Brand awareness – the extent to which customers can relate to a company by its name – is a crucial factor that contributes to business growth. The more your customers can identify and distinguish your products and services from those of your competitors, the better your sales will be.
Creating brand awareness is vital for the growth and sustenance of all brands, and even more so if you are a start-up. That’s why you need to concentrate on building brand awareness right from the nascent stage of your business through the right channels.
In this digital era where social media double as business platforms, you must take special care to tap into their power and popularity. Needless to say, it is an easy means to reach out to a large audience and make them aware of your business in a cost-efficient manner. Are you planning to create a social media strategy for your brand? For a startup company, it can be a bit difficult to start from scratch and slowly build a social media presence, but with these tips, your job becomes much more simple.
6 Essential Social Media Tips for Startups To Create Brand Awareness
Here are 6 useful social media tips that will surely help you to create brand awareness for your start-up
- Identify your target audience
- Identify the right social media platforms for your brand
- Create unique and valuable content
- Engage with your audience actively
- Team up with influencers
- Use a combination of promotional techniques
1. Identify your target audience
Today, there are 3.8 billion social media users in the world and, this, by no means, is a small number. It is more than half of the global population! However, not everyone in this 3.8 billion is your potential customer, so creating a generic strategy will be counterproductive. That’s why you must take special care to identify the segment of people to whom your business caters.
The best way to go about it is to ask some fundamental questions about your business as well as its consumers. Does your target audience comprise of teenagers? Are you aiming to target people in the age group of 40 and above? Is your business trying to become a B2C brand? Does your product/service target businesses rather than end-users?
Once you have a clear idea about your target audience, you can create a smart and actionable social media strategy for brand awareness.
2. Identify the right social media platforms for your brand
Every social media platform has a specific category of users, and each demands a particular type of content. To establish your brand’s presence through social media, you need to pick the right platforms. For instance, if your business deals in FMCG products, platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram will work well. For B2B businesses, platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn may be the ideal choices.
You also need to focus on the type of content you will produce. If you want to promote your brand through image and short video-based content, Instagram will be a great choice. For lengthy videos, YouTube may be a better option. Identifying the right platforms will enable you to optimize your campaigns and efforts.
3. Create unique and valuable content
Content is king and there are no two ways about it. Regardless of which social media platform you choose for propagating your brand identity, you need to create content that offers value to your audience. Based on the type of platform, you can create textual, visual, or video content or a combination of all.
When you share fresh and informative content, you develop a relationship of trust and authority with your viewers. This, in turn, helps your viewers to think about your brand in a positive light. Over a period of time, you can build a loyal customer base if you continue posting unique and useful content consistently.
Also Read: 6 Successful Marketing Strategies For Early & Growth Stage B2B Startups
4. Engage with your audience actively
The whole point of creating brand awareness is to make people talk about your brand and increase its recall value. To do that, you have to interact with your audience. It is not enough to publish content and then forget about it. The fundamental rule of social media is to be social. So, you have to take stock of how your viewers are responding to your content and respond accordingly.
In other words, you must actively respond to their comments, compliments, queries, and feedback. You must also show gestures to appreciate their ‘likes’, ‘retweets’, and ‘reposts’. Further, encourage your viewers to share your posts. By doing all these, you will be able to build a brand connection with your viewers and spread the word about your business.
5. Team up with influencers
Influencer marketing is a good idea when it comes to boosting your brand awareness efforts. Social media influencers are people with huge followings and the ability to mold opinions through their recommendations. Followers connect with influences on a personal level, which helps your brand gain trust and authenticity.
Find one or more influencers with followers that align with your target audience. For instance, a brand selling cosmetics must look for influences in that particular niche, while a technology company will find the perfect match for their brand in tech bloggers. By partnering with such influencers, you can leverage their content-creating skills as well as viewers on social media to highlight your brand.
6. Use a combination of promotional techniques
When using social media to create brand awareness, it is also important to use a combination of techniques to promote your brand and reward customers. Using hashtags, fostering meaningful conversation by creating groups, boosting popular posts, etc. will help take you a long way in attracting and retaining followers.
In addition to this, try and come up with programs to incentivize your followers.
For instance, you can hold contests that help expand your brand’s reach. Don’t hesitate to be creative when you design and conduct contests. Referral programs are also a great way to encourage customers to share your content and bring more followers.
In Conclusion:
When it comes to creating brand awareness, social media trump all over platforms. While you are at this task, do not forget to evaluate your performance regularly. Once you start tracking your progress, you will be able to realize what works for your brand and what doesn’t and rework your strategies for better viewer engagement.
