In today’s digital world, having a strong social media presence is increasingly important for both brands and individuals. Social media serves as a great tool to build brand awareness in the consumer’s mind. Without a presence on these platforms, you may be at a disadvantage compared to competitors who are leveraging social media marketing.
Building a strong and successful social media presence can pose a challenge amidst the ever-growing array of social platforms and mounting intricacies.
Building a presence transcends merely posting an image with a caption. It requires a strategic approach intertwined with creativity and a true understanding of your brand to cultivate brand recognition. We’ll start by defining what a social media presence entails and its importance.
What Is a Social Media Presence and Why Is It Important?
A brand’s social media presence represents their visibility and engagement across various social platforms. It involves building genuine relationships with consumers and establishing online communities. A strong online presence can help to deepen connections with existing customers while reaching out to new ones.
With over 4.95 billion social media users across the globe, this represents a substantial opportunity to broaden reach and visibility for any brand. The use of social media can be pivotal in creating trust and credibility with the consumer, cultivating genuine connections, and expressing your brand’s values and personality. All of these elements can work together to drive brand awareness and foster a positive brand image, allowing for growth.
It is important to note that a social media presence isn’t something that can be created overnight. It requires a strategic mindset and a well thought out plan to achieve optimal outcomes.
With that in mind, we have put together 17 tips to help you build and grow your social media presence.
1) Pick the Right Platforms
With a growing digital landscape, there is a vast array of social media platforms that you can use. However, don’t let this overwhelm you, and don’t try to get famous on every platform. Understanding your brand, your audience, and what platform will best align with these is essential.
For instance, if your brand focuses on creativity and artistry, platforms such as TikTok or Pinterest that allow for creative content would be most suitable. On the other hand, for a sophisticated, established business, platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook may be more appropriate. Nevertheless, it is important to conduct research to identify which platforms best align with your brand and where your audience is most active.
If you use Instagram as one of your platforms, consider some of the best video editing apps to create your Instagram reels.
2) Identify Your Audience
Effective social media marketing relies on your ability to identify your audience. Understanding your market allows you to choose the most suitable social media platforms and effective strategies.
For instance, if you are targeting younger consumers, platforms like Instagram and TikTok would be ideal choices. Statistics show that for Gen Z, 75% are using Instagram as their main platform and 69% on TikTok. On the other hand, if you are targeting older consumers, you may consider platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
Knowing your audience can also help you develop appropriate strategies. For example, Gen Z consumers prefer personalized content and influencers. So, if Gen Z is your audience, leveraging influencer marketing can help establish connections between the consumer and your brand.
3) Make People Aware You Are On Social Media
Sometimes it can be hard to grow a following on social media when you first start. It can be even harder if no one knows where to find you. Make sure you link your social media to your website, email marketing, etc. so that your current consumers are aware of your accounts.
4) Set SMART Goals
SMART goals are:
● Specific: Give concrete targets (followers, views, shares).
● Measurable: quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
● Achievable: Are your targets realistic?
● Relevant: Do your KPIs (key performance indicators) measure engagement?
● Time-Based: Set a fixed point for assessing campaign success.
Setting smart goals will allow you to keep track of what you want to achieve, set realistic timelines, and ways of measuring success. Any successful brand or social media personality has likely set SMART goals to reach the point of success that they desire. Setting goals will hold you accountable and help turn your aspirations into realistic objectives.
5) Create An Editorial Schedule
Creating a content calendar is so important to ensure timely posts. Balancing running a business can be stressful as is. Keeping a calendar will allow you to track when you are going to post, what you are going to post, and on what platform. It will hold you accountable and prevent you from forgetting to make a post. This is also a great way to track and look back at previous posting schedules.
Using a calendar tool like Sprout’s will allow you to streamline your social media planning and scheduling.
6) Be Human
Regardless of the platform you are on, it is imperative to be real, honest, and authentic. Consumers want to feel like they can connect with the person behind the brand. Companies that fail to convey their personality through social media risk appearing cold and ingenuine, which can deter consumers from the brand. Think of ways you can incorporate fun posts like “behind-the-scenes” content of what goes on in the company. This shows viewers the real people behind the seemingly impersonal brands they encounter.
Take Duolingo, for instance. They are a great example of how a brand has effectively leveraged TikTok and created videos showcasing their playful personality to engage with consumers. They have been so successful that they have even made a lasting impression on non-Duolingo users.
7) Leverage Trends
Trends are constantly changing across social media. It is important to stay up-to-date and take advantage of their popularity. Jumping on the right trend that aligns with your brand can lead to viral posts and help you gain exposure. This not only aids in reaching new customers but also shows your current consumers your brand personality.
Consider Chipotle as an example. They are a great demonstration of how a brand utilizes TikTok to showcase a variety of posts ranging from hacks to promotional content to trends. With ASMR videos being very popular, they leveraged this trend and made an “ASMR” video of their Chicken Al Pastor, which they recently brought back to stores.
With podcasts on the rise, this can be another great way to leverage content creation and get personal with your brand as a business. You can use a white glove B2B podcast partner to help you network with your ideal potential clients, while at the same time building an audience in your niche to close more deals easily. They can help manage and create written SEO, video, social, and audio content from each episode to drive more people to your website and increase sales.
8) Make Use of Visuals
A picture is worth a thousand words. Graphics can grab the attention of consumers when they are mindlessly scrolling through social media. Ensuring you use visuals in your posts, like images, videos, infographics, etc., can help your post stand out. Once you grab the attention of the viewer, they can go further to read your caption if they are interested. Don’t underestimate the importance of visuals in having a strong social media presence. It is noted that people will retain 80% of what they see, only 20% of what they read, and 10% of what they hear. Below is an example of a visually appealing social media feed for the brand, Pleasing.
9) Stay Active
Post, post, post! It’s not enough just to create a social media account; you must be active to maintain awareness. Finding a balance between staying active and not posting too much is crucial. Discover the right balance between the frequency and timing of posts. This comes with time! You may start to notice patterns the more you post.
Remember to also stay engaged with your followers. Respond to their comments, share their stories, like their photos, and be responsive to direct messages. This level of interaction can foster loyalty and a sense of connection.
With the overwhelming amount of social media activity that can occur, it can be hard to track and keep up with everything. Using a social media listening tool can streamline this process and collect all relevant online information about your brand on a centralized platform.
10) Be Engaged With Your Audience
Many people will see your content, but it is those who engage with and interact with it that are so important. In order to foster an interactive environment with your consumers, you need to show the person behind the screen. This doesn’t necessarily mean posting a picture of yourself, but allow your personality to come through in your posts. This creates a friendlier and more interactive environment. Respond to comments, ask questions, and prompt your viewers to engage with the brand. This will create meaningful experiences and grow genuine engagement.
11) Don’t Try To Oversell
Trying to push and close a sale may be appropriate in certain situations, but not on social media. Social media should be used as a medium to help grow your brand and its awareness. Pushing the hard sell on these platforms is likely to steer away consumers. They want a brand that is genuine and truly cares about their concerns. Focus on social media to engage with the consumer, offer useful tips, answer their concerns, etc. By showing that you care through social media, this can drive sales in other aspects. A push for sales through social media can come across as bold and intrusive.
12) Track Engagement
It’s great if you are creating fun content and have a good posting schedule going, but you need to know how your posts are doing. Tracking the success and engagement of your posts is a great way to identify what is working and what is not. This will allow you to plan future posts and strategies based on past trends and what has been effective. Using a platform such as Sprout Social, Hootsuite, etc. can provide you with a platform that summarizes engagement data, allowing you to draw key insights and patterns to inform future strategies.
13) Give Users A Reason To Follow You
Potential followers need a reason to follow you! People don’t want cluttered feeds, so they will only follow someone or a brand if they have a reason to. Whether you post exclusive content, tips/tricks, or special sales for your followers on certain platforms, these can all act as incentives for people to follow your account.
14) Host Giveaways
Giveaways are very popular on social media and are a great way to engage and interact with your customers! A lot of brands will ask contest participants to follow them, like a post, leave a comment, share their story, or some combination of these, in order to enter the giveaway. By doing so, the brand is getting people engaged with their page, increasing their awareness, and giving a chance to try their products. This is a great way to create an experience for followers that will create a positive association with the brand.
15) It’s Not All About You
It’s important to post about your brand, what you’re doing, and content that you have created. While doing this, you have to remember that social media is about you and the other person viewing your page. Make sure the followers know you care about them and see their posts on social media. If a follower makes a post and tags you in it, you should like it, leave a comment, or share it on your story. It shows your followers that you are engaged with them, shows authenticity, and makes them feel valued. This helps to foster an online community and relationships.
16) Generate New Ideas
It’s important to stay relevant and capture the attention of your followers. Don’t always share the same thing over and over. This can get boring and lead followers to avoid your account if they know you always post the same thing. Make sure to incorporate innovative, new, and exciting posts that can capture the interest of your followers. Keep in mind that consistency is still key. That is, come out with new content but maintain consistent branding and messaging throughout to send a uniform message across all your posts.
17) Learn from your mistakes and successes
It’s okay to make a mistake! Starting a social media presence can be a hard task, and you will likely see failures and successes along the way. It is important that you take those failures and learn from them to improve your strategies moving forward. Also, make sure to identify what is working. You may notice that your consumers are more receptive to certain types of content. You want to make note of this so you can continue to utilize effective strategies. Social media listening tools like HootSuite and Sprout Social can be helpful in measuring your performance and identifying what is working and what is not.
Conclusion
It takes time to build a strong social media presence, so don’t get discouraged. Stick to these tips and learn from your experience. If you view social media as a medium to create authentic connections with your consumers instead of just a selling method, you will see your business start to grow. Remember, patience is key. Now that we have run through 17 key tips, how will you start to build your social media presence?
Written by Kaitlin Duong
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Jony Studios is a client-focused media production studio offering audio/video production, B2B podcasting, and audiobook services. They have worked with a wide range of clients from small businesses to larger organizations such as Penguin Random House, Amazon, University of Waterloo, Freakonomics Radio and many others.
