learn new stuff and increase their knowledge. Social media channels like Twitter have also become very popular sources of the latest news.
So, if you’re able to provide value to your audience in any way, get on it. Users want to see posts that they can relate to or that seem more human. These are posts that increase knowledge and give new insights on trending topics. For example, if your brand sells chocolates and sweets, you can inform your audience about the origins of chocolate or any surprising benefits.
Use Visuals
Humans naturally have short attention spans. This means they lose interest in things very quickly. Even more so in the case of social media. Users will scroll past dozens of content in a matter of seconds. Hence, you need to generate content that engages them and delivers your message quickly.
Visuals are your best friend here. People love looking at high-quality pictures and videos. They are engaging and provide value in the shortest time possible. Visual content is also easier to understand and share. This increases its shareability. Social media algorithms also prefer visual content, which means more people will see it.
But you shouldn’t use all of your budget on visuals. Use royalty-free stock images and tools like Canva to create stellar visuals. And it won’t cost you a lot.
Interact With Your Audience
Interacting with your audience might just be the most important strategy for social media. If you’re not being interactive on these platforms, you’re throwing away so much wasted potential. It is called ‘social’ media because the platforms give you a chance to get personal with your followers.
Replying to your followers is the easiest way to interact with them. You’ll see brand mentions all over social media. If people buy and use your product, they will talk about it on Twitter, Reddit or other channels. Find these brand mentions and reply to them to engage your audience. A simple ‘Thanks for using our products.’ would suffice too.
To find these unlinked mentions, use social listening tools. Social Searcher is a free tool you can use to your advantage here.
Social Sharing
A significant benefit of social media that brands can leverage is how easy it is to share content. Every platform provides a simple ‘Share’ button at the end of each post. Users can click on these buttons to share the content on their profiles or send it through a private message to someone else.
Brands need to take advantage of this feature. Encourage your followers to share your posts with those around them. You’ll be able to capture a larger audience. These are typically the people who aren’t included in your audience. But become a part of them because their network is a part of your target audience.
Another great strategy is to add a social sharing feature on your blog and website. This way, people will be able to share your content directly from other channels to their social media profiles.
Partner With Influencers
Influencer marketing has taken the world by storm. They have a huge fan following that listens to their every word carefully and values their opinions. Marketers must work with influencers to improve their awareness and grow their followers.
Shoppers now value influencers a lot. This is because influencers have established themselves as credible personalities and experts. They use products and give honest reviews that are meant to help their followers shop better. As such, their followers have complete trust in them.
Marketers need to partner with the right influencers and promote themeselves on social media. This will expose a vast audience to their brand. The benefit here is that they can convert a major portion of their followers into their own audience. Hence, increasing their brand awareness.
Incorporate Emails
You won’t see a lot of social media experts talking about emails. But nobody ever said you couldn’t use emails in your social media strategy. As unconventional as it sounds, email is a great channel to support your social media strategy.
Promoting your social media profiles to leads in your email lists is easy enough. All you have to do is add your social media handles at the end of each email. People always look at a company’s social media profiles before working with them or buying from them.
So incorporating emails is a great way for building brand awareness with social media. Doing so lets people who have no idea about your brand learn about it.
Host Events
To reiterate, interacting with your followers is the best way to build brand awareness. And a great way to increase brand-audience interactions is to host events. You’ve probably participated in Instagram giveaways yourself. Truthfully, we all have at some point.
These giveaways are a great opportunity to improve engagement. All you need is a bundle of your customer-favorite products. Start promoting your giveaway contest early on. This will get people riled up and excited. Then host a fair competition and award the winner with the bundle and a shoutout.
The more you promote your giveaway, the more people will interact with it. Ask people to share the contest with others, and more social media users will find out about it. Brand awareness is all about getting your name in front of people. A giveaway contest does just that.
Use Hashtags
Hashtags are the latest trend in social media marketing. When it comes to brand awareness, hashtags are truly game changers. Posts with even a single hashtag get 12% more engagement than those without.
Almost every major brand has a hashtag of its own. These are branded hashtags that have much higher visibility than normal hashtags. For example, #MyCocaCola is a very popular hashtag by Coca-Cola. The beverage company started a campaign where people shared their favorite moments with the popular drink. In return, Coca-Cola promised a week’s worth of free supply to the winner.
Such hashtag campaigns are very popular among social media users. People are always looking for ways to interact with brands.
Leverage Trends
With the advent of platforms like Snapchat and TikTok, we’ve seen a rise in social media trends. A very popular trend was the Ice Bucket Challenge by the ALS Association. Millions around the world picked up the trend.
Marketers who want to build brand awareness through social media need to leverage these trends in their favor. Research which trends your audience favors the most and jump on the bandwagon. You can get your employees to follow and share the trend through the company profile.
Or, create your own trend that your audience can follow. To make a trend that goes viral, it should be easy enough to do without a lot of props and exciting enough for people to try. Market the trend on social media with a hashtag. And share the responses on all your official channels.
Ready to Start Building Your Brand Awareness?
Building brand awareness through social media is the latest trend in digital marketing. Brands want to achieve a wider reach and higher engagement. But that is easier said than done. We’ve highlighted some of the best strategies for building brand awareness through social media. Understand your audience, curate content that they will like and interact with them.
Do you have a great strategy for building brand awareness? Let us know in the comments!
Featured Image: Creatopy
