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Building Your Brand Through a Winning Social Media Strategy

January 1, 2013 Branding, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Social Media 0 Comments

Today branding goes beyond just your company’s logo or the products or services your business has to offer; branding is also through content and transparency. By this point we have all heard about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media platforms and we all know our companies need to be on them. You have created accounts but now what? Now you have to use those social media platforms to build your brand online, to show who you are as a company. Joining the conversation, providing useful content, connecting with your target audience are all ways to build your brand through developing a social media strategy.

Join the Appropriate Social Media Platforms
Your social media strategy will only work if you chose the right social media platforms to be on. If you are a retail company, then it might make sense for you to create a Pinterest account. However, if you’re an accounting firm, then Pinterest isn’t the right fit for you, but Facebook and LinkedIn are a good fit. Do your research on the different social media platforms before starting to build your social media strategy; if you have created a marketing strategy for your company then your identity as a company will be clear and you’ll soon see which social media platforms you should have accounts on.

Don’t Become a Social Media Phantom
Once you have decided to enhance your brand on the appropriate social media platforms, stay consistent. Creating accounts then not doing anything with them and becoming a phantom account is worse than posting useless content. If you have enough content that will be useful and valuable to your target audience, post on social media once a day. If you don’t have that much content to share, then pick one day during the week and stick to posting that same day every week.

Connect and Join the Conversation
Social media was created to open communication between business-to-business, businesses-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer. The first step to open the communication is to friend, follow, and connect with industry influencers to help you then connect with your target audience. By retweeting and commenting on a blog or Facebook post, this will help to get your name out there and show you are involved and paying attention to the happenings within your industry. Joining the conversation is a key part to your social media strategy.

Publish Meaningful Content
Once you have a Twitter handle, Facebook page, Blog, LinkedIn, and or Google + page then what? You need to begin publishing useful content. Publish content that your audience cares about and finds informative and useful. When publishing any kind of content you need to always think what the added value is for the reader. Take notice in what your target audience has questions or concerns on and provide answers to those questions.

Apply the 80-20 Rule
Your content should be non-promoting 80% of the time and generating self-promoting posts and tweets only 20% of the time. Keeping this rule in mind will make it so your audience doesn’t lose interest or value in what you have to say. If you promote your product or services all the time, pretty soon people are going to stop listening to what you have to say.

Five Key Takeaways:S.J.Hemley Marketing

  1. Always think of what your target audience will take out of the content you publish
  2. Join the conversation and interact with your target audience
  3. Create social media accounts with social media platforms that are appropriate for your business
  4. Publish content that will provide value for the end user
  5. Post content that isn’t always self-promoting, but content that holds advice for the reader

About S.J.Hemley Marketing
S.J.Hemley Marketing is a marketing and sales consulting firm focused on driving tangible results for professional services firms. Brand matters, but not without ROI. With over 20 years of sales and marketing experience within staffing and recruiting, we have helped to drive successful branding, sales training, lead generation activities as well as defining marketing strategy for top organizations.



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