Branding & Social Media: What your feed says about you!

Why branding is important?

With thousands of other accounts on these platforms you need to find a unique way to slot yourself into relevant audiences, whilst standing out from the crowd. This might sound a little like patting your head and rubbing your tummy but nailing this early on helps establish presence as your brand audience grows.

Branding shows your audience the authentic side behind your account. It’s an informal statement to your audience about how your business functions. Think of it as your brand’s personality – whether you’re the life and soul of the party, the laid-back professional or simply just doing your thing (and loving it). Your social media platforms is a great place to showcase your flair. Ultimately your audience will be drawn to the persona your brand puts out there and its relevance to them.

What does your feed say about your brand?

Branding your social channels is an easy way to remind your audience of your values and brand message. Featuring prominent logos for profile pictures and headers creates a visual consistency for your social feeds, which then clearly links back to any other online or offline collateral. Creating consistent content for your feeds also establishes a ‘look’ and ‘style’ for your brand, inviting audiences that resonate with that aesthetic.

While visual branding is important, the branding in your messages and copy is equally important. Nailing your tone of voice helps set the theme for your messaging and support your brand personality. Depending on your audience and service offering this will shape the persona of your brand and the language you use. For example, a health care service or provider may want to take a relaxed but informative tone of voice to provide valuable insight to potential clients, while a bespoke bakery might want to show off their creativity with a vibrant, informal and casual tone.

How does branding influence your audience?

When it comes to interacting and engaging with accounts on social media, audiences are ultimately compelled to action through their reaction to content. Whether its laughing at a funny meme or commenting on a blog post (like this one), the audience has performed an action based on their feelings towards the content.

By clearly defining your branding on social and shaping the content pieces around this, you’re inviting your audience to relate with your account and invite interaction. For example, if you’re setting up a recipe blog on Instagram, you’ll want to show the audience you’re relatable, knowledgeable about cooking and passionate about what you do. Shaping your tone of voice and post content around these three areas creates a human connection that your audience can relate to and is likely to interact with.

What’s special about social media branding?

Putting in place measures to review how your brand performs on social is one way to understand your audience and how they tick. Shaping your content around this, reaffirms this and will develop further audience growth, engagement and ultimately transactional value. Compliment this with a strong paid social strategy (which you can read all about here) and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a social media maverick!

Want to find out more about how to get the most from your social persona? Drop us an email.