AJ O'Leary

about • portfolio • essays • reviews • contact

Growing Your Brand with Social Media: A Starter’s Guide

This article was written on July 12, 2016, and may no longer reflect current industry trends or statistics.

Though Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and a host of similar services are as commonplace now as email and the telephone were in generations past, social media remains a maze for some and a minefield for others. If you’re not sure how to use social media to grow your brand, use this guide as a starting point!

Have A Point

In today’s attention span-starved world, it’s more important than ever to make the most out of every post you make. Increased democratization of content means you will find yourself competing with an ever-growing number of fellow publishers for those precious eyeballs.

When posting for your brand, ask yourself: Does my update have a point? Be short, sweet, and to the point. Don’t test the patience of your audience by dawdling. Brevity is the soul of online communication.

Identify Your Audience

While it’s true that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn can all be massively helpful platforms for extending your brand’s online reach, it’s important to remember that each site attracts – and caters to – a different demographic.

Facebook’s audience, for example, tends to skew older, while the site now rivals YouTube as a platform for publishing and sharing videos. Younger consumers are embracing Instagram, Tumblr, and Snapchat, while LinkedIn remains the domain of professionals. Twitter continues to attract users of all ages and backgrounds, though it is facing tough questions about its long-term viability.

If your brand is a highly specialized one, this might not matter as much to you. It’s unlikely that millennials will be interested in purchasing medical equipment on any platform. Still, tastes vary from site to site, which could very well mean that that video you’ve posted to Facebook won’t play well on Twitter, or that click-attracting Tumblr one-liner will catch crickets on LinkedIn. It’s up to you to develop unique brand strategies to handle each social networking service you plan to utilize.

Know Your Brand’s Limits

A strong social presence is key to your brand’s success, but knowing how to avoid overdoing it is just as important!

Determine a range of posts per day for your brand on each social networking service and stick to it. Keep in mind that different social networks call for different posting rates. One or two updates per day will generally work well for most brands on Facebook, while an hourly update (or, at the very least, several per day) plays better on Twitter.

Regardless of social network, it is crucial to send a strong message out without killing your audience with unnecessary or repetitive updates.

If your brand claims an international reach, take advantage of tools like HootSuite for Twitter and Facebook’s post-scheduling feature for Pages. That way, you can push content to your followers across the globe without needing to post live updates at 4 AM.

With these three easy tips in hand, hitting the ground running with your brand’s social presence won’t seem as scary as it did before. Always remember: It’s up to you to decide how to best implement a diverse social strategy for your brand, as no two social networks – nor brands – are the same. Good luck, and many happy returns to you!

If you liked this article, let me know.

Click here to view my other essays.