How to create a winning social media branding strategy
Your business is probably active on social media platforms — but do you have an effective social media brand?
Your business brand is its unique persona: it’s how consumers see you. Your social media profiles should be an extension of the brand you’ve built. That brand sets your business apart from its competition.
Below, we discuss how you can incorporate maintaining your brand into your social media management. We also cover what to avoid when it comes to social media branding.
Summary/Overview
What is social media branding?
Social media branding is a digital marketing strategy where a brand or individual uses social media to create a unique brand persona that differentiates them from their competition. Businesses use social media branding to stand out and increase brand awareness across social media networks.
A consistent brand engages consumers and encourages them to interact on social media. Social media branding is a powerful tool for building and shaping the identity of a brand, fostering community engagement, and establishing an authentic connection with their intended target audience.
Here are some examples of brands with strong social media presences:
- Slack. Slack stays true to its company nature by sharing useful content about topics like boosting productivity, improving work-life balance, and enhancing team communication.
- Nike. Nike’s tagline is “Just Do It,” which is all about chasing your dreams — athletic or otherwise. Nike’s socials feature inspiring athletes and everyday people working hard to achieve their goals.
- GoPro. GoPro is meant to be an action camera, and its social media presence drives that point home. The brand frequently shows video content of adrenaline-pumping downhill skiing, breathtaking underwater snorkeling, and more.
Each brand above uses social media to build a brand presence by creating informative and engaging content. Want to make sure your social platforms accomplish the same thing? Read on to find out how you can achieve a strong brand identity through leveraging different social media platforms.
How to create a social media branding plan
Creating a strong social media branding plan and establishing a compelling online presence is an essential part of brand building. Follow the following five steps to craft an effective plan.
1. Define your brand identity
Your content should spark an emotional reaction in your audience. For example, a brand like Nike might make you feel empowered or motivated. Our guide to brand positioning explains how to achieve that link between your brand and an emotion.
The first step to making this happen? Defining your brand identity and how consumers see your business. Here’s how to develop that persona:
- Define your brand’s mission. To identify your mission, write down what you do, how you do it, and who you do it for. Finally, don’t forget why you do it.
- Identify your core values. Look at your mission statement to identify your brand’s core values (such as “sustainability” or “inclusion”).
- Scope out the competition. Identify competing mission statements and values. How are yours different? And how are your products or services unique? Two brands can offer essentially the same product but have completely different values.
- Craft a visual identity. Determine what colors, fonts, and imagery support your brand’s values. A “fun” brand might use bright colors, while a “classic” brand might use muted tones. Create brand guidelines that outline and standardize this information.
- Establish your brand voice. Your visual identity will be supported by words, like taglines and slogans. What verbiage will you use? What tone is appropriate? Will it be more formal or more playful?
2. Understand your audience
Your target audience is the ideal consumer you’re trying to serve with your products or services. Understanding who you’re trying to reach makes it easier to determine how best to reach them.
If you want to reach business leaders, you might use a formal tone. If you’re trying to target teens, more informal language is fitting. Similarly, if you want to reach Baby Boomers or businesspeople, you might turn to LinkedIn. For Gen Zers? Try TikTok.
One way to do this is to create an imaginary customer profile, also categorized as a buyer persona. Survey your existing customers and gather demographic information to put together your profile, including:
- Age
- Gender
- Geographic location
- Profession
- Household income
- Hobbies
- Habits
3. Develop a content strategy
Craft content relevant to your ideal consumer that aligns with your brand. Follow these steps to develop a winning social media content strategy:
- Establish goals. Define what you hope to achieve with your social media strategy and set key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, if you want to boost traffic to your website, you might measure organic visitors.
- Run a competition analysis. See what your competitors are up to on social media. You can get inspiration from what they’re doing right — like seeing which social media content generates a lot of engagement (clicks, likes, shares). You can also use this to identify niches to fill. For example, if they aren’t active on YouTube, now is the time to create a YouTube channel. If they aren’t on Facebook, seize the opportunity and make a Facebook page.
- Audit your social media. If you’re active on social media, analyze your results. What content generates the most views and engagement? What types of people engage with you? Are you reaching your target audience? Which networks show the most potential?
- Create a content calendar. Create a social media posting schedule. Determine what type of content you’ll post on which social networks and how often. You can even plan what hashtags you’ll use. Having a content calendar helps ensure consistency.
Strategic branding isn’t just for social media content: Learn strategic branding for small businesses.
4. Use paid advertising
One benefit of social media is that it’s largely free. However, you can also use paid ads on social media channels like Facebook and Instagram.
Paid ads let you reach new followers more easily, expanding your reach. Influencer marketing is another option.
For maximum impact, make sure any paid ad content you create aligns with your brand. Refer to your brand identity; you should maintain the visual imagery and tone you established when defining your brand.
Also, ensure your ads are appropriately targeted — you can target ads based on demographics, like users’ ages or locations. You can even target people based on what other social media accounts they follow.
5. Analyze and optimize your efforts
When determining your KPIs, pick metrics to measure them. For example, if you want to increase brand recognition on a social media platform like X (formally Twitter), you might track tweet mentions and likes.
By analyzing the success of your social media marketing efforts, you can determine what is — and isn’t — working. For instance, you might learn that visual content like memes drives engagement and make this style of image a bigger part of your social media marketing strategy going forward.
How to execute your social media branding strategy
Executing your social media branding strategy is essential for creating a strong and consistent online presence. Here are some key steps to execute your social media branding strategy.
1. Stay consistent across social media channels
Maintain a unified brand image across all social media platforms. Your brand's messaging and visuals should remain consistent to reinforce brand recognition and trust among your audience, regardless of the platform they engage with.
Make sure you have the same profile and cover photos across all your social media. Create similar bios and descriptions as well. Using a consistent visual identity across social media channels is vital to creating an easily recognizable brand.
2. Incorporate branding into your everyday social media posts
Consistency is key when executing your social media branding strategy. Ensure that your brand's personality, voice, and visual elements are reflected in every post. Use hashtags, fonts, logos, and color schemes to create a cohesive and recognizable brand identity.
Consider creating and using unique branded hashtags in your posts — this creates a repository of posts that users can easily look up using the hashtag. Additionally, consistently using a branded hashtag encourages followers to use that hashtag in their own posts about your brand and products.
In your posts’ description and comments, make sure to maintain a consistent brand voice. Whether it’s professional, casual, or silly, creating and maintaining a brand voice that reflects your brand’s personality is vital to staying consistent on social media.
3. Collaborate with key influencers and brands
Leverage the power of influencers and strategic brand partnerships to expand your reach and enhance your brand's credibility. Influencers are often thought of as more authentic than brands, so partnering with influencers who have forged personal connections with their followers is an excellent way to create a more genuine and relatable image for your brand.
Identify influencers whose values align with your brand and engage them in promoting your products or services to their followers. By engaging in collaborations with influencers that operate in your brand’s niche, you can gain access to a pre-approved target audience that is already interested in the type of content or products your brand produces. When a respected person vouches for your products or services, their followers are more likely to trust and consider your brand.
4. Monitor and respond to audience interactions
Keep a close eye on comments, messages, and mentions from your audience. Engaging with your audience in real time helps build a sense of community and trust around your brand. Additionally, actively monitoring and responding to interactions on social media is an effective way to manage your brand’s image and reputation.
Addressing concerns, inquiries, or feedback on social media shows that you value your audience’s opinions and are attentive to their needs. When followers see that you are actively participating in discourse and are paying attention to them, it builds a sense of trust, which is crucial to fostering an authentic brand image.
Additionally, if your audience created content about your products (known as user-generated content or UGC), consider sharing it on your profiles. This is a great way to demonstrate the authenticity of your brand and reward followers who create content about your brand by showcasing them on your social media.
5. Analyze performance metrics and make data-driven decisions
Regularly analyze your marketing campaigns to evaluate the effectiveness of your branding efforts and compare the results against your social media goals. Use insights gained from these analyses to fine-tune your strategy, identify opportunities for improvement, and optimize your social media presence.
Analyzing performance metrics on social media is crucial to understanding what works well and what needs improvement. By utilizing social media analytics, you can better understand what works well and resonates with your target audience so you can tailor future campaigns to fit their needs.
Additionally, engage in keyword research to identify relevant keywords and incorporate them in your social media posts for optimal search engine optimization (SEO) practices. The more data-oriented you can make your content marketing strategy, the more your social media branding efforts will pay off.
Things to avoid when building your social media brand
Above, we’ve covered the do’s of building a strong social media brand. But there are also some don’ts worth mentioning.
Here are some of the biggest things to avoid when building a social media brand:
1. Don’t ignore your audience. Be engaging
Ideally, your content encourages people to stop mindlessly scrolling and interact. Engaging social media content like polls, giveaways, and Q&A-style posts can help toward this end.
Post consistently and during times that are relevant to your target audience to boost engagement and brand awareness — you don’t want to post when everybody’s sleeping.
Finally, respond to people who engage with your content. Reply to comments, good or bad. Redirect negative comments to a less public forum, like your customer service team. Learn how these brands dealt with negative reviews.
2. Don’t imitate the competition. Be original.
The point of social media branding is to stand out from the competition. Original content is a must. You don’t want to be accused of copycat content, which detracts from your authenticity and turns off consumers.
To come up with unique content, focus on what makes your brand unique. Is it your above-average customer service? Is it the lifetime warranty on your products? Is it the speed at which you deliver your services?
Once you identify those unique traits, build content that speaks to them. For example, if you pride yourself on your quality craftsmanship, give social media users a behind-the-scenes look at how your products are made with an informational video.
3. Don’t over-post. Be strategic.
Post on social media regularly to build your brand. However, don’t spam your followers. Focus on relevant content that serves a purpose for your target audience, whether it’s entertaining them or providing information.
How often you post depends on the media format. For example, when it comes to Instagram, research suggests businesses should post once per day to their feed and twice per day to their stories. In contrast, posting more than once daily on some platforms — like LinkedIn — can backfire and decrease engagement. Meanwhile, the TikTok algorithm reportedly rewards posting more than once per day.
Build your social media brand with Adobe Express
Attractive and engaging social media posts are a powerful way to build your brand. But you don't need to be a graphic designer to create great content.
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You can also customize each template to your own needs. Change the typography, colors, and imagery to match your brand style. And with Adobe Express Pro, you can even save your brand color palette for easy access.
So what are you waiting for? Start using Adobe Express today to build your social media brand.