Social Media Branding & Content

The essential step in designing an appealing social media presence is to understand the concept of humanization. We define humanization as the process of humanizing, or making something relatable to humans, one’s brand. Remember, people talk to people, not things. Too often we analyze business social media presences and see they are receiving little to no response because of this simple misunderstanding.

So how do you humanize your brand? It’s simple – show more people. Making your logo your profile picture may not be the best idea if people do not recognize your brand. However, if your profile picture consists of people who appear to be happy, wearing your company’s shirt or holding your product, it may appeal to your audience (humans) in more effective manner. An example of this concept is illustrated above.

Creating Your Business Social Media Profile

If you keep the concept of humanization in your mind as you create your social media profiles, you will find more success. When creating your account you will have to do the following:

– Create Your Identity (Account/Handle)

– Provide More Information

When creating your account, or “handle”, make sure that it is nothing outrageous. Your social media accounts should represent your business. People who connect with your brand should know who they are connecting with.

For example, Adam owns a local phone repair shop, called iGeek Mobile. However, on Facebook, he named his company “Atlanta phone repair”. Adam has grown his Facebook fans for “Atlanta phone repair” to over 10,000 fans but have not received any customers. On the other hand, there is a company named “Atlanta’s Best Phone Repair” who has been receiving an influx of customers. Adam realized that the people connected to his Facebook page did not realize that his business was iGeek Mobile. In effect, he lost his customers to Atlanta’s Best Phone Repair. Make sure that you never make a mistake like this. Your social media account information, such as your name, should mirror the information on your website.

Next, create your biography. Some social media platforms allow more characters than others when it comes to creating your biography or “About Us” section. Regardless, try to keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Let’s look at a couple of short biographies. Which one do you think is best?

iGeek Mobile is a phone repair company. We were founded by Adam and Anthony, graduates of Georgia State University. We are open everyday from 8AM to 10PM. For more information, visit iGeekMobile.com
iGeek Mobile is the best phone repair company in the city! We’ll fix your phone in less than one hour and give you $10 off if you come in this week. Call today! 404-596-7925
iGeek Mobile is located in Downtown, Atlanta. Our company prides itself in integrity, quality, and customer satisfaction. We were awarded one of the best companies to work for in 2010.

#1 does a great job at identifying what the company is. However, unless the owners are famous, people may not care who the owners are or where they graduated from. The hours of operations are good to know, but people have to want to use your services first. It serves no purpose in this bio. Lastly, directing someone to the home page of your website may be the best way to lose track of a potential lead.

#3 starts off by identifying where they are located. This is good, but the location of your business can be found on your profile so it is no point of having it in your bio. The second point about what the company prides and the fact that it is one of the best companies to work for is a decent statement, however, we recommend tailoring your bio specifically towards your main objective.

#2 is the best biography to choose. It does four things:

Identifies the company: Phone repair company
Describes its competitive advantage: Fix in less than one hour
Offers an incentive: $10 off if you come this week
Has a Call-to-Action: Call today!

This bio was tailored specifically toward the reader and only aims to satisfy a potential need that they may have currently or in the future. When writing your biography on social media, you should make sure that you include some of these components when necessary.

Designing Your Social Media Profiles

The design of your social media profile will have a huge impact on how your target audience views your brand. When choosing a profile picture, you should use a high-quality image of people and/or customers in your place of business, with your product, or receiving a service. If this is not a good fit with your business or the audience you’re targeting, then use your logo. If you choose to use your logo as your profile picture, then your background or header image should contain humanized content or a nicely designed graphic that produces a captivating message to attract people to your brand.

BAD PROFILE PAGES

– No profile picture set. No background photo.

– Bad profile picture. No background. Not humanized or appealing.

GOOD PROFILE PAGES

– Humanized and appealing to their target consumer

Determine what type of content you will post

So now we have a nice, humanized and designed social media profile that is growing at a high rate. What type of content do you post? Our rules for creating content on social media consists of the following:

Know Your Audience
Relate To Your Audience
Post About Your Brand
Highlight the positive
Post Unbiased Content

Know Your Audience

Earlier, we talked about knowing who your audience is and what platforms you can find them on, now we need to take this a little further. Before you post anything on your social media channels, you need to understand what your ideal customer is interested in. For example, if your business is Foot Locker and you sell athletic equipment, your ideal customer may be interested in health, fitness, and sports. As a marketer, it is essential that you thoroughly understand the behaviors and interests of your audience. Once you understand your audience, your content creation proficiency will come naturally.

Relate To Your Audience

Post content that your followers would be the most interested in. Again, if your business is Foot Locker, you can post health tips, workout motivational quotes, the newest athletic gear, etc. The more relatable your content is, the more people will engage with it. The more likes, comments, and shares your content gets, the more people you will be able to reach. If you want your content to go viral, the first step is to make it relatable.

Regardless of industry, there is some content that will relate to almost anyone. We refer to this as universal content. We consider major events, news, and holidays as universal content. If you ever grow shy of content to post, then always refer back to this rule of thumb.

Brand Content

There is no coincidence of why brand content came after relatable content. The first step in marketing your business on social media is to relate to your audience first and then indirectly promote your product or service to them with digital marketing services i. Brand content is defined as any type of content that is directly related to the business that you are marketing. This could be company updates, news, or promotions for your products.

In order to distinguish between brand content and relatable content. We created the 80/20 rule, which implies that 80% of the content posted on your social media campaigns should be content that relates to your audience and 20% of the content posted should be directly associated with your business. You may find that most businesses do the opposite and post about their business 100% of the time. The harsh reality is no one is going to care about your business 100% of the time, but people will care about content that is related to their interests.

Highlight the positive

Always highlight the positive aspects of your business. If there are customers who are posting about how satisfied they were with your product or service, then repost that content on your business social media channels. In contrast, if someone was unsatisfied with your product or service, then that is not something that you should post on social media. When people view your social media channel, they should be interested in learning more about your work, not turned off by negative remarks. Delete all negative remarks if possible and deal with them privately.

Post Unbiased Content

One thing to always keep in mind is to post unbiased content. If you are a Muslim, please do not promote your religious beliefs on social media. Why? Well, your customers may not have the same religious beliefs as you. The same goes for politics, philosophy, or anything that you are very passionate about personally. Realize there is always someone who will disagree with your point of view, so try to stay somewhere in the middle.

For example, instead of saying “I hope Barrack Obama wins the election”. You may want to phrase this in the format as a question, such as “Who do you think will win the election this year?”