5 Tips for Branding Your Startup on Social Media

When estab­lish­ing your start­up, get­ting your tar­get mar­ket to know and remem­ber your brand should be one of your top pri­or­i­ties. But with oth­er busi­ness set­up process­es to work on, focus­ing on brand­ing your new com­pa­ny may be the least of your con­cerns for now.

How­ev­er, fail­ing to work on brand­ing your start­up, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the set­up stage, can be a cost­ly mis­take to make. When you ignore this vital mar­ket­ing process, you will find it more dif­fi­cult to estab­lish a unique iden­ti­ty and a strong image of your business.

Because of these rea­sons, you will encounter more chal­lenges as you break into the mar­ket and go head-to-head with your competitors.

A top provider of brand­ing con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices from Dubai also says that neglect­ing to build your brand from the start won’t help you boost your vis­i­bil­i­ty and get the trac­tion it needs to obtain your tar­get market’s trust and loy­al­ty. This will impact your startup’s suc­cess in the short and long run.

Building Your Brand On Social Media 

The lack of time, man­pow­er, or bud­get to invest in brand­ing your start­up is no longer an accept­able rea­son to neglect this key mar­ket­ing ele­ment. With near­ly every­one hav­ing access to the Inter­net and social media, it makes sense to use these ful­ly to build and boost your brand. To start build­ing your startup’s brand on social media, fol­low these tips:

1. Establish Your Official Brand Style Guide 

Con­sis­ten­cy is a cru­cial ele­ment of brand­ing. If you want all your social media posts to be uni­form, which can help you in var­i­ous ways, cre­ate your for­mal brand guide­lines first.

Set your startup’s brand style guide, which should iden­ti­fy the col­or or hues, typog­ra­phy, tone, and voice of your label. Make sure you already have your offi­cial logo as well.

Your style guide should also have guide­lines regard­ing images and graph­ics to use.

Once you have estab­lished these guide­lines, you will be able to cre­ate a con­sis­tent impres­sion and expe­ri­ence for your audi­ence on all plat­forms. And this will help you great­ly with your social media brand­ing efforts.

2. Choose Your Tone Of Voice Wisely 

Your tone of voice is one of the most cru­cial ele­ments of brand­ing your style guide. As such, you need to select the best one before offi­cial­ly estab­lish­ing it.

You can choose the right tone of voice for your start­up by con­sid­er­ing the type of prod­uct or ser­vice you pro­vide first. For instance, if you are offer­ing a finance-relat­ed prod­uct, select­ing an author­i­ta­tive, infor­ma­tive, and help­ful voice will work best for your brand.

Also, think about the type of per­son­al­i­ty you want your busi­ness to con­vey and how this can help you build your brand online.

Your brand’s per­son­al­i­ty will dif­fer­en­ti­ate your start­up from the com­pe­ti­tion and help you con­nect with and build rela­tion­ships with your tar­get audi­ence. Because of these rea­sons, you have to choose a per­sona that sets you apart and make sure this is reflect­ed in all your social media con­tent.

3. Select Which Social Media Platforms To Utilize 

Being active on all social net­work­ing sites is not a good brand­ing strat­e­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you or your staff do not have enough time to put into this mar­ket­ing process. Doing so will only drain your ener­gy and give you unsat­is­fac­to­ry results.

To deter­mine which sites would work best for brand­ing efforts, find out which ones your tar­get audi­ence is most like­ly to be active on. Addi­tion­al­ly, test and eval­u­ate which plat­forms can sup­port your goals.

Also, con­sid­er the nature of your busi­ness when choos­ing which plat­forms to use. If you have a B2B com­pa­ny, you need to be active on LinkedIn since many entre­pre­neurs are on this site. In case you have a B2C start­up, build­ing your brand on Face­book, Twit­ter, and Insta­gram will be more advan­ta­geous since near­ly all con­sumers are using these networks.

Keep in mind that each social media site has an audi­ence that is used to see­ing a cer­tain type of con­tent. These plat­forms dif­fer in the ways they sup­port brand­ing and mar­ket­ing cam­paigns as well. Once you know where your tar­get mar­ket is and which sites can aid your efforts, you can expect bet­ter results from your brand­ing efforts.

4. Make The Most Of Visual Branding 

Images are also impor­tant com­po­nents of brand­ing and mar­ket­ing strate­gies. Because of this, you also need to use the pow­er of dif­fer­ent visu­al elements.

When­ev­er you post con­tent on your social media accounts, add a pho­to, graph­ic, or meme that sup­ports or builds your text. Anoth­er option would be to make images and videos the sub­jects of your posts and add tar­get­ed mes­sages in the descriptions.

But what­ev­er you post, again, always be con­sis­tent. Make sure your cho­sen hues, typog­ra­phy, and per­son­al­i­ty are reflect­ed by the pho­tos, graph­ics, and videos you select.

When your tar­get audi­ence sees this con­sis­ten­cy in the things you pub­lish or share, they will have no dif­fi­cul­ties iden­ti­fy­ing that these posts come from your com­pa­ny. And this type of brand recog­ni­tion is a goal worth work­ing hard for.

5. Post Frequently 

Post­ing reg­u­lar­ly on your social media accounts is also a big part of consistency.

Using an online or app-based con­tent cal­en­dar will enable you to plan your posts and con­tent and sched­ule your updates in advance. These tools will also help you get a bird’s‑eye view of what mes­sages you will send out and how they can affect the results of your campaign.

To ensure your sched­ule sup­ports your brand­ing efforts, you have to main­tain a good bal­ance between val­ue-ori­ent­ed con­tent and pro­mo­tion­al posts. This means avoid­ing shar­ing too many pieces of con­tent that are pro­mo­tion­al in nature.

If you want to con­nect with your audi­ence at a deep­er lev­el and encour­age them to engage with you, you have to pub­lish and share posts that are about your prod­ucts or ser­vices and ones that they find fas­ci­nat­ing and exciting.

Addi­tion­al­ly, be con­sis­tent with inter­act­ing with your audi­ence. If you build a rep­u­ta­tion for reply­ing to mes­sages quick­ly and engag­ing with fol­low­ers who leave com­ments on your posts, peo­ple will asso­ciate your brand with pro­fes­sion­al­ism, reli­a­bil­i­ty, and excel­lent cus­tomer service.

This will go a long way in help­ing you achieve your brand­ing goals.

Refer­ring to your brand style guide and being con­sis­tent will help you build your brand on social media. How­ev­er, don’t for­get to think about your audi­ence and engage with them every chance you get. This will ensure your brand­ing cam­paign works for (and not against) your startup.

SOURCE: Boot­strap Business