Each social media platform has a preferred method of engagement that can affect how a business communicates its brand message. Think of it this way:
Social media is a vehicle for your message, your brand provides the road, and your strategy is the map.
There are various rules of engagement for representing your brand on social media. Those include brand rules (we write in this voice, our images evoke that emotion) and platform rules.
Facebook wants to see people engaging with your posts, including comments, likes and shares. Instagram rewards you for keeping viewers on the app longer. Twitter wants you to tweet all day long. LinkedIn wants to explore your connections. And Pinterest wants you to pin, pin, pin.
Without a social media strategy, some businesses find themselves posting “when I think of it.” Inconsistent posting, low frequency and a varying tone of voice in off-the-cuff posting can affect brand communication. Frequency and consistency can affect how the medium’s algorithm responds, too.
If you’re not playing along with the algorithms and keeping up with those as they change, your brand message won’t reach your audience, much less engage them.
A PLAN – IMPLEMENT – ANALYZE cycle will help ensure your branding and social efforts align:
- Plan for the long game
Effective social media doesn’t happen overnight and neither does brand awareness. Ensure you’re integrating your social into your other marketing efforts along the way, too. Continued, consistent efforts that are developed to match the medium will result in consistent increases in both social metrics and brand recognition. - Test, then test again
Finding what works for your audience starts out as educated guessing. With testing and social listening, we can identify the effectiveness of our social posting to attract the right demographic and effectively communicate the brand messaging. - Do more of what works
Without evaluation, there is no long game and there is no testing. Our team analyzes weekly and monthly reports where we can see what’s working and understand why so we can lean into those efforts.
Wondering what success looks like on this journey? Here’s one example from our own Instagram feed. It’s been said that only 7% of your audience are seeing your posts on Instagram. Not only did this post receive great engagement, over 28% of our followers liked it!
Ensuring your social media is on-brand can be time-consuming. There are many tools that we use to make the process smoother and easier. It still takes a concentrated effort to ensure the two align.
Is your social media working for your brand? If you’re not sure, you can request a social media brand audit.