Alt. tag: Social media thumbnails on a gray background.
Within the ever-changing internet landscape’s competitive atmosphere, digital marketing is the most demanded one and needed for any type of business. Businesses need to diversify themselves, put forth a distinct message, and ensure optimal lead acquisition. Thus, many choose to focus on brand awareness, as a means of staying competitive and recognizable everywhere. Among the many strategies one might use, then, come social media. With astoundingly large user bases, it’s easy to improve brand awareness through social media.
The internet itself became a far more widespread tool than it was at its inception. From 16% of the world’s population using it in 2005, it has become a household asset within just 14 years. Over 53% of the world’s population was using it by 2019, and the number can only grow. Likewise, by 2019, about 40% of the world’s population was using social media. That’s approximately 3 billion people – an absolutely vast potential audience. But raising brand awareness through social media comes with distinct challenges, and many businesses fail to do so properly. One will need a deep understanding of one’s intended audience, as well as clear marketing goals and an effective campaign structure.
1.Choosing the right social media networks
The crucial first step is to choose the perfect social media platform that’s appropriate for your brand. Therein lies a vital distinction, however; a larger base alone does not translate to a better social media channel. To raise brand awareness through social media, it is also essential to consider the following factors of each network;
The nature of each platform
The main, specific demographics of each platform’s active user base
How your brand’s content will enter the users’ feeds
How you can use each platform to foster brand loyalty
A larger user base alone will not render any one platform ideal for your brand if it does not fit your product or brand image as well. Each platform has unique strengths and weaknesses which you should consider carefully. That said, let us explore the three main options.
Facebook
The dominant social media platform in the world, Facebook boasts 2 billion monthly users. It provides businesses with a plethora of marketing and analytics tools, including Facebook Groups, Insights, Analytics, and Ads. Its ads remain affordable as well, making Facebook an attractive social media channel to raise brand awareness through.
Caption: Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world.
Alt. tag: A web browser tab on Facebook’s homepage.
A platform based on immediacy, Twitter has approximately 320 million monthly users. Marketers can engage with audiences through tweets, the main post feature, but can also use such features as Twitter Chats, Hashtags, Lists, and user mentions. Twitter does come with a unique limitation of a 280 character limit per tweet, and is arguably more time-sensitive by nature. Still, it’s a potent social media channel for any brand whose target audience is under 50.
A much more visual-based platform, Pinterest boasts 250 million monthly users. Much like Snapchat and Instagram, which are equally viable options, it allows businesses to deliver visually stimulating content. Of course, it’s easy to increase brand awareness using such social media when they enable visually engaging content. From videos and images to infographics, marketers have a plethora of options to engage with audiences. Pinterest offers such features as dedicated Pinterest pages, Promoted Pins, and Buyable Pins, through which marketers can reach audiences.
2 . Setting up a strategy for raising brand awareness
After selecting the optimal social media platforms, one needs to set up a cohesive strategy that takes said platforms’ criteria into account too. Social media marketing must adjust to them, in much the same way as search engine optimization (SEO) adjusts to search engines’ ranking criteria. While algorithms inevitably vary, on the whole, they fundamentally measure similar metrics;
Recency – newer posts take priority over older posts
Engagement – posts that are engaging get more play
Interest – users’ search history and engagement determine interest in posts
Therefore, when considering how to increase brand awareness using social media, it is vital to remain consistent in one’s efforts. Post frequency is a global factor, message uniformity across channels is significant, and personalized content is ideal. Thus, a key part of any such strategy would be to set such goals in advance.
3 . Creating high-quality content
Optimal content distribution alone will not suffice. Knowing your target demographic is of paramount importance, of course, as it’s easier to raise brand awareness with the right audience. But lead acquisition does not end with brand exposure – that is only where it begins. Engagement will be the driving factor behind successful marketing campaigns, and engagement comes with personalized, stimulating, quality content.
Authenticity resonates with audiences, as do compelling, informative, or amusing images. Social media posts can also serve as landing pages for your audience, so it’s in your best interest to keep them, as well as your main business website, optimized.
4 . Remaining consistent across social media channels
With optimal marketing content in hand and distribution means decided, it is equally vital to remain consistent. Using many different social media channels to raise brand awareness may be difficult to manage, especially if you assign many different people to the task. You should thus make sure that your messaging is both regular and consistent.
It may be ideal to limit the number of people who post on behalf of your brand, and to keep them informed on your intended style and tone. You may also want to use automation tools to help manage your social media channels, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software.
5 . Monitoring progress
When all is said and done, monitoring progress will inform how you proceed. With social media channels expanding constantly, you will need to closely monitor how effective your strategies are.
For example, a spike in referral traffic coming from your social networks will be a decent indication of marketing success. But if engagement and sales don’t increase proportionately, you may not need to keep focusing on how to raise brand awareness through social media. Instead, it may be that another factor of your sales funnel needs your attention instead.
Conclusion
It should be undisputed that raising brand awareness is a goal worth pursuing. Building brand awareness and loyalty is the key, and amplifying it through a powerful social media presence is invaluable. Should you focus on how to increase brand awareness through social media correctly, you can expand your audience and boost sales according to your goals.
Manjunath Chowdary
Digital Marketing Consultant
Kandra Digital
