Most business owners are already aware that having a presence on social media is a necessity for running a company in the modern digital age. A strong social media presence can literally make your business. However, like many other aspects of running a company, it also has the potential to break it.
Branding is a key element to consider when setting up your company’s presence on social media. Your brand is defined as what makes your company unique, as well as what image is brought to a customer’s mind when they think of your business. What follows are six of the key ways social media can help – or hurt – your branding efforts.
- Consumer Engagement
Social media allows businesses the unprecedented ability to interact directly with their customer base. This allows customers to have a say in what products are produced, what improvements are made to your business model and more.
Customers love direct interaction with their favorite companies via social media because they feel they have a personal relationship with their favorite brands. This increases brand loyalty in a way other marketing efforts simply do not.
This increased interaction, however, opens more potential for mistakes to be made. An insensitive or offensive comment can threaten to tear down months or even years of branding efforts.
- Sharing
Almost all social media platforms allow users to share a post. This is excellent from a corporate branding standpoint because people who did not know you even existed might see a shared post from a friend of theirs and decide to check you out. Sharing features make it easier to spread your brand far and wide with minimal effort and financial cost to you.
Of course, a faux pas post that goes viral can undermine your reputation with customers who have never even heard of your company before. Damage control measures will then need to be undertaken. You want to be extremely careful with what you post on social media because any one post could travel far and wide.
- Monitoring
Social media gives you the ability to monitor what is being said about your business and how customers view your company. This allows your marketing department and PR representatives to determine what is and is not working about your branding efforts in real time. It also allows for faster course corrections.
Of course, the information you get from that monitoring may be bad. If you know about a negative image that is taking root regarding your business, however, you can begin taking steps to combat it.
- Update Frequently
Social media platforms help your branding efforts by forcing you to add new content frequently in order to remain relevant. You need to update your social media feeds regularly to stay at the forefront of customers’ minds.
Frequent updates also increase the chances of simple good timing. Ideal timing can cause a social media marketing plan to succeed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams – or cause it to fail because timing wasn’t right. For example, Red Bull managed to harness the power of an oncoming summer with the #thissummer hashtag and affiliate it with their brand for unprecedented success.
It can be difficult and time-consuming to keep social media feeds updated. This is especially true if your company is small or you don’t have a dedicated social media manager overseeing your various corporate profiles. Fall behind, and your branding efforts stall.
Luckily, nowadays there are software tools out there that can help your company and its social media managers automate certain repetitive tasks, as well as manage multiple social media feeds most effectively. This keeps your social media followers in different time zones around the world in the loop 24/7.
- Content is Out There Forever
Everything you post on social media will be out there on the Web forever. This is good because it allows customers to stumble across old things you have posted at any given time. This can convince them of your professionalism and entice them to do business with you.
There is another angle to this, however. Comment threads seemingly go on forever. Even a few months down the road, you may have people commenting on old posts.
This can be difficult to manage, because customers expect you to respond to them. If you can keep up with the demands your ever-increasing content will require, it will really help your company’s branding efforts.
The downside, of course, is that a post you don’t necessarily want people to recall will be out there forever as well. Even if that post is deleted, screenshots and shares might still exist. This can easily break your business all at once or over a prolonged period of time.
- Consistency
Branding is all about sending a consistent message to your customers about who you are as a company. Social media enables that consistency, especially if the same representative or representatives from your company are the ones who manage your social media content.
Of course, consistency can be difficult to maintain over the course of several years, as different employees come and go. Even if you only designate one employee as the keeper of your social media profiles, that consistency may go away the moment someone else makes a post or if that employee leaves and you need to replace them. This can cause your branding to suffer.
Social media can make or break your branding. Nevertheless, your company should have a presence on several social media sites. You can’t afford otherwise.
Author Bio:
Jasmine Williams covers the good and the bad of today’s business and marketing. When she’s not being all serious and busy, she’s usually hunched over a book or dancing in the kitchen, trying hard to maintain rhythm, and delivering some fine cooking (her family says so). Tweet her @JazzyWilliams88
