Social Media Branding – The Ultimate Guide for Viral Brand Campaigns in 2024

Last Updated on October 13, 2023 by DesignerPeople

What enables people to stay connected across the globe, offers entertainment, provides the latest information and even generates income for some people? It’s social media! And it’s not just people but also businesses that can use social media branding to maximise their growth.

Today, a large population browses social media regularly, making it a powerful tool for businesses to engage with customers and increase sales. If you’re starting a business, then utilise social media platforms to take your business (and sales) to the next level. Here’s our complete guide to social media branding and your business’s subsequent viral brand campaigns!

What is Social Media Branding?

How you present your brand persona on various social media platforms is called social media branding. It allows you to share your company’s ideas, stories and updates. It helps existing customers and potential buyers to view your brand beyond its products and services.  

Gone are the yesteryears when the only form of advertising was through television and print media like newspapers and magazines. Today, we’ve social media, a multi-dimensional platform with several uses. It’s a stage where you can showcase your products, talk about your brand’s story, engage with customers, run ads and even offer quick customer service. 

Manage Brand Reputation

Social media branding is crucial for many reasons. It lets you speak on your brand’s behalf and helps customers choose your brand over others. However, an equally important aspect of making your brand design visible on social media is managing the brand reputation.

Why does any business advertise its products and services? To promote the product’s existence and influence customers. Your social media brand reputation management does the same. Maintaining a strong social media presence will make your brand more visible and accessible among your target audience. 

Roadmap to make a strong social Brand Presence

Every brand should consider these three key elements to create a strong social media presence and viral brand campaigns:

• Consistency: Your brand voice, style and other brand parameters should always be consistent. Whatever content you post should align with your company’s values and suit your marketing goals. Also, be consistent with your posting schedule and visual identity.
• Unique brand voice: How would you feel if your friend spoke in different accents every day? Weird, right? The same applies to your brand’s voice – it should be unique, clear and not sound similar to any other brand. 
• Brand storytelling: People love stories as they can associate with the elements in the story and feel closer. Having a fascinating brand story is pivotal in social media branding. Stories such as how your company name was born or how a product was created will always intrigue people. 

Common myths that hold you back

Although accessing social media is as easy as pie, certain myths mislead businesses into wrongly using it or giving up on social media branding. We’ve listed the four common myths below:

• Overnight success is the norm

  Everyone dreams of their first campaign going viral! But like any other marketing platform, growth on social media also takes time. Success on social media comes with consistent efforts, dedication and patience.

• It’s all about going viral

  Going viral on social media sounds nice, but viral trends change fast and are quickly forgotten. Instead of focusing on creating viral and irrelevant content, focus on creating valuable and relatable content that your audience will like engaging with.

• Negative comments should be ignored

  Criticism on social media shouldn’t be ignored at any cost. You should address both positive and negative comments to provide the best service to your customers. Empathise with customers and work on improving your products and brand reputation.

• Every social media platform is the same

  You shouldn’t post the same content across all social media platforms. Each platform is unique with different audiences, content styles and engagement patterns. For effective social media branding, use a platform for what it’s made for. We’ve elaborated more on this in the segment below.

6 strategies to success in social branding

Let’s understand the strategies to build effective social media branding for your business that will always stand out:

• Determine your brand’s goal, vision and values

  Certain values and goals drive anyone to start a business. Ask yourself questions like ‘What will our company do?’, ‘How will our products help people?’, ‘What values and changes will our services bring?’

  These questions will help you build the brand’s vision, values and goals. Understanding these elements will aid in your brand’s growth, marketing and communications. Develop content around these elements and post them on social media to raise brand awareness among your target audience.

• Select a brand name and design a logo

  Just like a person’s name, a company’s name is its basic identity. Choose an appealing name that best fits what your company does and stick to it. Design an equally appealing logo with colours and fonts that connote the feelings of your brand message. Having a brand name and logo helps people become familiar with your brand across social media and other platforms.

• Select and use the most appropriate social network

  Choose the most suitable social media for your brand. If you’re a B2B business, then leverage LinkedIn to grow your social media presence and showcase your products and services. If you’re a B2C business, then use Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram to tap into your target audience’s network. Serve up relevant content on social media to attract the right audience.

• Create different marketing personas for different social media platforms

  Instagram and TikTok are the hotspots for GenZ and Millennials while Facebook caters to an older audience. Using memes is suitable for Instagram and Facebook but not for LinkedIn as it’s a professional platform. So, your marketing personas should be different for each platform.

• Determine the type of content beforehand

  What’s the most suitable content for your business? Your target audience should relate with the content you post. It should align with your brand guidelines, aiding in your company’s social media branding. Apart from photos, infographics and short videos, include user-generated content to gain a loyal followership.

• Make your brand voice more human

  We already mentioned this. Your brand persona should have a unique brand voice that helps customers engage with your brand. It should be conversational and humane instead of sounding like a lifeless robot. Speaking like a human will always reflect the brand’s customer-first approach.

Brands can’t neglect social media

Here are the top four benefits of social media branding:

• It allows you to stand out in a crowd

  There are near-infinite choices for every item nowadays. Despite that, some brands do very well while some don’t. Sometimes, it’s the product quality while sometimes it’s the mere branding. Believe us, social media branding has the potential to present your brand as one-of-a-kind. If you do it right, you can stand out amidst the crowd, no matter how many competitors you have.

  

• It allows you to expand and reach new potential customers

  Engaging with customers through social media can earn your brand huge brownie points. Using social media insights, you can find out the interests and needs of potential and existing customers. You can further use this data to improve your products and services, enabling your brand to expand and increase sales.

  

• It makes task management easier

  Social media helps us stay abreast with upcoming trends and business insights. Hence, it helps your social media team stay ahead of the crowd and plan content accordingly. This isn’t limited to social media as it’ll also help in designing products based on the latest trends, making your entire workforce’s work easier.

  

• It helps you receive real-time feedback

  Social media allows people to post candid comments and honest feedback about products and services. This instant feedback serves as important customer data helping you derive sales and performance insights. You can even use social media to solve real-time queries like shipment-related issues or upcoming product updates.

  

Conclusion

Social media is a powerful tool to attract more users by learning about their interests, preferences and values. Create useful, valuable and exciting content on social media to engage your target audience and make them aware of your brand.

Use appropriate tools to schedule your content and research the latest trends to improve your brand’s online reach. Weaving stories through outstanding social media ad designs is a crucial aspect of attracting customers online. Hire our team of expert designers and develop successful social media branding for your business.

Author: Anush Malik

Being a strategist’s head and a long term visionary personality aims to achieve excellence in branding, packaging and digital marketing field. My 15 years of design experience and masters degree ais my strength which keeps me motivated and keep me going positively. I have participated in extensive branding design conquests in India, USA, Australia and New Zealand with winning zeal. My objective is to encourage start-ups and hence involves actively in the articles which will act as a productive intake of knowledge for them. Do connect me personally via my LinkedIn and I love to share my expertise with you.