Social media has reached a saturation point when it comes to the wealth of content, brands, and marketing available to consumers. This availability of content, plus the ever-growing number of social channels make it a challenge for brands to reach audiences in a meaningful way.
As social media evolves, it is important to understand the best way to stand out in the crowd and reach consumers, serving them the content that will help build your brand voice. Here are our top tips for growing brand awareness on social channels.
1. More engagement, less traffic.
Social media used to be a one-to-many business channel, with a chance for brands to market to the masses with links, photos, and videos. The purpose of these were to drive clicks offsite, and ultimately foster sales growth.
Since then, things have changed. Social media is a chance to instill your brand culture with consumers, and an opportunity to make them feel a certain way when they think about your company. Although clicks are important, it is crucial to focus more on engagement with people than with advertising to them on social media. These channels can help to promote brand depth, facilitate a brand voice, and offer a social platform to “meet” and interact with customers in a new way.
2. Personalization is key.
Brands that are successfully utilizing social media give users the feeling of a one-to-one experience, something that they don’t get from a magazine ad or a television commercial.
It is important to personalize content, making it feel tailored to the customer and the specific app or channel they are utilizing. This is what ultimately leads them to return for more information, and builds a sense of brand identity in their mind.
3. Stay consistent.
Although it is important to tailor your content to work best across various social media platforms, it is also crucial that visual branding remain cohesive. Things like imagery, colors, and even copy can add to how recognizable your brand is.
This way, consumers understand and recall the same brand attributes whether they watch a Facebook video clip, scroll through an Instagram story, or browse a Twitter post.
4. Stay real.
A recent Sprout Social study found that honesty was voted the most valuable brand quality on social media by consumers. Authenticity is critical to social media, and important to make your customers feel understand, heard, and appreciated.
While this feeling of trust may not seem as important as direct marketing, it can lead to improved brand awareness as people sense your brand’s values and ethics.
5. Tackle more than just marketing.
The latest social media channels to rise in popularity are messenger apps. Because of this, pushing out marketing content alone is not enough to inspire consumers.
Many brand employ chat bots or customer service chat features through their social media channels, like Facebook messenger. This enables them to provide actual services to their customers online, in addition to posting relevant and interesting content. Offering more than just marketing content heightens the sense of personalization and one-to-one marketing, ultimately bringing customers back again and again.