Branding Social Media and Why You Need to Do It

Have you started dabbling in social media for business? If so, have you been consistently branding your social media?
Here is why you should (and why ‘dabbling’ may not be quite enough!)

Social media is one of the simplest and best ways to grow your business and connect with your audience.

When wading into an ocean like Facebook or Instagram, it is easy to become overwhelmed by all of the different things you can do as well as all of the changes that continuously occur.

If you have been posting for a while without gaining many likes and followers and without seeing any solid results or conversions, you might need to go back to basics to figure out the problem.

 

The Importance of Branding for your Social Media

Social media is an excellent way to connect with your audience, and the right use of the right branding is essential to sticking in people’s memories when they come across you on social media.

One study has shown that 84% of people are more likely to buy from a brand they follow on social media than from a competitor.  Your branding should be tailored for your individual business, giving the look, feel, and experience of your business to others that you want.

This will include your-

• logo,
• colours,
• fonts,
• and images,
• but also is much much more than this.

Branding should give your audience an understanding of your business, its values, products, services, personality, and vision. 

When you use your branding consistently and regularly across your digital and physical marketing material, clients will start to become familiar with your brand whenever they see your branding. 

They start to remember your business and hopefully trust you as a knowledgeable expert in your field.

 

Here are some of the key reasons why branding is so important for your social media:

• Your branding should emanate the experience you want your customers to have. It is key to have branding that communicates the vibe of what you do and why you do it.
• It makes your images and posts stand out from the crowd, and helps to stop the scroll.
• It helps to build a relationship with your audience, they will start to recognise your posts and how they make them feel.
• Branding is prominent and plays an important role when your posts are shared by people across social media – they let everybody know who made them and invite new visitors to get to know your business.
• Most social media content is borrowed or inspired by other posts already seen, but don’t just copy and paste what you like, use the ideas to create your own original content and make sure it is branded well.

 

The Look of Love

Your use of colour and imagery is very important, especially in social media feeds when people are scrolling and scanning so quickly.

Up to 80% of brand recognition comes from your consistent use of colour. Colours are highly emotive and have a strong psychological effect on people, so you should choose your brand palette wisely.

People make judgements about your business within the first 90 seconds of interacting with your branding, and studies show that at least 60% of their judgements come from colour alone. 

Consistent use of branding helps people to start to recognise you and build a relationship of trust in your brand, whereas a lack of branding has the opposite effect. 

 

Some Tips and Tricks

While your branding needs to be consistent across social media platforms, you should still tweak your posts to make sure they create maximum impact for the specific platform and the audience who use it. 

Instagram, for example, is more a visual platform than written content, while Facebook is a little of both. LinkedIn is a more professional platform with a slightly older audience, while TikTok uses videos to appeal to a younger audience. 

• Think about all the places that you could inject your brands personality. For example, on Instagram- your profile image, your brand voice in your bio, your colour palette in your story highlights. Use your brand’s colour palette subtly throughout your posts too.
• You can and should connect with your audience across more than one social media platform, but make sure you choose the ones which connect you with your target audience.
• Always use good quality images that are the perfect size for the social media platform you are using. Your images should be clear, not overused by other businesses and brands, and also need to load quickly, especially on mobile screens.
• Never forget that social media is just that – social. The majority of what you post should offer value and benefit to your audience and go towards building a relationship with them. It should inform, entertain and intrigue. 

 

It should not be salesy or pushy, but instead should be about the human in your business connecting with your customers. 

Track your posts and see which ones get the best response and engagement from your audience. Then tweak your future posts to appeal in the same way, to best connect with your ideal customer.

 

Branding in Social Media – Final Thoughts

• You should choose visual elements to represent your brand.
• Always use these consistently for your audience to engage with, including on your website, on emails, on promotional material and of course on social media profiles and all posts.

Social media feeds are busy and fast-moving, and highly visual. They are also social – connecting with people on an engaging, emotional level – and for this reason, your branding and every single one of your posts needs to be engaging too.

Need a sweet and simple start to make an instantly memorable mark on your social scrollers, swipers and likers?

Grab my free Instagram Story Highlight Cover s HERE

& read more HERE.