Do you know why building brand awareness is important for brands?
It makes people remember what your brand does and what you can offer them. For instance, when you want some sneakers, your first thought may be Nike or Adidas. Or maybe when you want chicken, your first thought could be KFC.
Such examples show why building brand awareness is crucial.
These companies have made lasting brand identities, so when people think of buying what they offer, they come to the buyers’ minds first.
If you want to build a strong brand identity and increase your brand awareness, social media can be a powerful medium.
With it, you can maintain customer relationships, find new leads, engage your audience, promote your offers, and extend your reach.
And the best thing?
All these benefits contribute to brand awareness.
But how exactly can you use social media to build brand awareness?
How to Boost Brand Awareness Through Social Media
This article will show you some powerful social media tactics you should implement.
#1. Identify Metrics to Track Performance
You know your goal is to increase brand awareness. But how do you measure whether your efforts are helping you progress towards your goal or not?
Some of the metrics that will help you measure your overall performance include:
- Impressions
- Reach
- Social shares
- Mentions
- Follower or subscriber growth
- Engagement rate
- Referral traffic
- Conversion rate
Track each of the above mentioned social media metrics and use the data to optimize your social media strategy. It will help you boost your brand awareness and grow your business.
#2. Segment Your Target Audience
The first step to raise your brand awareness is to know who your target audience is. From their preferences to their pain points, you need to know everything.
Not just that, you also need to segment them.
Why?
Because you may have more than one buyer persona. For instance, a sportsperson and a traveler are both likely to be interested in purchasing a sunscreen lotion. While both are your target audience, their needs and problems may differ.
You need to advertise your product differently to both these personas to appeal to their tastes. If you segment your audience, you can reach out to them in a more personalized way.
That brings us to the next question:
How do you segment your target audience?
You can segment your audience based on their interests, age, location, behavior, lifecycle stage, or any other such factors.
Segmenting can go a long way in boosting the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.
#3. Identify the Best Platform For Your Business
While the number of social platforms is constantly increasing, it’s hard to focus your marketing efforts on all of them at once.
You have limited time and resources.
That’s why you need to be picky and only choose relevant platforms that can effectively help you build brand awareness.
But how can you pick the best platforms for your business?
Consider the kind of audience attracted to each platform. For instance, LinkedIn is mostly for professionals while Twitch is for gamers. The platform with which your target audience coincides is the one that you should focus the most on.
The right platform will make it easier for you to build an active community around your brand.
#4. Create a Strong Brand Identity
Your brand identity plays an important role in creating familiarity with your target audience. When you think of brand identity, the first thing that comes to mind is logos. While it is one of the most important aspects of brand building, the identity of a brand includes a lot more.
Your tagline, aesthetic style, brand colors, tone, and other aspects are also important parts of creating a strong brand identity.
It’s important to choose them carefully to reflect your brand’s values and mission.
When you use them consistently across different channels, you establish a unique brand identity that sets your brand apart.
#5. Create Engaging Content
Your content can be a great way to educate your audience about your brand values, products, and services. It can be an important tool to boost your brand awareness. In addition to this, your content should be relevant to your audience.
One way to make sure your audience finds your content interesting is to leverage keyword research. You can check the most popular keywords that people are searching for.
Additionally, you can look for trending topics and hashtags. This will help you create content that your audience is likely to resonate with.
To create more engaging content, here are some of the strategies you can use to attract your audience:
A. Conduct Polls
Ask your audience to share their opinions about trending topics, or something related to your niche or brand.
However, keep in mind that your aim is to drive engagement, not push for sales. So, avoid taking a sales-oriented approach. Instead, try to conduct polls that are humorous, conversational, and informal.
You could create a daily or weekly challenge that allows your brand to interact more frequently with your audience. Your content series could be in any format — videos, infographics, GIFs, memes, or podcasts.
In the content series, you can address common pain points, share educational content, or talk about what’s happening in your industry.
C. Leverage Visual Content
Visuals can be a great way to get your audience’s attention. Plus, they can help you promote your products and advertise your brand.
How?
Share brief video clips that run for a few seconds and use them to showcase your products or highlight your brand values.
Want more ideas for creating videos?
You can also share tutorials, how-to videos, live videos, Stories, Reels, and other types of videos to tell your audience about your brand.
In addition to this, you can also publish memes, GIFs, infographics, and photos.
D. Repurpose Your Content
Constantly creating new content can be exhausting. If you are unable to come up with fresh ideas, you can repurpose your content.
For instance, you can create podcasts from videos or make infographics from a blog post. This strategy can help you create content without putting in too much effort.
But how can you decide what kind of content is best to repurpose?
Focus on the content that your audience already likes and engages with. For instance, a blog post that receives many shares can also be a good topic for a good infographic or explainer video.
E. Promote Other People’s Content
Your feed does not have to contain only content from your brand. You can, from time to time, share relevant content from other recognized industry leaders.
However, make sure that the posts you share add value to your followers, or further educate them on a topic that is relevant to your niche.
F. Conduct Interviews
Interview relevant professionals or influencers in your industry to further educate or inform your audience. An added benefit from this strategy is that you can reach out to the guest’s followers or fans as well. It can be a great way to boost your reach and visibility.
G. Showcase What Goes On Behind-the-Scenes
Tell your audience what goes behind closed doors at your office to add an element of fun to your content marketing strategies.
This way, you can also introduce your audience to your employees and your work culture. If you are hosting an event, then videos and photos from it can be a great way to get more audience engagement.
#6. Host Social Media Competitions
Hosting competitions does require that you put in some time and effort. But if done right, competitions can help you get more followers and boost your engagement rate.
To get started, be clear about what you want to achieve through a competition. Do you want to increase your follower count? Or get more sales? Whatever your goal is, make sure your competition is designed around it.
Another important aspect of these competitions is the reward associated with it. If you want the audience to participate in the contest, you will have to offer a reward that is worth their time and effort.
In addition to this, make the rules of participation extremely clear from the start. Mention the date the contest ends, when you will be declaring the winner, and how they will receive their reward.
#7. Partner with Influencers
Word-of-mouth marketing.
That’s essentially what you get from partnering with influencers.
Influencers have large and dedicated followings who seek out their recommendations. That’s why influencer marketing can be a great asset for building brand awareness.
To get started with it, pick an influencer discovery platform that can help you find relevant influencers. Some of these platforms also enable you to measure your campaign performance.
Once you’ve found the right influencer, work with them to finalize your campaign. You could also work with them to run social media contests and giveaways. Social media takeovers can also be a great way to work with an influencer.
All in all, with the right strategy, platform, and influencer, this strategy can help you turn your brand into a household name.
#8. Showcase User-Generated Content
User-generated content allows you to boost awareness without trying too hard to advertise your brand. Plus, it’s a great way to show appreciation to your customers.
But how do you run a user-generated content campaign?
Encourage your customers to upload photos and videos with your products online. You can also ask them to use a branded hashtag to boost your brand awareness.
When users post such visuals, make sure to give them a shoutout or feature them on your social media feed. This way, you can also give them more visibility.
Final Thoughts
The secret to running social media campaigns that boost brand awareness is to use tactics that leave a lasting impression on your audience.
Those tactics include creating engaging content, working with influencers, and hosting contests to create buzz around your brand.
However, keep in mind that building a strong presence and building relationships with your audience may take some time.
Do you need more clarification on any of the tactics mentioned above? Please mention them in the comments section. We can help you get answers to your queries.
About the Author!
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is the co-founder of Attrock, a digital marketing agency. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.
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