Stacey is looking for ways to encourage people in her area to visit her recently opened ramen bar and restaurant. She launched the restaurant with the help of family and friends, giving out flyers, blasting music on opening day, and even setting up her business’s social media pages.

After a while, she isn’t welcoming new faces to her restaurant and learns that nearby ramen places are becoming more competitive. Stacey needs a brand strategy to stand out from all the ramen bars.

An excellent avenue for Stacey to share her brand is on social media. With a social media branding strategy, she can boost her business’s awareness, build credibility, and stand out from the competition.

This blog post will guide you through the following:

• What is social media branding?
• Why is social media branding important?
• 4 social media branding strategies for small-to-midsized businesses (SMB)

What is social media branding?

Social media branding is the process of creating an identifiable and unique image of your business on different social media platforms. Using impactful storytelling and digital tools native to these platforms, you communicate messages that draw out an emotional response from your audience.

Let’s go back to Stacey as an example. Suppose she sources all her produce from local farms to support family farms and ranches. She can share her brand’s story about supporting local farms through a series of videos and even feature the farms she works with.

One of the positive emotional responses she can get from her audience is a new follow on her social media page. Another positive response is a new customer visiting her restaurant for the first time, because they wanted to support restaurants that source locally.

Social media branding makes businesses approachable and relatable, because they are connecting with their audience through platforms that encourage interaction and engagement.

The importance of social media branding

Now that we know what social media branding is, let’s go through what makes social media branding important for businesses:

• Social media branding increases awareness of your business: For people to engage with your business, they need to know who you are. Social media lets you introduce your brand to the audiences engaged on the platform.
• Social media branding builds credibility and relatability: When you deliver a consist brand image, you help build trust with your brand on social media. You also get to show sides of your business people haven’t seen. That leads to increased credibility and relatability.
• Social media branding creates more authentic relationships: Social media platforms let prospects or customers leave a comment on your post or reach out to you via messaging. These one-on-one conversations make them feel heard and seen, creating genuine relationships.

4 social media branding strategies for SMBs

If you want to start with social media branding check out these four strategies that will help your business:

1. Have a consistent brand image
2. Segment your buyer personas
3. Develop a social media content strategy
4. Use automation tools

Let’s go through each one:

1. Have a consistent brand image and tone

Being consistent with your social media branding boosts your credibility.

While you may have various audiences on different social media platforms, your business needs to stay true to its brand image across all platforms. Start with having the same profile and cover photos for your social media pages.

Your short bio and company description may vary across platforms, but they should convey the same values and messages. Your posts should also have the same tone across different platforms, communicating similar messages and values important to your business.

Have you ever checked a business’s Facebook and YouTube pages, and for a moment you thought you were looking at different brands? Such is the case when a business is not consistent with its brand image and tone across all platforms.

Mazda’s Facebook and YouTube pages have the same profile and cover photos. Their profile descriptions are worded differently, but convey the same message of how the company puts importance on carefully crafting its vehicles.

2. Segment your buyer personas

Your audiences across platforms are different. Your TikTok audience is probably younger than your Facebook followers, and your Instagram audience may prefer seeing stunning photos of your products.

Segment your buyer personas. You can do this by starting with your existing customer database. Segment them according to the different social media platforms they use, and tailor your strategy accordingly.

3. Develop a social media content strategy

Now that you’ve segmented your personas, you can craft your social media content strategy for your different platforms. You may be communicating with a diverse audience on various platforms, but make sure your brand voice and tone remain consistent across all platforms.

Plan and create content that’s suitable for specific platforms and audiences.

Let’s go back to Stacey.

Her brand story of local sourcing can be chopped into several Reels for Instagram. On Facebook, she can share a series of images with quotes from the full-featured video, which can be found on her YouTube page.

4. Use automation tools

A handful of tools can complement your social media branding strategies. Some of them are:

• Content scheduler: Tools like Buffer let you schedule your content for all platforms ahead of time.

• Social media analytics tools: Want to know how your competitors perform? Tools like Social Blade track your competitors on different social media platforms, so you know how much work you need to do to get ahead.
• Chatbots: If you want your page to respond to FAQs anytime a user messages your business, chatbots are a nifty addition to your strategy. Make sure your chatbot’s tone is still on brand.