The rising popularity of social media has made it a multifaceted tool for several purposes. Marketing is at the top of the list due to the number of people on several online platforms daily. In Kenya, the use of online social platforms recently experienced a record rise, with internet penetration estimated to be reaching a significant percentage of the population. This increase has made us some of the highest social media consumers in Africa. With the country’s Millenials spending over three hours daily on social media, they have become an easy-to-reach audience that is the target for many marketing strategies.
With such a broad target audience on social media, companies are investing in marketing their products and services on the internet. Brands that were mostly focused on reaching their consumers through email, flyers, and print media, now have another effective way to connect with them. With creative business ideas springing up every day, the competition is fierce, and companies need to stand out above the rest by having the right branding strategies.
Why The Need For A Branding Strategy?
Your brand is the face of your business. It has become more than just a logo, photo, or a selected set of colors. Your brand is what customers perceive as the company’s face and voice. How it makes them feel is a huge part of your success in connecting with them.
Familiarity, trust, and loyalty in a brand can translate to better sales. A branding strategy will;
- Set you apart from the competition
- Make you instantly recognizable to your customers
- Dictate a clear marketing strategy
- Improve customer retention and loyalty
- Define your brand purpose
It is vital for customers to recognize your brand no matter what channel they come across it. So, consistency is essential across all marketing touch-points. Your brand’s vibe online must be similar to your marketing strategy on other offline platforms on which you market yourself, e.g., TV ads, OOH (out-of-home) media, etc.
Social Media Branding
A social media branding strategy will guide how you communicate with your customers across several social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, and Twitter. Yet, it must be customized to fit the different types of social networks to reach their vastly different audiences effectively. Achieving this can be a challenge for many companies and brands, so we’ve compiled 7 ways to help you ensure your branding is consistent across social media platforms.
Outline your goals clearly
With many companies jostling to be noticed on social media, it is important to have a focus that helps you stand out. If your posts are aimless and disjointed, they won’t engage your prospects.
Knowing what you represent will translate to your audience and hold their attention. Before starting a social media branding campaign, you should;
- Decide on the values that define your brand
- Find out what makes your brand unique to your target audience (price, convenience, quality, novelty, etc.)
- Research the demographics of social media, and decide which platform works best for you and your ideal audience.
Decide on the basics
Basic social media branding requires you to have a consistent visual look. This covers a logo, profile bio and handle, color palette, boilerplate et cetera.
Your brand’s look and profile can be tweaked to fit the visuals of different social network platforms or catch the attention of a diverse audience.
However, they must be very similar, so your customers can easily recognize any social media profile that belongs to your brand. Sharing content that is similar in tone and nuance, as well as a consistent schedule for posting, will also convey a singular brand feel.
Enhance your visual branding
After establishing a consistent brand look across social media platforms, ensure the same look is reflected in the pictures, graphics, and videos you share. You can achieve this by;
- Using similar colors and filters across several platforms
- Using the same overlay text fonts for images and videos
- Creating similar graphic templates for different types of announcements
A brand that does this consistently will achieve the ultimate goal of branding on social media – customers that can recognize their content without necessarily seeing a brand’s social media handle or logo. An example is Safaricom PLC, whose brand logo is an appealing and instantly memorable one on their Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook social media profiles.
Analyze your audience
Good social media branding takes your marketing personas into account. People on platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, have different interests and ‘language’, so you cannot use one marketing template for all of them. Your target audience will vary across several social networks, so it is necessary to modify your content for each type of audience. Creating multiple marketing personas for different social networks will help you adjust your voice accordingly.
Listen to your audience
Your strategy should be based on not just reaching the right audience with the right content, but also on meeting them at the right time and place. Social listening will help you understand what, when, and where people want to hear and see from you. You should examine the demographics of the platforms where you have a profile and set up listening queries. This will help you key into what matters to your audience. For instance, Tusker Lager consistently celebrates the country’s athletes on their Facebook profile.
Share content that gives you a voice
Having a recognizable personality will further strengthen your brand on social media. Using the right captions and related copy can create a brand voice and tone. Being perceived as consistently sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek, funny, or informative will create a persona that customers can recognize and connect with. For a large social media team, a writing guide that defines the use of particular company catchphrases and vocabulary will enable your team to remain aligned, and your content to sound similar.
Measure and adjust
Measuring the success of a social media strategy can be tricky since branding is mostly qualitative. It is, however, possible to measure the impact of branding efforts by closely monitoring social media mentions, engagement, and share-of-voice.
Auditing your posts on social media will help you discover where you need to improve in voice and tone. Also, regular surveys can help you learn what audiences you’ve reached, understand an audience’s level of brand recognition, and find out if they perceive your brand the way you want them to. Since it takes time to build brand recognition, you need patience to measure levels of success.
In the modern business landscape, making a connection with the vast customer pool online will ensure your place as an authentic brand that people want to buy from. Tapping into the vast marketplace that social media platforms represent in Kenya has never been more critical.
It’s Time To Get Social!
With social media posts significantly influencing sales decisions, a consistent flow of valuable content on social media is a priority for any successful brand. Following the tips outlined above will fix and build an authentic and strong brand image on social media. For specialized marketing strategies and building a reputable brand, expert skills are invaluable. At KoaMedia our team of experts will create a customized social media campaign, and amplify your social media strategy efforts to help you meet your primary business objectives. Contact today!
