One of the many reasons to use social media to market your business is branding. Particularly for small start-ups, it’s important to develop and promote a brand that customers will remember. By engaging prospects on social media, you not only build a brand, but you engage people and build personal relationships that convert prospects into paying customers further down the sales funnel.
The best social networks for the commercial brand
With social networking sites so popular and more and more of them popping up every month, it’s not always easy to determine where you should focus. Personal social networks are different than commercial social networks, so it’s important to target the right sites and provide the right type of content.
The top social networking sites for small businesses are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. While you don’t have to use all of them, it’s a good idea to create a business page/profile on at least three or four of them and keep those pages updated regularly.
Why you need to use social media for branding
It’s hard to stand out from the huge crowd of social networks vying for your target market’s attention, but you should still give it a try because that’s where your clientele hangs out. Your message will join many others; your goal is to somehow divert the attention of the rest. Posting a mix of text, image, and video content works best, depending on the platform you’re using.
Not sure how to start a social media campaign that will engage your target market? Here are five great business ideas that can help your small business thrive online.
1. Competitions: Everyone loves to win something. With a competition posted on social networking sites, you not only gain valuable information about your target market, but create a real buzz that is likely to go viral. For example, Cadbury asked fans to build a giant hand resembling a Facebook ‘Like’ symbol out of Dairy Milk bars and offered participants the chance to try out new products. Mountain Dew used a crowdsourced strategy to solicit information on a new soda flavor, allowing consumers to help develop the final product. Because fans were actively involved in these competitions, they were more likely to become loyal customers.
2. Quizzes/Games – Post a quiz or game that allows participants to win something for free. For example, Heinz published a short personality quiz that matched each consumer with the perfect can of beans, then awarded one winner per hour to receive that product for free.
3. Apps/Games: Develop a game or interactive app based on your brand. This allows people to have fun while they see your brand over and over again. Progressive Insurance did this with a “Find Flo” app, while A&E created a Parking Wars game based on the TV show.
4. Free Content – ​​Ask your friends/followers to create content for you, like making a personal video showing usage of your product or capturing a visit to your business. Ask fans to post their content directly to your Facebook page. Paramount did this with the film, Paranormal activity, posting viewer reactions to the film. Twitter’s Vine app, which allows you to upload 6-second videos, is a nice tool to use.
5. Offers: People always want something for free. You don’t have to go crazy with this, but if you really want more followers/fans/friends, try giving away something for free, like a gift certificate or sample product. Domino’s Pizza UK announced several “featured flavours” in a succession of tweets using the hashtag #letsdolunch and discounted the price of a pizza by one cent for each tweet using that hashtag. They created quite a stir and sold a lot of pizzas!
Social branding is a way for any company to become a household name and there are no excuses not to use it to your advantage. Feeling overwhelmed by logistics? There are many online marketing consultants that will create a successful social media marketing campaign for you!