Part 1 — The benefits of branded social media
As a business owner you may ask yourself, where should you focus the bulk of your time and energy? Your website or social media? Let’s talk about building your brand through your website vs. social media.
The answer is both. But let’s be real. It’s impossible to constantly be everywhere, especially if you don’t have a large team. While we would love to have multiple marketing arms of our businesses functioning perfectly at all times, sometimes we have to make choices on where to focus our time and money to get the biggest bang for our buck. Where you focus right now depends on where you are in your business journey.
Ideally, you would have a personable, visually beautiful, consistent social media presence that drives visitors to your strategic, branded website. Your website then encourages them to book a call with you so that you can see how you can best help them. But sometimes we have to choose where to start and then build up to being able to focus on multiple aspects of our brand and marketing.
There are a lot of benefits to focusing on either social media or your website at different times in your business and because there is so much to say about both facets, we’re going to focus only on social media today. Check back next month for a breakdown of the benefits of focusing on your website.
Social media attracts industry peers and connections
If you take a hard look at your social media followers, how many of them are actually industry peers (or entry-level freelancers looking to learn from you) and not potential clients? Especially for interior designers on Instagram, a high percentage of followers are not potential clients at all.
Now, this isn’t all bad. Instagram is an awesome place to get your name out in your industry with vendors, peers, publishers, and other industry pros. It’s a great way to position yourself for press or speaking engagements and get to know fellow designers that you could learn from. Instagram can also be a great way to attract clients, but just know that those vanity follower numbers aren’t all potential clients.
Social media provides a space for easy engagement
While it may feel a little intimidating and formal to fill out a contact form on a designer’s website, sending them a DM feels easy and doesn’t require much thought. This can be good or bad. The casual vibe encourages conversation, allowing you to chat with potential clients in a low-stakes environment where they feel comfortable. In this way, you can show them your lovely personality and make an emotional connection that could open the door for a potential project.
On the other hand, the low barrier to communication means you get a lot of unqualified leads. These could be people that don’t have a budget anywhere near what they need to work with you, aren’t serious about their project and just spitballing and price comparing a lot of designers, or potentially people that prefer to communicate in short DMs and might be a nightmare for following your process if you don’t reign it in right away.
Not everyone who contacts you through DMs is trying to railroad your process, but it’s always good to point them in the right direction from the beginning. To do this, be sure to respond to their DM by inviting them to either fill out the form through your website to schedule a call or direct them on how best to start the process. That way you get the benefit of finding people through social media, but pull them into your process from the beginning.
Social media is a great testing ground for showing your personality and experimenting with new tactics
My favorite thing about social media is that it moves fast, and because of that trying new things is easy and low stakes. If a post doesn’t create the engagement you thought, no worries….it’ll be lost in the feed in no time. If it goes well, then you’ve learned a new way to speak to your audience that you can continue to use.
It’s a wonderful training ground for learning to use your brand voice and figuring out what resonates most with your audience.
There is always a new feature to play with on social media, and if you’re willing to experiment, you can find out how your audience really enjoys engaging with you most. The fun thing about social media is that it allows you to showcase your personality in a way that feels comfortable, and even quirky, which leads to connecting to potential clients that are attracted to you as a person and a brand, not just a collection of portfolio projects.
This personal connection will help you create relationships with potential clients who couldn’t imagine working with anyone else! If you’re willing to step out of your comfort zone, reels and TikTok are a great way to interact with your audience that allows you to show off your personality AND your projects simultaneously. Check out some reels from recent branding clients, Peach and Pine Interiors here. They do a wonderful job of mixing their lifestyle with their work.
Social media is a great way to make an introduction that gets potential clients to your website
The ability to engage easily with your audience on social media provides a great way to get to know people and make an introduction. Social media is your highlight reel, and your job is to engage the people who feel comfortable there, but also to get them to leave and go to your website. You can often connect with people that wouldn’t necessarily have found you through a Google search, but they notice your feed and decide to follow. It’s a great marketing tool, but your website is where you really want people, so your feed often acts as a means to an end.
Social media keeps you relevant
While you probably won’t update your website every day, you could very easily engage on social media multiple times each day. In a world that moves fast and audiences that expect constant updates, social media gives you an easy way to stay top of mind. Since people tend to have short attention spans, social media gives us a great opportunity to share snippets of our world (beautifully branded, of course) to keep them interested and engaged without having to put in hours of work editing website pages or writing long-form blog posts. Your followers become accustomed to seeing you there and excited to see updates. While your followers may not always be in the market for your service, your job is to keep these people engaged so that when they do need it, you are top of mind.
Who benefits most from social media branding?
Social media is a great way for younger businesses to start finding their voice and building their brand because it provides immediate feedback and is free and easy to start. Social media can help to form a base of potential clients while you budget for and build that perfect website.
While it’s a good start, social media can only get you so far. Your website will always provide a more comprehensive wealth of information for potential clients looking to hire you, but social media can keep you top of mind and provide an easy and free way to market your business.
For more experienced businesses, your money and effort should be put into a powerful, custom website that stands out. Be sure to check back next month, when we’ll focus on branding your website.
