As a small business owner, you probably already know that it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to make your company successful. Likewise, you probably already know that in today’s digital age, one of the best ways to grow small businesses is by using social media sites to reach potential customers. By creating engaging and valuable content, you can increase brand awareness and reach your target audience. Not sure where to start? Keep reading to learn how you can use social media marketing to increase brand awareness and reach more of your prospective customers.
Related: What is Brand Awareness? Definition + How to Guide
Basics of Social Media Marketing
First, let’s get to know the basics of social media marketing.
Social media marketing (SMM) is the use of social networks to get in touch with old and new customers to build your brand, increase website traffic, and improve sales.
Below are examples of SMM sites:
- Social Platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn
- Bookmarking Sites like Pinterest and Flipboard
- Social News Sites like Digg and Reddit
- Media Sharing Sites like YouTube and Vimeo
- Microblogging Sites like Twitter
- Community Forums and Blogs like Warrior and Tumblr
- Social Review Sites like Yelp and FourSquare
- Sharing Economy Networks like Kickstarter and Pantheon
These sites maintain the functions of social media: identity, conversations, sharing, relationships, presence, reputation, and groups. All of these functions are the building blocks of how businesses are able to use social media platforms to attract new audiences and maintain the current ones.
An effective social media marketing strategy is when you combine the functions of social media with implementing a strategy to use them on social media platforms. But it doesn’t stop there—you also need to make sure that you’re building brand awareness in the process.
Basics of Brand Awareness
Terms like brand awareness, brand name, brand identity, brand image, and brand recognition get thrown around a lot. Sometimes, they may seem like they’re referring to one thing when they’re actually referring to something different.
Here are the definitions of each one from the Oxford Dictionary:
- Brand Awareness is how familiar consumers are with the company’s qualities, image, or goods or services.
- Brand Image is how consumers perceive the company’s goods or services.
- Brand Name is how a company is distinguished from other companies with the same goods or services. A brand name is synonymous with a trademark.
- Brand Identity is the visual element of a brand. These elements include logo, design, color, graphics, and other visible designs.
- Brand Recognition is how consumers can identify a brand from its competitors.
Still, brand awareness is just the first step in gaining consumers. To reach customer loyalty, it’s important that consumers consider and evaluate your products, make a purchase, and experience satisfactory customer service with your brand. Once a consumer becomes loyal to a brand, this loyalty can translate to consistent transactions and referrals.
How can Social Media Marketing Increase Brand Awareness?
It’s a known fact that about half of the world’s population has social media. Though this may not translate to individual persons because a user may have more than one social media account, that’s still a lot of potential consumers!
In today’s world, everything is online—shops, research, entertainment, and of course, businesses.
If you follow any business pages on Facebook, you’ve probably already seen TikTok recommended products, reviews on goods or services, or even blog posts that promote brands. This is the power of social channels. It can help companies get in touch with their customers and even build a loyal following.
That’s why one of the best ways to reach your customers is through a well-built brand awareness strategy through social media networks.
But how do businesses use various social media platforms to increase brand awareness? Here are some of the effective ways:
Related: Shelten, LLC: Social Media Marketing Agency for Small Business
Find the Best Social Media Platform for Your Needs
Remember that different platforms have different functions. It’s important to choose the right platform for your content. This is an important part of building a solid campaign because you don’t want to put all of your hard work to waste posting on all the different platforms but without the expected results.
Research Your Audience and Your Competitors
Always check what your competitor is doing. Analyze their social media strategy, their weaknesses, and what they’re doing well. In this way, you can have an idea of how social media users react to the type of content that your competitors post.
In most cases, those who engage in your competitor’s posts are your target consumers. This way, you get to see which types of content they find most valuable. However, don’t just base your consumer data on competitor followers. You also need to determine the right demographic to which your goods or services are targeted.
Build a Solid Social Media Campaign
Before getting started, plan whether you’ll be doing video content for your projects, visual content for new products, or educational content related to your business. No matter how you choose to share, make sure you’re posting valuable content, as this is one of the most effective ways to get the attention of a wider audience. Plus, high-quality content marketing is a great way to make you memorable.
Also, it’s crucial that you’re always consistent with posting. Never leave your followers waiting for content. Prepare your content schedule way ahead of time to keep your audience engaged.
Get the Right People to do Your Social Media Management
Do you have an established team of SMM professionals? If not, you need to think about hiring people to do the job. Posting on various social media platforms might be a one-man job, but the content that you’ll post is best when it comes from writers, designers, and specialists who know what they’re doing.
Our team of SMM specialists is equipped with the right tools to help you with your social media marketing strategies. Shelten, LLC is not just a social media expert, but also a brand awareness company.
We make sure that your posts are on-brand for your company as well as valuable for your audience. Our brand awareness campaigns are also tried-and-tested for different B2B and B2C companies, as we work closely with each of our clients to achieve exemplary results. We also ensure that you maintain an active social media presence to ensure community engagement.
It’s not easy to get yourself known and keep a positive impression on social media, but we’re here to help. Click here to book your free consultation today!
Related: 30 Funny Social Media Quotes
Bonus Tips for How to Use Social Media Marketing to Increase Brand Awareness
If you’re looking to increase brand awareness, social media is one of the best channels for doing so. Not only are people spending more and more time on social networks, but they’re also increasingly using them to discover new brands and products. A recent study found that over 60% of consumers say they discovered a new product or service on social media in the past six months.
So how can your business take advantage of this trend?
Here are three bonus tips for using social media marketing to increase brand awareness:
First, make sure your social profiles are complete and up-to-date. This includes filling out all of the necessary information (including your website URL), adding high-quality images, and regularly posting content.
Second, use paid advertising to reach a larger audience. Paid ads on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms can help you target specific demographics and interests based on data collected by those networks.
Third, create compelling content that will inspire people to share it with their friends and followers. This could include blog posts, infographics, videos, or even just images with clever captions.
By following these tips, you can start seeing results from your social media marketing efforts in no time!
Get ready to take your brand to the next level and contact Shelten, LLC today for a free consultation – we’re always happy to help!
