How important is it to work on your brand awareness strategy? When done right, your company can become widely known (and preferred) among your target customers. But to get there, you need to use channels that make it easy to connect with your audience. This is what makes social media a must-have for your brand-building campaign.
The key is to humanize your brand by creating a personality that’s relatable and likable. A report from Sprout Social shows 90% of consumers say they’re more likely to engage with social media posts that embrace the company’s personality. And if that interaction is positive, it can yield favorable results for your business. According to Lyfe Marketing, 71% of consumers with positive brand interactions on social media are likely to recommend the brand to family and friends.
So how do you create these positive engagements with your target customers? You can start by creating a social media marketing strategy. Let’s take a look at why this is essential and how to make it happen.
How Social Media Helps Build Brand Awareness
More than 53% of the world’s population is using social media, according to Hootsuite’s Digital 2021 report. In other words, there are plenty of opportunities to reach customers from all walks of life, locations, and backgrounds. It also helps when consumers are actively looking for products and engaging with brands on these channels. GlobalWebIndex reports that 54% of social browsers are using social media to research products.
Sharing information about your products and services on social media presents a great opportunity to reach sales-ready customers. And by having a profile on these social channels, you increase the odds of your brand being found and engaged with. Over 200 million people visit one or more Instagram Business pages daily. And 74% of consumers are viewing and sharing brand-related product videos on social media.
People are also looking to connect with brands on social channels for customer support. In fact, most engagement consumers have with brands on social media consists of asking questions, offering feedback or praising a product.
With a consistent presence on social, you can spread the word about your brand and products, showcase some personality and engage your audience.
Which Social Metrics to Track for Your Brand Awareness Campaign
There are numerous metrics you can track on social media. But many are known as vanity metrics. They look good on paper but don’t mean much for your bottom line. Examples of vanity metrics include likes, followers and views.
When you’re embarking on a brand-building campaign, you want to track the following more meaningful metrics:
- Brand mentions: How many people are talking about your brand on social media?
- Impressions: How many repeat views are you getting from a single person?
- Reach: Is your number of views growing?
- Engagement: How many shares and comments are you getting per post?
- Audience sentiment: Are the discussions/mentions of your brand positive or negative?
The goal is to monitor metrics that demonstrate how well your brand is known and perceived by your target audience. As these metrics improve, you may see social media lead generation increase.
Social Media Marketing Tips
So how do you build your social media marketing strategy to drive these metrics in the right direction? Here are several tips to try.
Create Brand Profiles on the Right Social Media Platforms
Not all social media channels are worth the effort for your business. The idea is to choose the ones your audience actually uses. To find out, you may want to conduct a survey asking customers which platforms they frequent. You can also use analytics tools to learn about your audience’s social media habits.
For example, on Facebook and Instagram, you can create business profiles, which grants you access to data analytics. In your dashboard, you can view data about your audience. This will tell you who is in your audience, where they are, their age range, and how they’re engaging with your content (likes, shares, comments). Then based on the insights, you can focus on recreating content that specific audience members are interacting with. This way, you can attract more of those individuals to your page.
Publish Engaging Content on a Regular Basis
If you want to get noticed on social media, then you need to consistently publish content that’s interesting and relevant. Memes, infographics, videos and other visual content tend to do well on social media. For example, stories (short videos that disappear after 24 hours) are a popular way to connect with audiences. And Facebook is a great platform to use for them, with 70% of users saying they prefer to watch Facebook stories. Instagram and Snapchat are next in line, according to HubSpot’s State of Marketing in 2020 report.
If you can do this daily, then the odds of attracting new people increase. Focus on sharing information, starting discussions and engaging with others’ posts to help drive engagement. You can also feature user-generated content, which are posts, photos and videos posted by other people. Just make sure to click share or cite the author to give them credit.
Encourage People to Share Your Content
Outside of getting users to share your social media posts, you can focus on asking folks to share content from other platforms such as, for example, your blog. You can ask readers to share your posts in your CTA (call to action). Just be sure you have social share buttons on your blog posts to make it easier.
Partner With Influencers
Harnessing the power of influencers is an excellent idea, especially when you’re trying to grow your visibility quickly. You can find influencers within your industry on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Some are open to partnering with brands by sharing content, mentioning and even hosting contests on their behalf.
What makes this a great connection is that it promotes your brand to an audience you otherwise wouldn’t have access to. But don’t focus on the mega-influencers with millions of followers. Instead, focus on the mini-influencers with thousands or tens of thousands of followers. They may be easier and more affordable to do business with. And their followers tend to have higher (authentic) engagement because mini-influencers are more relatable than someone like a Kardashian.
Use Tools to Automate Connections and Interactions
If you’re a B2B company, then networking is an essential part of your social media marketing strategy. However, you may not have the time to grow your connections on social media channels. This is where automation tools come in handy.
CoPilot AI is one tool you can use to generate more leads from LinkedIn. The platform will help you find and engage with high-value leads based on your criteria. You can develop campaigns that target leads based on company size, location, industry and job titles using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It’s an outreach strategy that can drive more prospects to your door. Want help setting up CoPilot AI and managing your LinkedIn outreach efforts? Orpheus is partnered with CoPilot AI and offers consulting on their platform as a marketing automation solution.
Start Building Brand Awareness Today
Creating an online presence for your business is essential, especially with more than half the world using social media. By using these same channels to connect with your audience, you can build awareness, engagement and, eventually, loyalty.
Not sure where to start? Let Orpheus help. We have a team of digital marketing professionals who excel in social media marketing and brand building. Our professionals can also help with writing and sharing blog posts to your social profiles.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help, then reach out to us today.
