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The word “branding” takes on different meanings for different people. Entrepreneur.com defines it as “The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products.”
Webster’s Dictionary gives it a simple definition of “the promoting of a product or service by identifying it with a particular brand.”
Branding is, quite simply, a promise to your customers. The combination of your logos, content, and customer experience is your brand. Branding tells them what they can expect from you. It separates you from your competition.
“Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be,” Entrepreneur says.
What does “branding” mean to you? What kind of image do you want to portray about your business?
One of the best opportunities to build and showcase your brand is through social media. The challenge is distinguishing your brand from your competition. If you have not yet considered ways in which to properly distinguish your brand from others, here are ways to get you going in the right direction.
1. Choose the Right Networks
Are the social media platforms you’re using aligning with your brand? How can you be sure what social media channels are best for your business?
While Facebook may be “king,” perhaps you should be on Pinterest for brand awareness or selling a product. LinkedIn is growing in popularity – should you start a business page?
Our post “What Social Media Platforms Are Best For Your Business?” dives into the main platforms and others you should consider.
2. Keep Your Branding Consistent
Are all of your profiles in-line with the other? You want all of your profiles to look like they are owned by the same company in order for your customer to find you and recognize you.
Decide on a color palette
What is the personality of your business: bold and energetic, calm and stress-free, exciting and vibrant, intelligent and serious, goofy and funny? These descriptors can help you determine the variation of colors you will want to use to portray your brand. Color does affect how people react and associate with your business. Check out “What colors best match your business personality?” to learn more.
Use the same logo
You should use the same logo on every social platform. This is the recognizable image associated with your brand.
Filters are fun, but make sure you choose wisely
Finding a fun filter for your image is always fun. Don’t get too carried away with adding a ton of variety with these. Try and keep your filtering consistent. Choose one or two and stick with them. If you have too much variety it tends to make your brand seem unorganized and inconsistent.
Fonts, Fonts, Fonts
Keep your fonts consistent when placing wording on your images. Pick no more than three and use these all the time. It’s best to find ones that are bold, stand-out and represent the personality of your brand.
Create Templates
Templates work really well to help in keeping the look and feel of your posts consistent. The template would include a standard design, fonts and coloring. For each post, you would just slide in the different images and swap out the wording to match your post goals.
A fantastic resource to help set up templates is Canva. In Canva, you can upload your logo, fonts and color palate to help in creating your templates.
3. Graphics and Image Sizes
Each social platform has an image size recommendation that works best within the platform. One size doesn’t always work well. Square images will work across most platforms, but sometimes it’s not optimal on somewhere like Twitter. You may also want to make a different size image for a Facebook ad. You can find image size recommendations HERE.
4. Develop Your Voice
Let’s go back to the question of what is the personality of your business? This should be reflected in your social media posts. Consider who your audience is and how they want to be spoken to.
Your overall tone with images and wording should resonate with your audience but also represent your voice. It’s important to not stray from this. Stay authentic, as your audience will grow to expect your voice.
5. Complete Your Social Media Profiles
Go back through each of your social media profiles and make sure you have completed all of your bio/about areas with accurate information about your company. Treat your bio/about areas like they are an elevator pitch for your company’s mission. This will confirm your messaging is the same across the board.
This is also an opportunity to take an inventory of your social media presence and get any inactive profiles updated.
6. Post Regularly
This cannot be over-emphasized. The point of posting regularly is to stay top of mind and social with your customers and audience. If you are inconsistent then you will be forgotten. The other thing to know is that not all of your posts will be seen by all of your audience. There are a lot of other businesses just like yours vying for your customers’ attention. Staying consistent will better guarantee you will remain competitive and seen by your audience.
This blog post was originally created in August 2017. It was updated in April 2021.
If you’re looking for social media help, The Social Ginger is here to be your partner! Set up a FREE discovery call today.
Great advice here Shannon thank you. Btw you might want to do a spell check on the sentence graphics and images make since!! I think the word you meant to use is sense. Please keep the pearls of wisdom coming.
Thank you Amanda! And thank you for picking up the typo. That totally makes “Sense.” 🙂 This has been corrected!
thanks for sharing these information. Nice blog indeed