Building a Social Media Presence for Your Brand
If you missed it, over the last month my friend Cari and I have been doing a collaborative blog series all about taking your brand concept from an idea to ready to launch to the world. We kicked the series off with a Q&A all about conceptualizing your brand and over the past few weeks, we’ve covered brand and website design, and brand photography. Today we’re going to be talking about building a social media presence for your brand!
Why should you build a social media presence for your brand before you officially launch?
Here are two reasons:
Social media builds awareness of your brand. Social media is the most cost-effective way to reach your target audience (for free!) so why not use this tool for your new business? According to Sprout Social there are 3.96 billion social media users and 55% of consumers learn about new brands on social. Building your social media presence before you launch your brand is essential to reaching new audiences in the 21st century (stick around and I’ll tell you how).
Social media builds trust in your brand. Have you ever heard of the know, like, trust factor? It’s a marketing concept that basically says, first someone has to know about your brand, and then they have to like you, before they will trust you enough to hire you or purchase from you. Social media builds that connection and that trust with your audience. If you want them to purchase on launch day, you should be building your social media presence long before then.
How do you build a social media presence for your brand?
It’s as simple as starting an account and posting regularly! Social media is a great place to position yourself as an expert in your field, build brand awareness, and connect with your ideal audience, building trust all along the way. Posting authentic, helpful and engaging content regularly, and engaging back with your followers and ideal customers will help you to build your brand on any social media platform.
Here are a few things you can be posting about before you’re actually officially ready to launch your product or service to the world:
Introductions to yourself, any team members, and your brand.
Sneak peeks of what’s to come.
Behind-the-scenes, either of your space coming together or your products being made, etc.
Helpful tips for your ideal clients (for example, if you’re opening a baby goods store, share helpful tips for new moms)
Your lead magnet (we’ll talk more about this next week)
Above all, YOUR HEART behind what you do and your brand!
Which Social Media Platform (s) should you use?
This really depends on who your target audience is! In general, I’d say that if you’re marketing to people over the age of 40 I’d focus on Facebook, under the age of 25, I’d focus on TikTok, and anywhere in between, I would focus on Instagram.
Since my target audience is on Instagram, I have spent the most time learning about this particular app and its nuances, so I have a few additional tips for this particular platform, but I think they can translate towards most social media platforms for a basic strategy.
Post regularly! Social media is a slow-growth marketing platform which means you have to continually show up day after day. The easiest way I have found to do this without it sucking up all of my time is to batch schedule my posts ahead of time for the week or month. I like to use a service called Planoly for this. The nice thing is that you can also toggle your posts from Instagram to Facebook and Twitter through this app and save yourself even more time!
Ask questions! Engagement is key on social media for your post to show up more in the algorithms. Asking questions that you think your audience will engage with is one of the best ways to do that! Other forms of engagement you can ask for on Instagram are likes, saves, shares, and website clicks.
Use hashtags! It takes a little bit of research, but typing in keywords that you think your ideal audience might be searching in the Instagram search bar will populate some common hashtags people use. From there it can be kind of a rabbit hole of clicking on posts that use those hashtags and seeing what other hashtags they use, clicking on those, and so on. Keep a note on your phone with all the hashtags that align with your brand to use on your posts. Don’t forget to look up some location-based hashtags too!
If you are a location-based business, use geotags! When you put up a post there is an option to add your location (or geotag). Putting in a general location of the city you do business in will make your post searchable in that location and help others nearby find you.
One last thing, when setting up your bio, I have some tips for what to include. You can learn about them here: https://www.effiegurmeza.com/blog/instagrambio
Up next week: Lead Magnets and Sales Funnels and Email Sequences, oh my!
