Social media is a key channel for building your brand presence. But sometimes, it can be difficult to present a consistent brand message across all platforms.
How do the experts integrate branding into their social media accounts? What brand strategies have worked well for developing a consistent social media presence? We ran a survey to find out, and 118 experts shared their insights!
We cover their recommended strategies for brand growth later in the article. But first, let’s check out some insightful statistics on how companies use social media for brand-building.
Facebook: The most popular platform for brand-building
We started by asking marketers to share all of the social media platforms they use to build their brand. Almost everyone (92%) told us they use Facebook, making it the most popular platform. And more than three quarters (76%) use LinkedIn.
Next, we asked marketers to name the platform they use most frequently for brand-building. Again, Facebook won out, at 31%, and LinkedIn came in second, at 28%.
This is likely the case because large, diverse audiences use Facebook, making it a good fit for brands to reach many different demographics. It’s also easy to post different types of content on Facebook, and schedule several posts days or weeks in advance.
Meanwhile, LinkedIn is ideal for building a business presence. This is especially vital for B2Bs looking to connect with audience members in a more formal capacity. Even for B2Cs, LinkedIn’s professional network makes it ideal for building authority in a brand’s niche.
Brands usually post multiple times per day or multiple times per week
Most brands believe frequent posting – daily or multiple times per week – is key to building a consistent brand presence on social media.
On their most-used platform, 42% post at least once daily (31% post 1-2 times a day, while 11% post more than twice a day). And 36% tell us they post 2-3 times per week. Most brands (64%) also have a set social media schedule.
Combined with quality content, regular posts ensure your brand will stay top-of-mind, and increase the chances that a relevant audience member will discover and follow you. If someone enjoys your content enough to follow you, this increases the chances they will purchase from you.
Hours spent on a social media strategy
We were also curious about how much time marketers spend planning social media content, creating the content, and responding to comments about their brand on social media.
- 71% of marketers spend between 1-4 hours planning content
- 35% spend between 1-2 hours
- 36% spend between 3-4 hours
- 65% of marketers spend between 1-4 hours creating content
- 31% spend 5 hours or more creating content (making this the task most people spend five hours or more on)
- 67% of marketers spend between 1-4 hours on engagement (monitoring and responding to comments)
- 36% spend between 1-2 hours
- 31% spend between 3-4 hours
We included a full breakdown of responses in the charts below.
Expert-recommended branding strategies for social media
What strategies have created the biggest growth in brand presence on social media? Based on their own experiences, what tips do experts offer for developing a social media strategy for brands? The experts we surveyed shared tips and strategies in 15 categories. Let’s dive in!
This list does not include the types of content experts recommend for a brand-building social media content mix. We’ve dedicated a separate article to that, which you can find here.
1. Set platform-based goals
Alex McGinness of The Catalyst Studio says, “Getting really clear on what my goals are on a specific platform. Instagram is my social media platform of choice, and knowing that my goal there is to drive potential leads to my website has helped me increase the quality of my content and overall value to my audience. Whenever I create a piece of content I ask myself: ‘Does this content align with my overall goal on Instagram?’ If not, it doesn’t make the cut.”
Michelle Wintersteen of MKW Creative Co. tells us, “I advertise my brand and services on Instagram, Facebook, in my Facebook group, on TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Twitter. In order to be successful in each, I need to create incentive for my ideal client to follow me in all the places.
“This means creating content that will perform best on each platform instead of blasting the same stuff everywhere. For example, on my TikTok, I mostly post brand design recap videos with audio voiceover. On Instagram, the majority of my followers follow me for entrepreneurship advice/personal lifestyle content, so that’s what lives there.”
2. Know your audience
Jess Coleman of Root & Bloom Social advises, “The one thing that’s created the biggest growth for my clients’ brand presence on social media is researching and studying their audience on each platform. It’s the most basic principle for any marketing strategy, but it so often gets overlooked. Know who you’re speaking to so you can know what really matters to them. Only then can your brand provide them truly valuable content via social media.”
Mike Faley of Brickroad points out, “Sometimes more important than who your audience is, is who your audience isn’t. You can’t please everyone on social. Today’s growing markets choose brands that align with their personal values. That means deciding which people you’re okay turning away at the door, and advocating for those you want inside. Nike made the decision that racists aren’t their core audience, and that worked out pretty well so far.”
3. Set a regular posting schedule
Michael Kenler of Anabolic Aliens recommends, “Far too often, brand managers and social media marketers will post on social media accounts sporadically. Posting at a certain time and day every week allows your followers to engage with your content. Your brand will become a living, breathing entity that people interact with. As a result, your consistency will help to grow your brand and create a thriving online community.”
Karlyn Ankrom of Oh Snap! Social says, “Implementing content on a consistent basis is vital to stay in front of your audience. Having consistency also kicks off the awareness phase of the buyer’s journey, keeping you and your brand top of mind, all the time. If you’re not showing up regularly where your ideal client or customer hangs out online, does your brand exist (to them)?”
Kris Hughes tells us, “Some days it’s difficult to come up with fresh content to post, but it’s always worth the effort. There will be days when you’re having writer’s block, but you have to do it anyhow. The people who are the most consistent on the platform and learn from what the data tells them see the massive brand benefits.”
Matt Erickson of National Positions attests, “There are no shortcuts. Your brand needs to invest the time, know what its voice is, what its value is, and create engaging content on a consistent basis. Perfect content does not exist. But committing to create content consistently – and engage with your social audience – will help guide the creation of better content that can help grow your audience and your brand. It will not happen overnight. Most brands that seemingly always create amazing content had their growing pains.”
Muhammad Mateen Khan of PureVPN says, “You need to show up, day after day, with fresh content. Some quick tips to help you stay active:
- Incorporating social scheduling and automation to save time and energy
- Picking and prioritizing your social networks based on your audience location
- Finding ways to repurpose content so you’re not always trying to reinvent the wheel
- Scheduling or simply blocking out 10-15 minute chunks, so you can post content and respond to customer concerns”
4. Use consistent branding across channels
Laura Burden of Burden Brand Management shares, “To create the biggest growth for a brand presence on social media, stay consistent in all aspects, including messaging and imagery. From the written content you’re producing to the images attached to them, readers want to see a perfectly tailored feed that’s consistent throughout.”
@burdenbrandmanagement on Instagram
Lily Stern of TheClose tells us, “We always use the same colors and fonts for our social content, even on different platforms. This has allowed us to become instantly recognizable, so if someone follows us on one platform but then sees our content on another, they’ll know it’s us.
“I’d recommend creating a brand strategy template, with your brand colors, fonts, and any stylistic guidelines you’d like to follow. Choose colors already on your website or part of your logo, and use the same font you do for the website. Over time, after a social user sees your color/font/logo combination repeatedly, they’ll begin to recognize it.”
James Dyble of Global Sound Group tells us, “The repetition of similar social media posts and style cements your name in a prospect’s mind. Think of a cola brand: You will most likely think of Coca-Cola, because they are everywhere, always putting their signature red color and logo into the eyes of the consumer. Take hints from the biggest brands in the game – stick to the same color and writing style, and post regularly.” There is no time to waste on overthinking, collect your ideas, and use an online logo maker to call them to life.
5. Stick to your own brand voice
Jus Chall of Skein Agency advises, “Find your voice. So many brands have no personality on social media, and it makes them all sound the same. If a brand can find some personality and find a way to be conversational, they’ll find their voice. After they commit to showing more personality, the brand will be more engaging and unique, which will increase shares, comments, and impressions. As an example, Wendy’s has a great social media account that people rave about, thanks to its brand personality.”
Adam Binder of Creative Click Media recommends, “Clever, consistent captions set your social media presence apart from your competitors. The language you use on social media lets you establish a brand voice and personality for your company in a way that might not be conveyed strictly visually. Whether you’re a fashion label keeping it fun and humorous, or a consulting firm staying professional, make sure your brand voice is consistent across all of your company’s channels.”
6. Be authentic
Beth Nydick explains, “Show up face forward on your social media. People buy from people. Your audience has an easier time getting to know you by seeing and hearing your authentic self. Share who you are, not just what you do, with your audience, and they will show you what they want with comments, likes, and shares.”
Taylor Galla of Spy.com adds, “Show up consistently in ways that are authentic to your brand and the message you’re putting out into the world. People can tell if you’re copying someone else, superficially following trends, or regurgitating another account’s thesis – avoid doing all of these things. Consider what you bring to the table better than anyone else, and bring that in heaps that all feel aligned to you and your mission.”
7. Encourage user engagement
Seren Kiremitcioglu of Vertical Leap shares, “It’s not enough to fire out dry, self-promotional posts and hope someone clicks. Imagine if someone did that in real life – only spoke to you when they wanted to promote something. You’d quickly get annoyed and avoid them at all costs!
“So why is this different on social media? Use your analytics to find optimal post times and pinpoint which content your audience connects with most, and create a social calendar around this data to respond to any interactions. Not only is this great for engagement, but it heightens your brand presence.”
8. Interact with your followers
Quinn Black of Content Cucumber says, “Responding to comments, liking, and re-tweeting are great ways to directly connect with your audience. They want to know you’re not a robot. By engaging organically with your online audience over social media, you can form a direct connection with them. This also helps to increase your authenticity and legitimacy. In addition, engaging increases your exposure and helps you reach more people.
“If someone comments on your post, respond. Let the user know that you are listening and appreciate their input. Encourage your audience to share your content. Show them that instead of a cold and unresponsive machine, your business is a living network of people who are willing to reach out and listen.”
Reshu Rathi of LambdaTest says, “Ask questions. This is the fastest way to engage your social media followers. Asking questions also starts conversations and can be the fast track to real relationships with your audience. Remember, social media is all about building real relationships with real people.”
Jenny Massey of Snowy Pines White Labs recommends, “Reply to people on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, share your content throughout your social media platforms, and become more engaged with other businesses throughout your niche.
“The more interactions you have on your profiles, the more relevant you’ll become, and the higher chance you have of showing up on people’s feeds. If you have friends with a lot of followers, ask them to share your content as well.”
9. Connect with key people in your niche
Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers recommends, “Connect with people in your industry. I see a lot of companies, marketers, and entrepreneurs just posting on social media without interacting with anyone and without building a community. When you create content, I often say you want to spend 20% of the time and money creating your content and 80% of the time/money promoting or distributing it. This is the same with social media. Connect with people in your industry, and promote relevant and interesting content to them.”
Nikola Roza shares, “Social media is not for selling. People don’t go to Twitter or Facebook to buy stuff. Instead, they go to relax, chat, laughm and have a good time. So engage with others in your niche, and become a genuine contributing member of the global community. When you do, you will get noticed and turn cold strangers into warm supporters and followers, and some even into future partners.”
Brent Bouldin of New Media Advisors shares, “One of our most successful tactics was to curate a list of other social media handles that published content in our vertical. We would create a steady stream of content that would be of value to our followers and their followers. Then, we would reach out to the other handles suggesting that they feature our content. This allowed us to grow our brand presence and following with an audience in our own vertical, while allowing the other handles to share quality content with their followers and grow their own presence.”
10. Form strategic partnerships
Alli Rodriguez of Alli Rodriguez Public Relations tells us, “We partner with larger brands and promote giveaways. This helps both brands by driving traffic to one another’s sites. There is always a risk that people following are only doing so for the giveaway and will choose to unfollow at a later date. However, in my experience, we were able to grow a brand’s presence on their social media by 60% in less than three months with this tactic.”
Syndi Braun of The Social Robin advises, “Our greatest brand awareness and presence on social media has always been thanks to a well-known, highly-followed client sharing the work we did for them on their social media feeds. By strategically partnering with well-known clients, adding watermarks on your work, and the clients tagging you when they share your work on their social media gives a ton of visibility to potential clients. There is no better way to show both trust and the quality of your work with thousands of people who never knew who you were – and it costs less than traditional awareness advertising.”
11. Create and contribute to Facebook groups
Matt Diggity of Diggity Marketing shares, “I have had tremendous results in growing my brand presence through industry-specific Facebook groups that I own or moderate. The key to making this strategy work is being an active contributor to the groups. Take time out of your schedule each day to post new topics and answer any questions that members have.
“Focus on providing valuable advice and information that solves problems or offers insights into difficulties fellow group members face in their own business. If you consistently deliver value in Facebook groups, people will take notice, and you’ll boost the visibility of your business, as well as build your authority and personal brand.”
Jane Kovalkova of Chanty advises, “Create your own Facebook group. Organic traffic is becoming impossible to get and groups can bring amazing results if you spend enough time on them. We have more than 1,000 members and it has become our customers’ number one spot for asking questions, getting product updates, interacting with other customers, and much more. Overall, it’s our busiest channel for customer support and promoting ourselves. It doesn’t cost anything but your time, and that’s just one of the reasons why we love it.”
12. Use the right hashtags for promotion
Osmir Diaz of Buen Business advises, “Brand presence is often misunderstood as being the purely visual aesthetic seen on any given social media platform. [But], overloading pages with graphics in the same art style won’t be enough to build a strong presence.
“Branding for any business or organization should be focused on the people it is trying to retain as followers, but also specific to finding more followers like them. One strategy I use for this is hashtag research. If you have a brand that can present quality content for a given hashtag, new followers will follow you.”
Katie Fellenz of Trust & Will recommends, “Use hashtags that relate to your brand’s niche. Instead of focusing on using the most popular hashtags that are trending at that moment, use less popular ones that relate more specifically to your brand or product. The communities that see these less popular hashtags are more active and more likely to follow your page and convert to customers.”
13. Use social analytics tools to track your success
Ryan Philips of bioClarity explains, “When it comes to social media marketing, the tools you use can make a huge difference. Social media is ever-evolving, so it’s important that your business evolves with it as well.
“One major tool my company uses is Hootsuite to track metrics. It has helped us track which tactics are working and which tactics are not by showing exact metrics of each post. We’ve also been able to establish ‘Awareness Metrics,’ ‘Audience Growth Rate,’ ‘Post Reach,’ ‘Potential Reach,’ and so many other helpful metrics to help us continue to grow our social media presence. Apart from the actual content itself, measuring that content has proven to be just as important.”
14. Advertise wisely
Laurel Mintz of Elevate My Brand says, “Advertise wisely. Our approach is using high velocity A/B testing to perfect the message, image, and targeting for each social platform to grow visibility and awareness of those channels. We know that 1-2% of your audience typically sees your social posts, which is why the paid side is so critical to growth. But it can and should also inform the messaging on the organic side so it can support engagement as well.”
15. Try guerrilla social – especially if you’re a B2B
Perrin Carrell of Ranq explains, “Our services are B2B, and we started seeing the best results when we stopped focusing on followers and visibility, which are mostly arbitrary vanity metrics, and started focusing on what we call guerrilla social media marketing.
“Instead of trying to be impressive and magically attract followers, we’re in the trenches. We’re finding communities and engaging in conversations. We’re talking to people. We’re listening. We’re making strong 1:1 connections. It’s a different kind of work, but it’s not more work. And it works especially well for B2B companies.”
Wrapping up
Now that you’ve heard from the marketing experts, it’s time to apply these tips and create your own social media brand strategy. As with every brand strategy, knowing your audience, staying true to your brand voice, and using consistent imagery are key.
With social media, it’s also vital to ensure the content you share is authentic, and to build connections with your followers and other relevant brands. Partnering with other brands to share each other’s content can also help you expand your reach and promote brand awareness.
