Effective Social Media to Help Boost Brand Awareness
Effective social media can help boost brand awareness and deepen your relationship with customers. Thus, having a social media strategy in place should be an even greater part of your post-COVID-19 marketing plan.
Social media should always be included in your company’s marketing approach and be a vital part of your public relations strategy. It allows you the opportunity to strengthen connections with current customers and place your company out front with potential customers. An understanding of how to use social media can effectively boost brand awareness.
There are two types of social media use for brands—proactive and reactive. Both of these interactions generate brand awareness.
Proactive social media is where your brand can sparkle as a subject matter expert. By structuring your content from a problem-solving standpoint, you can respond to customer needs and explain how your specific ingredient, product, or service meets those needs. This type of interaction is a key component to building brand awareness.
Reactive social media means becoming part of the many discussions that are occurring on social platforms. Responding and interacting with your current customers or clients, whether on your own posts or theirs, is a great example of this. This type of content usage increases customer engagement, meaning your brand continues to be at the front of the customer’s mind.
By using proactive and reactive approaches to promote your brand, you encourage current and potential customers to view you as a trustworthy source of information.
A question I often hear from virtually everyone in senior management positions is, “Why spend the effort with social media and invest actual dollars if it does not directly increase sales or lead generation?” The benefits of having a strong social platform presence will include:
- Building trust and brand loyalty with your key audiences
- Establish greater personal and human connections with customers
- Boost brand awareness
- Increase company and product knowledge and improve market timing
- Timely, cost-effective marketing
It is important to realize that social media participation not only means offering or responding to a topic with the written word. Video, podcast links, motion graphics, or infographics are additional ways to create meaningful content that will attract attention.
To be honest, at the end of the day, having a strong social media presence may or may not directly impact your sales goals. It will, however, increase brand awareness and your ability to be seen as an expert with subject matter around the products and services you offer. Brand awareness keeps your company top of mind and ahead of your competitors.
Social media provides an excellent opportunity to promote timely content in a quick and cost-effective manner and encourages interpersonal interactions—meaning you have the opportunity to strengthen relationships with your customers, be it existing or potential.
Sheldon Baker is a senior member of Baker Dillon Group LLC and has created numerous nutraceutical brand marketing communications and public relations campaigns for well-known supplement and food industry companies. For brand marketing consulting, contact him at SBaker@BakerDillon.com.
