Branding For Social Media

Branding for social media means so much more than updating your cover photo on all of oyur platforms. A brand is how you make your customers feel, and it’s built by taking a consistent approach across every interaction they have with your brand. When re-branding, it’s essential to make sure your social media feed aligns with your website and nurtures a sense of community. The best brands on social media encourages potential customers to leave the platform and learn more about you on your website. Once they’re on your website, hopefully it’s designed to guide them directly to becoming your customer. Think of your social media feed as a sales person that opens the gate and leads customers to your door. Then it’s your website’s job to help you close the deal.

This is What Sets Pop and Grey Apart

When you invest in a brand at Pop & Grey, we provide way more than the bare minimum — we ensure what your potential client sees on social media is cohesive with what they’ll experience when they go to your website. Our branding process covers not only honing your voice, creating emotive visuals, building an easy-to-follow style guide and a rock-solid custom website. We also include social media covers and templates with every brand to ensure that your feed is aligned with your custom website.

It’s important to note that you don’t own your social media feed. These tech giants can decide to completely change their algorithm (which they do often) or even block you from your own account for reasons you may not understand. For that reason, I never suggest to clients that they focus all of their energy on social media. Often, before they focus on creating a powerful brand, they are spending WAY too much time and energy in this space. This is why it’s so incredibly important to have your own, self-hosted, custom website. Your main energy should be focused on your website.

That said, social media is a great tool to help you form a relationship and connection with your ideal clients and entice them over to that hard-working website of yours.

Here’s how:

Be Consistent & Recognizable

Use your style guide and social media templates to make your feed visually consistent and recognizable. Consistent doesn’t mean boring and inauthentic. On average, it takes someone seeing your content 5-7 times before they remember you. Think how long that can take if your look and feel is different every time they see your brand. They’ll see you that 5-7 times (or more) and not even realize it! The impact is lost, and it’s going to take twice as long for that visibility to make a difference. Nobody’s got time for that!

The goal is for your potential customers to begin to recognize your posts whether you include your logo or not. When Anthropologie pops up in my Instagram feed, I immediately recognize their style of photography, the consistency in colors, the texture and the style of typography that permeates their brand. I never need to see their logo to know it’s them. You want that same instant recognition for your brand, which is why consistency is so important.

It’s as equally important to make sure you’re consistent across all social media platforms where you are present. You’ll have to balance your voice with the platform, which means your posts won’t be exactly the same, but the message and visuals should be recognizable. Recognizing the differences in your audience from Instagram to Twitter to Facebook and beyond will help you know how to alter your posts to appeal to what people want from that platform. However, if one client were to visit all three platforms, your look and messaging remainsthe same and doesn’t confuse them.

Showcase Your Personality

I will always tell clients to build their brand and website before they spend time curating their social media. Your digital home should be in tip-top shape because it’s the comprehensive representation of your business.

Use social media how it was originally intended, not as a replacement for your website.

This means your social media should be just that…social. The best use of social media is giving potential customers a more intimate peek into your personality. This will connect with them on an emotional level. Well placed calls to action sending them from the social platform to your website will ensure that they take that important step. And you better be sure that the transition from one to the other is completely seamless!

Your voice on social media can be slightly more casual than your website. Instead of spending all of your time selling, give people what they really want in their feed. Give them a peek behind the scenes, educate them about your industry, even make them laugh a little and feel comfortable with you. Build that rapport instead of using your feed to sell.

Interact With Your Followers

Don’t just post and run. Unlike your website, social media is a conversation rather than a monologue, so engage in it. Make those potential clients feel like they’re actually getting to know you. When you respond to comments, you = begin to form important relationships. Not to mention, engaging encourages more comments, which helps you show up more in the algorithm. So it’s really a win-win. The more you engagement you encourage, the more your content will show up in their feed.

Don’t forget that the goal of social media isn’t to spend your whole day chatting. You’re not going to see much of a return on investment if you don’t leave time to actually do your work. If you’re not seeing people move from your feed to your website, then you’re missing an opportunity, and your job is to figure out what’s broken.

Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin

Remember you don’t have to be everywhere all the time. Each social platform has a different audience. If a platform doesn’t attract your client, then Bye Felicia! Don’t waste your time there.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or haven’t really done much social media before, then just choose one platform to focus on. Find the one that’s most likely to have your ideal clients and spend all of your time there. Once you feel like you’re cruising along on that platform, if there’s another platform that also has a good chunk of your ideal clients, then start working on that one. Don’t feel like you have to be everywhere right out of the gate. You may be pleasantly surprised to find that just going all in on one platform is all you need.

Have Fun!

My favorite thing about social media is how quickly it moves. It gives you the opportunity to take risks, make mistakes and learn from them. Knowing this should give you the freedom to try different tactics and see what creates the most engagement. If you’re posting a few times a week, then your audience will likely only see your most recent posts.

One of my favorite ways to have fun with social media is in Instagram stories. This is another place where you can experiment and see what works. From giving behind the scenes look at your business and life to curated templates showcasing your work, stories is one of the best ways to create engagement with your audience. Plus! 24 hours later…poof it’s gone! So see you can see what works for you without worrying about creating a chaotic, confusing feed.