Guest post by Shane Barker.

Building a brand is more important than ever. It helps you create mindshare with buyers and establish what they can expect from you. Your brand is what differentiates you from your competitors.

A solid brand identity can help you get more people to trust your products and/or services. This will, in turn, help you drive more conversions and revenue. (Branding matters as much in B2B as in consumer marketing; if you were trying to sell 10,000 laptops to a large corporation, would you rather be selling Dell or some unfamiliar no-name knock off?)

So, how can you boost your brand’s value?

Arguably the best channel is through social media. Roughly 2.5 billion people in the United States actively use at least one social network. Each of them spends approximately two hours every day, on average, on social media. This means that amplifying your presence on social media can help you get noticed easily and build a recognizable brand.

Here are five actionable strategies that can help you boost your brand’s value using social media amplification.

1. Be Consistent

The best way to make your brand stand out on social media is to maintain consistency. You need to follow a consistent approach while interacting with consumers or buyers across various social media networks.

Brand building is more than using a consistent logo, color palette, bio, and handle name across multiple social media channels. You should use the same fonts and styles in your images and videos as well.

For example, Southwest Airlines rebranded themselves by implementing a yellow, red, and blue tri-color scheme. This helped them add a sense of warmth to their brand and make it feel more welcoming.

Here’s a snapshot from their website that showcases their new color scheme:

Images via Southwest Airlines

Similarly, you should maintain a similar voice and tone across all of your brand’s messaging. For example, decide whether you want to use the term “clients” or “customers” while addressing your target audience. This can help you keep your content style consistent.

Over time, people will see and begin recognizing the consistency in your posts. This will help them recognize that a post, video, or ad is from you even before they see your brand’s logo.

And, this type of brand recognition can help you boost your brand’s value in the minds of your target audience. Once they recognize you, they are more likely to trust your brand, engage with your content, and buy your products and/or services.

2. Get Your Timing Right

Even the most amazing content won’t make an impact if it doesn’t reach the right people when they’re looking for it. That’s why it’s important to time your social media posting schedules to ensure that your target audience gets to see and engage with your content.

To accomplish this, you’ll need to figure out when your audience is most likely to be active on various social media platforms.

Though there is no perfect time to post on social media, you can use artificial intelligence (AI) powered solutions  for guidance about when to post, what to post, and how often. Using AI and advanced machine learning, you can maximize your social reach and engagement by posting at the theoretically ideal times.

This practice can help you improve your brand’s value over time and get more people to trust and follow your brand on social media.

3. Leverage Hashtags

You can further amplify the reach of your social media content using relevant hashtags. Use a tool like RiteTag or Hashtagify to find the most popular hashtags in your niche and include them in your social media posts. This can help put your content in front of the most relevant audiences.

For example, if your brand sells hair care products, you can use hashtags such as #haircare, #haircaretips, #hairproducts, and #haircareroutine. There are many powerful tools that can help you track trending hashtags in your niche.

Other than niche-specific hashtags, you should also create and use branded hashtags to boost your brand’s presence and value on social media. This may include your brand’s name and other campaign-specific hashtags.

On the consumer side, one of the best examples of successful hashtag marketing is the famous watch brand, Daniel Wellington. They regularly use branded hashtags such as #danielwellington and #DWPickoftheDay.

Most of their user-generated content also includes the hashtag, #danielwellington, resulting in over 2.2 million tagged Instagram posts.

Image via Instagram

4. Harness the Power of Influencers

Another popular strategy to boost your brand’s engagement on social media is to partner with influencers. Social influencers have authentic audiences who trust their recommendations, which means that they can influence buying decisions.

You can (often, pay to) partner with the top influencers in your niche to effectively showcase your products and services to your target audience. When an influencer recommends your product, their followers are more likely to show interest in your product and, probably, buy it.

You can also ask influencers to promote limited-time offers of selected product lines. This strategy often helps brands generate more sales and revenue.

The Lime Tree Clinic partnered with influencer, Laurah, to promote 10% off deals on beauty treatments on their one-year anniversary in January 2020.

Image via Instagram

To effectively manage and optimize B2C influencer campaigns, you can connect with professionals from the top agencies for help. Experts in the consumer influencer marketing industry can help you partner with the right influencers, amplify your content, and boost your brand’s value.

B2B influencer marketing works a bit differently, but the basic principle is the same: build relationships with the top influencers in your specific industry or technology area.

5. Boost Your Top-Performing Social Content

Consider incorporating promoted posts into your social amplification strategy. Promoting your social media content using paid ads can help you increase your reach and visibility. And if you boost your top-performing content, it can help you drive the best results in terms of engagement and sales.

Use various formats to amplify the reach of your social media content. You can leverage carousel ads, photo ads, Shoppable Instagram ads, and pre-roll video ads to reach wider audiences.

Running paid ad campaigns on multiple social media channels can help you promote your events, new products, services, festive discounts, upcoming/ongoing sales, and more. You can spread awareness, engage potential buyers, and drive more sales and revenue.

However, you need to ensure that you define the target audience for your paid ads very carefully. Displaying your ads to irrelevant users is wasting your ad budget.

When running paid campaigns, ask yourself questions such as:

• Whom do you want to target? Do you want to target your social media followers or new people? Do you want to target people from any specific gender, age, or interest group?
• Is the content of your ad relevant to the target audience for it?
• What do you want to achieve from your paid social campaign? Do you want users to visit your website or app, download an ebook, or buy a particular product?

Answering these questions carefully can help you spend your ad campaign budget wisely. You can engage your potential buyers with an attractive offer and keep your brand at the top of their minds. They’ll be more likely to buy from your brand if they’re looking for a similar product during that time.

Conclusion

Social media offers a great opportunity to promote your products and/or services and grow your brand. You can continuously audit your social media presence to analyze how people see your brand. It can help you understand whether you’re effectively reaching the right audiences.

You should also post your content at the right times to ensure that it gets maximum visibility from your target audience. This can help you get people to trust your brand and products/services.

How do you use social media to boost your brand’s value? Feel free to share your tips and insights in the comments below.

Shane Barker has been a digital marketing consultant for 15 years, with an emphasis on influencer marketing in the last five years. He specializes in sales funnels, targeted traffic, and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities. Connect with Shane on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The post Five Ways to Boost Your Brand Value Using Social Amplification appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog | Webbiquity.