Table of contents
Branding is the process of creating a strong, positive perception of a company, its products or services in the customer's mind by combining such elements as logo, design, mission statement, and a consistent theme throughout all marketing communications.
Social media branding is quite different from normal branding in that it has the possibility of reaching a wider range of audience. The mechanics used in social media branding is quite different and of necessity that one follows it to create their brands on whichever platform they find themselves. Here are a few steps to take on creating a better personal brand on social media.
Clear Biography: Having a clear biography makes it easy for your audience to know exactly why they would want to engage you. It gives a sense of value and importance to a target audience. Some people don’t have the luxury of time to read through a very lengthy biography so an individual should keep it precise, concise and direct.
Clear Photoshoot: The use of clear visuals adds up, the psychology of aesthetics lays out that people are more attracted to clear images than unclear images. Further, it states how authentic your brand and value are.
Clean, Clear and Consistent Profile Picture: Your profile picture visually defines who you are and how you want to be seen by others. It is expedient that your profile picture portrays your brand so at first access of your profile one can get a grasp of what you’re into.
Specialization to Some Extent: You should find a niche, and have something to specialize in. You should be known for a particular niche by your target audience so that they know who to go to when services in that area are needed. This also takes effect in referral, when being asked about a particular product due to specialization one person in that field should come to your mind.
Links to More Information: When Setting up a profile for more engagement, an individual should provide backlinks to other social media profiles, For example when using Twitter as a primary platform you can put your Instagram and Linkedin profile links on your bio. This increases the authenticity of a brand when viewed by others. It also serves as an alternative contact format in case not reachable on a particular platform.
The above points are as regards setting up your profile on social media platforms, regardless that alone doesn’t boost brand engagement as there are other steps to apply.
Learn in Public: it affords you the opportunity of both learning and teaching, not just that you’re learning but that you’re learning in an open space which when seen spikes the interest of the audience.
Be Consistent: this entails that you’re consistent and unbreaking in a particular field and also a scheduled time. It is better to schedule posts daily than to post once and never post again.
Be Helpful: The profit gotten from a community is dependent on how much investment one has made in it, that is to say, providing value-driven posts to a particular set of audiences will yield many results in the long run. With your post, you provide solutions to challenges.
Be Active and Engaging: the default way to boost social media engagement is by much interactivity, it’s called social media for a reason. You get active by commenting, liking and sharing people’s posts. Engaging in interesting discussions, especially in people’s comment sessions is also a good way to gain visibility in the community.
A major challenge being faced in this field is how to create content.
How does one create content? there are a few tips to give for that
Learn something new.
Create a new project.
Open source the project.
Document the building process.
Create a video showing how to do it.
In creating content you can reuse content but make it in multiple formats so as not to produce the same thing over. If something has already been done like a topic has already been treated by someone else you can do it but do it much better and differently.
In content creation focus approves mastery, which means you need to be good at one thing so you’ll be well-known for it. You also need to mix things to create something new, it’s all about creativity. An example of this is an instance where you get to write about the effects of social anxiety on software engineers.
SUMMARY
Branding is often overlooked meanwhile it serves as the ladder for a company’s progress. It involves the name, logo and product of a particular company. When it comes to social media, branding becomes a more stringent activity to look into because of access to a wide range of audiences. In this article I laid out steps to take when creating your brand on a media platform which is making your biography clear and precise, having clear photoshoots, and having a clear, clean and consistent profile picture across all platforms. The above points are fully beneficial to just creating a personal brand but when boosting brand engagements there are other steps to take example contributing to the online community, being active and engaging, being consistent with post-scheduled time and learning in public. These all are a modified format of what I learnt from day 2 of the Hashnode boot camp.