Brand Awareness on Social Media
Using social media to raise awareness about your brand may seem like a difficult task given the large scale of competitors that are all competing for a share of the consumer market. Any business that's serious about promoting their brand has very active profiles across different social media channels so they can increase the reach of their marketing campaigns.
However, if you're just starting out, getting people to talk about and acknowledge your brand can be done with time, effort, and the implementation of a few practices and guidelines.
How to Increase Your Brand Awareness
There are a few different ways you can increase the awareness of your brand in the world of social media. Here are some practices and strategies that can help you get people talking about your business.
Find Your Target Audience
A great way to start your marketing campaigns on social media is to first figure out what your target demographic is. With this information you'll be able to focus your efforts on the social channels that they interact the most on. Keep in mind a variety of factors that narrow it down to a few channels such as gender, location, age, income, and education.
If you have the manpower and resources, you should maximize your efforts across as many channels as possible that fit with your goals and strategy. If you're a B2C company, you may want to focus more on outlets like Facebook and Twitter. If you're a B2B company, places like LinkedIn may be a good channel to focus on.
Make Unique and Engaging Content
Stand out from the competition by creating unique content that will capture interest from your target audience and even those that may not fall within that category. Videos, images, gifs, and posts that catch a user's eye are good ways to foster more engagement. You should follow trends and post any relevant content you have that can piggyback on the trend to attract consumers at the right moment.
Keep in mind the parameters and capabilities of each social channel you post on. Lengthy posts or updates are better suited for Facebook than Twitter, as Twitter only allows for 140 characters per post. Hashtags are more optimized for Twitter and Instagram than they are for Facebook or Google+, so use them with the appropriate platforms when using them in your campaigns.
Create a content schedule so that you are always posting content to build a following. Having one post that gains a lot of attention and engagement will be meaningless if consumers don't hear from you again for weeks afterwards.
Post content or status' that act as open-ended questions and foster discussions. This way, consumers will interact with each other on your profile and post and increase its potential reach. You can also chime in and offer your expertise on the matter in an engaging way that promotes your brand as an expert in the field.
Reach Out to Influencers
Influencers are people on social media that are considered experts in their field or have general persuasive capabilities among their followers. By reaching out to them and pointing them in the direction of your unique content, products, or services, you can entice them to promote it and increase the awareness of your brand. People tend to seek out reviews through people they know and trust, thus, having a promoter advocate for your brand will generate trust and interest in your brand.
Pay for Advertising
If your business has the resources, you should use some paid campaigns across social media channels to attract users that may be interested in your solutions. Sponsored Posts on Facebook and Instagram, Twitter Cards, or advertisement videos on YouTube can really help streamline the awareness of your business.
Engage with Users Outside of Your Own Profile
Social media channels are a two-way street; you have to engage and interact outside of your own profile to foster engagement on yours. Like, comment, and share the content from others to show that your brand is as much about listening to others than it is about reacting to interactions on your own profile.
Follow others in your industry and interact with their content to showcase your expertise in the field. Use their reach to your benefit by being a consistent presence to offer commentary and help to those who ask.
Use Competitions, Giveaways, or Sponsored Events
Pique the interest in users with giveaways or contests that offer cool prizes. Sponsor a local event for people in your niche or even charity to bring awareness to a good cause that will bring attention to your brand. Anything that engages users and gets them talking and excited is an excellent way for them to get to know what kind of brand you are.
Use Your Co-workers and Employees
If your a business that has a decent amount of employees, encourage them to share content and updates about your brand to their audiences. They may have followers in the same line of work or are just interested in their field.
Also, showcase any team events and gatherings to show that your brand is made up of people, just like those you're trying to reach on social media. This will put faces into context with your business and humanize your brand.
How to Monitor Your Brand Awareness
Use a Monitoring Tool to Track Keywords
Use a social media monitoring tool to keep track of people who mention some target phrases and keywords, as they may signify their interest in your market. By tracking these keywords, you can have eyes and ears all throughout social media to respond to queries, answer questions, extinguish customer frustrations, and more.
Monitoring your brand name on social media is more about brand protection than awareness; however, keeping track of comments from users that do interact with you can provide you with great opportunities to attract more users by helping out and engaging with users.
Establish KPIs
Establish some metrics that can let you know how your social media campaigns are doing. From social, organic, or paid traffic to total likes, comments, or shares, these metrics can let you know the success of your campaigns based on what metrics you deem to be the most important.
Building brand awareness from nothing can be a difficult task; however, if you follow these guidelines and remain aware of your market and the users you want to attract, you can foster a lot of engagement and get people talking about your business.