Social media, personal branding and traffic are all intertwined. You can use social media to increase your personal brand, enhance sales and grow your business. When businesses want to draw attention to themselves, social media provides growth opportunities.
Social media strategies need to be cohesive in nature to help your marketing and SEO efforts.
A few key social media points to keep in mind are:
1. Social Media Marketing is Brand Building
Buyers gravitate to brands that they’ve heard of and trust. There’s a lot that goes into the buying process, and consumers are just a click or tap away from conducting their own brand research.
Social media can be used to help your brand show up positively on:
- YouTube
Even Google Reviews can account for 10% of your traffic, so use these outlets to promote your brand and services.
You’ll want to create a brand that is original, engages with the community and supports brand intent. The right brand can create trust. If you’re not engaging in social as a part of your SEO strategy, you need to reevaluate your marketing plan.
2. Social Media Has Search, Too
Not everyone chooses Google as their go-to search engine. If you’re on Facebook, there’s a good chance you’ll conduct a search for a brand you saw to find out if it has a page or profile.
Social media sites have search engines, and even if a person doesn’t use a social media site for search, the profile will show up in regular search results.
LinkedIn is a prime example of a platform where search is used extensively. The site requires you to optimize your page, and this is done through:
- Filling out all sections properly
- Adding in proper skills
- Adding in proper keywords
This strategy can be used across several social media profiles.
But what can you do if you want to increase brand loyalty across social media platforms? Can you do it? Sure.
There are a lot of methods you can implement, with the first being one of the most important: create a social media strategy.
Don’t go into the process blindly. You want to start your social media marketing with a strategy that you can properly follow. This strategy may include:
- Researching which platform your desired demographic uses
- Targeting the right social media platform to promote on
- Connecting with users
- Reaching out to potential partners, customers and influencers
There’s a lot more to the process than just these four points, but you’ll need to start with them first. And then, you’ll want to use social media to “spread the love.” Share quality content, some of the content being yours, to help build links and brand awareness, too.
Once you find your voice, you’ll be able to reach your audience and carve out a platform that is your own.
Consistency in social media is important, so make sure to be active and to post, respond and comment often.
Your audience will have expectations that you need to try and meet.
This is just the start of the process. You can be a silent company that doesn’t answer any of the community’s questions or engage in the conversation, but this is a recipe for failure. The truth is that you won’t get far if you don’t answer questions and acknowledge your audience.
With 22% of the world’s population on Facebook alone, you must begin responding today. If for nothing else, you need to respond to build your brand and put your customer service skills on display.
Once you have everything under control and are happy with your social media branding strategy, it’s time to rev up your progress.
You can start to enhance your social media strategy further by:
- Remaining active on question and answer websites
- Create videos and start promoting via YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, etc.
- Curate content through the likes of Scoop.it or similar sites
- Join and become active on popular, targeted forums
- Start publishing on review sites and encouraging consumers to leave ratings and reviews
There’s a lot to do to build your brand identity and awareness, but if you do even half of what’s discussed above, you’ll be well ahead of your competition.
And remember: consistency is the key to social media success.
