Jessica is the Founder and CEO of both Valux Digital stock price and uPro Digital, a globally recognized marketing and PR firm.
getty
Social media strategies are an important part of modern digital marketing strategies. Social media marketing is most effective when it is integrated with the brand’s overall marketing strategy, including marketing itself. So, how does social media branding work?
Why Marketing Is Important To A Successful Business
Before considering the integration of social media and marketing, it is good to define what we mean by branding. A brand is more than a company logo and strapline or slogan. The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) defines a brand as “the physical appearance of a product or service, along with the beliefs and expectations surrounding it.”
Whenever people think of a brand name, the name is not the only thing that comes to mind. In fact, even if someone has never used the brand’s products or services, the name itself creates associations. Take the Porsche car brand, for example. Few people have ever driven one of the company’s vehicles. But mention the name, and most people will think of luxury, luxury, luxury cars. Maybe they can imagine what it would feel like to drive one.
Leaders take great care to create and manage their brand. This includes logos and labels, brand slogans and well-crafted messages. These things create the building blocks of an attractive brand.
Bringing Branding into Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing takes the visible and invisible forms of branding and combines it with the power of social media. More than a decade ago, social media started as a way to connect and entertain people. Since then they have evolved into the most powerful digital marketing tools available to brands.
Today, social networking sites around the world have more than 4 billion monthly users. Experts expect this number to grow to about 6 billion by the year 2027. For businesses, social media offers an unparalleled opportunity to connect directly with customers. This is true for business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B).
By their very nature, social media channels encourage two-way communication between the brand and customers. They are opening up brands to lead, unfiltered customer views that were previously hard to come by. At the same time, brands not only reach potential customers but also see how they interact with consumers. Show advertising cannot provide the same level of communication.
How Social Media and Branding Help Each Other
Aligning the brand with social media activities can strengthen public perception of the brand and create a bond between the brand and its audience. To achieve these synergies, marketers need to ensure that these brands’ content and messages are reflected in their social media efforts.
Building these links starts with choosing the most appropriate social media channels. For example, LinkedIn may not be the first choice for a brand looking to reach consumers to introduce a new skin care brand. Depending on your target age and demographic, Facebook or Instagram may be more appropriate for connecting with your target audience.
Once the marketing team has chosen the right social media channels, the team must consider what they want to share. This is another point of contact between branding and social media. In short, every TV post, image or video must be linked back to the message that the brand wants to convey to its audience.
It is not enough to connect brand messages with media products. Any social media interaction, whether it’s a detailed response to a complaint or a thank-you message after a thorough review, can promote a positive image. Similarly, bullying occurs in public and can damage the reputation of the brand.
Unlike many other digital marketing methods, well-planned online marketing can create and strengthen trust between the brand and the consumer directly. As a result, brands can improve their reputation and brand image through social media marketing and advertising.
Public Relations (PR) and Social Media Branding
PR is another powerful way to improve a brand’s online presence and increase its visibility. If your brand is just starting to have an online presence, PR is one way to build and promote that presence.
Media visibility and credibility provide a unique opportunity to gain attention, establish thought leadership and create awareness. In the short and long term, social media gives your brand credibility.
Combined with social media marketing, TV broadcasting can reach a larger audience in less time and less expensively than PR can. Again, optimizing the results depends on the interaction between the activities. When marketers create impactful messages, distribute them through appropriate social media channels and support them with targeted PR, they can increase brand presence and exposure.
What Businesses Can Benefit From Social Media Marketing
Is social media marketing worth it? Compared to simply sharing a few posts on social media, affiliate marketing takes time to plan and implement. But the possible results more than justify the effort.
Brands can benefit from being recognized as an authority in their niche by sharing white papers or high-quality articles that showcase their expertise and key messages. PR and social media together create opportunities to reach as many people as possible.
Social media marketing also supports other areas of digital marketing, such as search engine optimization (SEO). Linking to the company website from a highly respected social network such as LinkedIn can improve SEO rankings over time and drive traffic to the website and company.
The most important advantage of social media marketing, however, lies in its ability to create trust between brands and customers. Coherent and coherent social media messages not only reinforce an existing positive image, they allow marketers to be more direct and honest by blurring the lines between businesses and potential customers. The resulting connection is strong and long-lasting, allowing brands to convert social media users into loyal customers and supporters.
The Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only group of successful public relations, media, creative and marketing agencies. Do I qualify?
