9 Best Practices for Growing Your Brand Online
Whether your brand is big or small, there is one thing we all have in common and that is wanting to grow your brand! Growing your audience and brand awareness is one aspect of increasing your overall revenue growth. While creating loyal customers that come back time and again is important, you can’t always expect that audience to want to purchase more and more, and that is where growing your brand online can help.
In order to grow your brand on social media platforms, there are some best practices you should follow to keep your social media strategy running like a well-oiled machine. Let’s dive in!
1 | Know Your Audience
You can’t expect to grow your brand and your following if you don’t have a good understanding of your target audience. So doing some research on your audience is key. Some of the things you’ll want to know is who they are, what they want, and how they spend their time on social platforms. Knowing this information will guide all of the other tips below, as well as your overall social strategy.
2 | Use the Right Platforms for Your Brand
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Snapchat, Tiktok…there are so many social platforms out there but your brand doesn’t need to be on all of them. Think about what platforms your target audience is most likely to use. For example, if you are a B2B company, LinkedIn is probably the top option.
Now if your target audience uses 5 or even 7 platforms, you don’t have to connect with them on all of those platforms either. In fact, doing so could contribute to brand fatigue. So consider this:
- Does your team have the bandwidth to create relevant content for a specific platform?
- Does the purpose of the platform fit your brand?
- What’s the current ROI of your efforts on that platform?
If a platform isn’t a fit for your audience, you don’t need to be active there. Creating more thoughtful content for fewer platforms will always serve you better than scrambling to be everywhere all at once.
3 | Test It!
Some tactics work while others don’t. What’s the difference? The only way to know is by implementing a consistent testing strategy. This is known as A/B testing. We could get into a whole blog post on A/B testing alone, but the key is to remember to only change one small aspect of a post or ad at a time. If you change more than one thing between version A and version B, you won’t know what change made the difference!
4 | Stick to Branding
The best performing brands online are always consistent and recognizable. So set clear brand guidelines and stick to it. This means using the same logo, colors, and voicing across all platforms so no matter which platform you are on, audiences will immediately recognize you. This not only eliminates confusion, but also increases trust with your target audience.
5 | Learn About the Algorithms and SEO
Each platform has an algorithm and they keep the specifics of it under lock and key. But there are some things that the platforms do tell you, such as using relevant keywords can help increase your SEO on the platform or that comments push your post up further in the algorithm than likes. So dig into and learn what you can about the SEO and algorithm “dos and don’ts” for each platform you are on.
6 | Schedule It
Scheduling your content in advance can make your life so much easier. Plus, planning out your content ahead of time helps you create higher-quality content. Several of the platforms have their own built-in scheduling tool, or you can use a third-party app that helps you schedule your content out across multiple platforms at once. So give yourself time to make high-quality content by planning out what you want to create, and then scheduling it in advance because your audiences won’t stick around if you don’t consistently create high-quality content.
7 | Listen
Communication is a two-way street. This old saying rings just as true for communication on social platforms. Social listening provides free, real-time research on what your audience is saying about your brand, your products, and your competitors (also known as brand sentiment). Set up a strategy to listen, checking for users making recommendations or sharing your content. Then dig deeper into the trends; this can help you with tweaking your strategy and even new product development, so look for holes in your industry that you can fill. Then track brand sentiment to see what people are saying, both positive and negative.
8 | Respond Promptly
Speaking of negative sentiment, you want to make sure that you are responding promptly to negative brand sentiment as well as DMs and comments, especially those seeking customer service. Responding shows you care, and engaging with users, even on positive comments, can help boost your posts online. Here are some tips:
- Set up an autoresponder for DMs that let users know you will get to them as soon as possible, or use AI to help answer simple questions.
- Respond promptly to comments on your posts and engage with your audience.
- Respond to both positive and negative brand sentiment shared by users on their profiles and feeds. Remember, if it is negative, you want to respond promptly, but you also want to be thoughtful in your response!
9 | Know Your Specs
Finally, make sure that you are using the right specs for each platform. Not all image sizes work across all platforms and not all platforms give you the same character count for your posts. Even if the overall message of the post stays the same, customizing the media specs and caption length will keep your profile polished and professional!
Key Takeaways
Social media is constantly changing, such as platforms tweaking their algorithms. But by following some of these best practices, you’ll be able to stay on top of those changes, helping you save time and grow your audience!
Need help growing your brand? Tintero Creative is your digital marketing partner! We help you create social media strategies that tell your story in a way that works for your industry, digital trends, and marketing best practices. Schedule a free consultation today!