Stop being another face in the crowd – How to use social media to build brand presence

Big brands make it looks so easy, don’t they? Seamlessly conversing with their followers and posting out useful or entertaining information every day, it can feel a bit of an uphill struggle to compete with the big brands on social media. But don’t give up quite yet, there are still so many ways to build your brand presence using social media channels to make a serious impact on awareness.

Familiarity can have a huge impact on if a user chooses to interact with you or not, without this, they will often just scroll right past. That’s why we’ve taken a deeper dive into how you can overhaul your social media presence, to compete a little harder in the world of social media.

Do… have a voice

One of the core elements of having a personality that defines your brand is having the confidence and voice that demonstrates who you are. Being able to communicate your values, beliefs and the essence of what you do to demonstrate these will allow you to build your social media voice.

An opinion which can be communicated clearly allows you to be more approachable as an entity and will ultimately attract like-minded people to your brand. For example, if you’re passionate about sustainability, discussing topics around this from different mediums such as news, lifestyle and how-to’s, can help build a conversation on your platform.

Do… brand it up

An unbranded, generic social media profile won’t make you stand out from the crowd. Instead, you should create or enlist the help of a graphic designer, to help create assets to use on your profile. This includes properly scaled banners for each channel and a profile picture or icon to use to ensure consistency.

You should also look at your bio or about section and ensure that this represents your brand tone of voice and gives the best explanation of who you are, what you do and why you do it. This doesn’t need to be pages but should endeavour to communicate your brand vision and be created in a tone of voice that emulates how you structure your individual posts.

Don’t… Post everything, anything and all the bits in between

As tempting as it may be to post every hour of the day, (we get it, you have a lot to say!) you should try and exercise some restraint. Consider what you’re going to post and make a content calendar. This will offer some structure to your planned posts and ensure you have something to say on a regular basis. You can then pepper this with ad-hoc retweeting or reposting other people’s content with your own commentary, as and when it happens.

Remember, it’s quality over quantity and a handful of great, considered posts are likely to have much more clout than 100 pointless or spammy posts. Posting too regularly can also put your followers off and mean their newsfeeds are too overloaded with your messaging, which can result in your following dropping off.

On Instagram, styles and colour schemes work really well and can increase the aesthetic appeal of your page. For those who have a signature colour scheme or excel at creating linking images on the tiles can then align with the brand and reflect colours used in a logo or that represent a product to draw in the user to want to see more. This also allows you to be consistent and makes sourcing imagery or designing content, simplified.

Don’t…. Be silent

One of the best ways to gain followers and increase engagement on your social channels is to make the first move. If you post an article about a specific brand, then tag their social handles and use hashtags relevant to the topic. You never know, they might like or retweet your post which can lead to more people following your page.

It’s important not to be a spammer though. Tagging brands, influencers and publications is great but everything in moderation. Be sure to post your own material and balance how much you interact with others, to ensure you don’t annoy people into unfollowing you.

There is also such a thing as posting too much, if you only have a handful of followers, posting every five minutes may not be the best idea. Instead, use the analytics available to you within your social platform to identify the most optimal times to post and understand which of your posts are the best received. You can then align your social posting strategy with the content and timings which work best for your channels.

Don’t…. Copy and paste your content

Not all social platforms were built equally, and the types of people that use them are exactly the same. Every social channel works in a different way and as a result, you must use them all differently. Posting ten times on Twitter in one day has a very different effect to posting ten times on Instagram or Facebook.

Understanding which social channels work for your brand is crucial. For example, if you aren’t seeing much interaction on Facebook but your Instagram page is booming, it could be worth putting more effort into sustaining and growing your presence on the latter. You should still maintain your facebook page as this will also have some value, but use it sparingly for company updates, new product launches or longer form pieces such as blogs.

Finally, don’t just copy and past your posts across all of your platforms. Make sure your posts are bespoke to your platform, which could mean writing longer posts for LinkedIn to support your blog post of downloadable paper or creating a bank of your favourite product and brand imagery for Instagram which forms an overall aesthetic. Customers use social channels in different ways, so should you too.