Seven Ways To Improve Your Brand On Social Media

Planning an effective social media strategy is one of the most significant determinate to the accomplishment of your business. The old argument about whether your brand should be a part of social media is long over. We all know that social media is the main element to engage with your audience.
We have compiled 7 ways to improve your brand on social media.

1. Find A Social Media Manager
2. Think about your audience
3. Use social media to sell no more than 10% of the time
4. Learn more about each channel
5. Make sure your Social Media Manager knows your brand
6. Value Quality over Quantity
7. Make each piece of content valuable

1. Find a Social Media Manager:

There are a lot of self-proclaimed “social media advisors” and “professionals” out there and, while some of them are doing a great job, most aren’t. Again and again, we see Social Media Managers of brands, big or and small, in a lead strategist position doing it incorrectly. A fast and easy way to determine if your Social Media Manager is competent and worth your time, is to review some or all of the social media accounts of the brands that they managed in the past. Another (and probably our favourite) way to gauge their ability is to scope out their personal accounts. Exactly how many followers do they have? Do their posts catch a reader’s or viewer’s attention? Are people interested in their content and do they interact with them? Do they have a unique and innovative way of doing their jobs? If any of these answers are no, then it is highly likely that they don’t have a tight individual social media strategy, which most likely means that they won’t provide your brand with a solid social media strategy.

Improvement Tip: Find a social media manager who walks the walk and talks the talk (either on their own channels or the channels they have managed in the past). Or, at the very least, find a digital/social strategist who can coach a social media manager and tighten up their game.

2. Think about who your brand wants to reach and why: 

Social media is often confused as something more than it is in reality. Brands and people overcomplicate the matter to seem like a complex, intricate procedure that is like a mystery to solve when, truthfully, it is very simple. In reality, social media is simply a means of communication! The best way to use your social media program is to start by thinking about who you want to communicate with, why, and how.

Improvement Tip: Think about who your brand wants to reach and why. Try to generate different personas that describe your clients. When you write content or create a post make sure it appeals to at least one of your client targets. This will keep your brand’s presence in the spotlight.

3. Use social media to sell products or services no more than 10% of the time:

Imagine you met someone at a casual get-together, a friend of a friend, with whom you had a ton of mutual interests. You thought that they would be the ideal client for your business. Would you call them up for the first time and pitch them on your product and service right out of the gate? That would defeat the point and be very ineffective. Social media is very similar; its main purpose is to build your online business connections, not a marketplace. It is much better used for communication, rather than sales.

Improvement Tip: There are much more realistic and convenient sales and advertising tools out there. Ensure that your social media platforms are primarily being used for communication, and not sales.

4. Learn the specific “styles” of each channel:

You wouldn’t go to an important corporate meeting in Japan and give your presentation to a room full of native Japanese speakers in English, would you? Similar to these scenarios, social media programs have their own languages and your content should be suitable for each scenario. Make sure that you can recognize how to properly use each social media platform and the platform-specific style of each one of them. Instagram, for example, is of sequence a graphic tool so make sure your visuals stand out above the rest. Pinterest is great for curating a collection of visual effects and items. It is, thus very important to recognise the difference between social media platforms and their unique ‘languages’.

Improvement Tip: Learn the specific styles of each channel so you know how to effectively communicate using each and every social media platform. Spend some time looking over different popular and intriguing accounts of the brands and individuals that you admire.

5. Your Social Media Manager Has To Understand Your Business’ Brand:

Make sure that your social media manager understands your business, its brand, and the atmosphere that you want to purvey. They also have to have knowledge of your corporate group. If you are in the business of old-fashioned sports memorabilia, chances are higher that your social media intern isn’t going to be a professional in that area. If you run a fitness gym, but your social media agency has someone managing your accounts, who isn’t into fitness or exercises, the chances are that your brand’s voice will be lacking the passion for physical fitness that you need and want to express to your community.

Improvement Tip: Teach your social media manager the most important traits of your target audience and the key aspects of your business. Provide them with an overall summary of how you would like them to communicate on your brand’s behalf.

6. Value Quality Over Quantity:

There are posting times where you receive more views and exposure and you should always aim for a certain amount of likes/follows/etc. each day. Instead of putting all your focus on posting to Facebook, Tweeting, and Instagramming five times a day, seven days a week, reduce your posting speed and make sure that every one of your posts is as breath-taking as you can make them. Quality is a more essential part of social media, compared to quantity. So don’t let your brand or content suffer because you are trying to post as many times as possible.

Improve Tip: Be sure that the size of posts in your social media strategy doesn’t make the quality suffer. Good content is much more important than the total amount of posts in a day.

7. Adding Enough Value:

Instead of buying ads to promote your content, create an appealing post that receives more likes, shares, and engagements on its own. Make sure that every Tweet, post, and picture you upload adds value to your brand. There is a time and a place for paid advertising. It can be a very effective strategy but to do it effectively there is a lot of trial and error to find a method that works properly (if there is even one at all).

Improve Tip: Put yourself in your followers’ shoes, make each post you publish valuable and interesting. If it does not add value or attract interest, it is not worth posting.