Do you follow Bitly on social? If so, you probably know that we’re big advocates of a consistent brand experience.
A consistent brand can help you:
✅ Gain credibility
✅ Inspire trust & loyalty in your customers
✅ Boost your visibility within your market
✅ Justify charging a premium for your products & services
✅ Distinguish yourself from your competitors
✅ Establish a strong & consistent cross-channel customer experience
While this isn’t limited to social media, your social channels play an important role in building that consistency.
In this post, we’ll show you simple ways to use social media to help you establish a consistent brand that you can leverage as you connect with your prospects and customers throughout the funnel.
1 – Use consistent branding across your profiles
Your visitors should be able to move from your Twitter account to your Instagram page and immediately recognize that both profiles are operated by the same brand.
Why? Keeping your social media profiles consistent tells your audience they’re in the right place. This helps them get the information they’re looking for faster—whether it’s your business hours, phone number or any other information about your brand.
How do you achieve that consistency? Make sure to use similar or the same branding for your banners and profile photos across all of your brand’s channels.
You can also work with your design team to ensure your graphics for social have a similar look and feel.
2 – Develop a unique brand voice
Similar to our last tip, you should work on establishing a consistent and unique brand voice.
When it comes to developing a brand voice, the qualities of being consistent and unique go hand in hand. Want to develop a voice that’s unique in your space and helps you stand out from your competitors? You’ll need to be consistent with what you say and how you say it, so your audience begins to associate it with your brand.
3 – Brand every touchpoint
You’ve probably heard of the “rule of thirds” in social media. 1/3 of your posts should promote your product or services, 1/3 should be interactions with others and 1/3 should be industry news and tips relevant to your following. In other words: Don’t just promote your products or services.
We agree. People tend to not like feeling as though they’re being sold something.
But what if you could brand your every touchpoint, even when you’re not talking about your brand? Well, with branded links, you can.
Branded links make sure your brand is seen—no matter what kind of content you share, who you share it with, and when or how you share it. When you share a branded link with your content, you’re building and strengthening your brand with every impression.
4 – Join industry conversations
Whether it’s an organized tweet chat on Twitter or an informal conversation on Instagram, taking part in discussions related to your business can help position your brand as an expert in its field and boost its credibility and brand awareness.
How? By exposing you to new and relevant audiences.
To do this, use a social media monitoring tool (we use Sprout Social) to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s being said in your space. This is a great way to identify and build connections with influencers in your industry and your brand’s advocates, both who can help you promote your brand.
5 – Experiment with social advertising
Finally, to build awareness of your brand on social media, you can invest in an advertising budget to help maximize the reach of your content and business.
It often takes some fine-tuning before you reap the benefits of your dollars spent, but, once it does, paid ads can be a powerful way to get in front of new people and increase your social media following.
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Building awareness of your brand can be challenging, especially when you have so many channels. There are so many elements to your brand. Establishing a consistent experience for your visitors will take planning, time and effort. Your social media channels will be critical to your success.
Incorporating these five tips into your brand building strategy will help you lay the foundation for a consistent experience across all of your customer touchpoints.
Download our free guide to learn what brand consistency is, why it’s important & how to achieve it.
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