How to Build Your Brand on Social Media

Social media is a great way for technology companies to build and augment their brand image. Social media platforms are becoming an increasingly important marketing tool. Whether you choose LinkedIn, Twitter, something else or all of the above, they can be an important tool to broadcast your presence to your target audience. Most scientists and engineers who you are targeting through other platforms spend considerable amount of time on social media. Therefore it is important to maintain presence and stay in touch with them on various platforms. In this blog post, we will dive into the basics of building brand through social media for B2B businesses.

Creating an avenue for brand loyalty

Social media accounts can improve the visibility, and awareness of your brand. Many brands look into content creation to become more visible with their target audience. This takes the form of blog posts, white papers, and in-depth technical notes. Rightfully so, these assets help build thought leadership and establish yourself as a market leader. One of the easiest channels to distribute those assets is through social media. Social media posts allow you to create potential leads by just posting a photo, video, or status update, with a quick link to your page. Think of social media as one of the highways to your treasure land. The more pathways you have for your audience to reach you, the stronger presence you will have within your potential customer base.

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Secondly, when the consumer can easily find a brand online, even one they may already be familiar with; they are able to engage with the brand easily.  A study from the University of Hawaii found that when a consumer is able to interact with a brand via social media they are more likely to feel a sense of membership. Once your accounts are updated and gaining a following, you can also gain loyal followers for your brand.

Consumers increase their spending with brands they follow. Another study found that spending with a brand they follow rose from 12% to 75% in 2019. Using social media for your brand marketing not only attracts new customers but increases loyalty with familiar customers. Being active on social media can also create a sense of trust and transparency. If there are issues with a product that have come to light or a pivot in brand reputation, social media accounts are key to making your customers informed.

Creating a social media strategy

Now that we have briefly discussed the utility of social media in creating brand awareness, let’s look into how to select the right social medial platform for your business and setting some goals for your marketing efforts. Managing social media brands does require considerable amount of effort to both set up those accounts and then periodically maintain through regular posts and interactions with your audience. So, what’s the best platform?

What platform is best for you?

When you are looking to build your brand on social media, it is important to create a strategy first. The first step in creating a strategy is figuring out what platforms are best for your brand. You’ll need to consider your current audience, or the audience you would like to target. Where do your potential customers hang out? How important is demographics? For instance, TikTok may be best for your brand because 62% of the app’s users fall between the ages of 10-29 years old. So, if you are targeting fresh graduates just entering the workforce that might be a good choice. On the other hand, if your audience is primarily academia (university, national labs, etc.), Twitter might be a better option. Similarly, engineers in companies might prefer LinkedIn. So, the first thing to evaluate is the target audience and some guestimates of where they are active.

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The easiest way to figure out the demographics on a social media platform is to look at your own website traffic through an analytics tool. Google Analytics, which is a free platform can give you a wealth of data on your demographics, including age groups, geography and more.  The demographics featured can tell you everything from buying power of its users to the gender of users. This is a very helpful tool in choosing the right platform. It’s important that whatever platforms you choose, it allows you to engage with your audience and create a community around your brand. Kelley Myers, the director of social media for consumer brands at Microsoft says, “Social is a place for us to be more personal, to be more relevant, to be, in some ways, more candid because we’re literally in the same space that our audiences exist for themselves…”.

Consider your goals

The core of your social media strategy will be your goals. You should create goals that are S.M.A.R.T., meaning goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely.

An example of some possible goals are:

• Improve your website traffic
• Improve signups to a newsletter
• Increase awareness of a new product
• Build a community around your brand
• Increase engagement on a platform

These goals can all be tracked by some metric, usually through your desired platform’s analytics. Out of all these goals, engagement is the most important. When considering metrics, it is also important to consider the kind of platform you are on. Something like LinkedIn requires different goals than a platform like Facebook. Engagement is important on every platform and can lead to the attainment of all your social media goals. If you have an audience that engages frequently with your brand that means they are likely following you on other channels, creating a sense of community and overall interacting with your brand.

Goals in your strategy can also include how often you will post content. Creating a content schedule allows for a predictable relationship between you and your audience. People who follow you will have a general idea of when you post and when they can interact with the brand. When considering consistency it is important to get detailed, what times, days, and how many times per day or week will you post on social media?

When you begin to look into social media to build your brand it is important to have a strategy. A strategy will keep you consistent and allow you to easily track metrics that suit your chosen platforms.

Expanding to other geographies

You might not yet have a localized website with multiple language options. And this might limit your presence in some geographies. Opening a social media platform that is popular in some geo theaters, will give you a foothold with potentially brand new customer base. Weibo and WeChat, for instance are popular platforms in the APJ region. Creating and maintaining presence on those platforms might not only create brand awareness with potential customers from that region but also act as a pathway for early adoption of your technology by those customers. So, keeping in mind the initial tenet of treating social media as your highways, it will be helpful to understand where the start points of those highways should be. This could be geography bases, demographics based, etc.

Build your brand image

As you post to your chosen social media platforms, every post that you make will contribute to your brand’s image and reputation. When you think of brand image on social media you should think of the assumptions you make before you even interact with a brand. Social media branding can include the aesthetics, values, and attitude communicated by a brand via social media.

Your brand image does include the aesthetic look and feel of its platforms. When posting to more visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok you should have an idea of what your content would look like. Will you post high-quality content filmed with a camera with special color grading, logos, or fonts? Will your content be more casual and feature reoccurring people or be filmed on a smartphone? Your social media is a great chance to build a consistent aesthetic image across platforms.

When branding on social media, the aesthetic choices your brand makes will have to go beyond a logo. How will your brand interact with customers on social media? Will your brand curate broader technology around your products, promote your products or cover major business news in the space? A brand like PlayStation uses social media to preview new products, show footage of games and advertise events. They stand out because of their light touch on social issues, like Covid-19 in which they started their #PlayAtHome hashtag initiative which encouraged followers to stay at home during the pandemic and play their newly released video game. Like PlayStation, there are subtle ways to convey your brand’s values and attract the right audience.

Stay consistent to build your brand

Last but not the least, staying consistent will be important in all steps of your social media strategy. You should be consistent on all platforms with your posting schedule, brand image, voice, and tone. As you build your brand there will be trial and error but once your brand finds its place on social media you can sustain consistent growth with a long-term strategy.

Does your company have social media presence? What is your social media strategy and do you consider it one of the avenues for building a strong brand? Leave your comments below.