Social Media and how to use it to develop your brand

Do you wish that you knew where to start with social media and how best to use it to maximise your brands presence? These are a few hints and tips to help you along the way…

Firstly i think its important to start by saying that the number 1 key to all social media is to put out consistent content that solves your audiences problems. Think about building a relationship with your audience through your content. Dont think about monetizing anything just yet, this will come.

Below i have listed the key social media platforms and a quick paragraph on how best to exploit this platform for your brand.

If you are interested in developing your personal brand open this link in another tab for after:

https://medium.com/@james.a.holmes1/personal-branding-b23c71d2e577

Facebook is the #1 social media platform in the world with 2.6 billion customers. Giving you the biggest audience size to market your brand which is a good place to start. Having this big of a potential audience gives you the best chance of finding your customers.

You can share a wide range of information on the platform allowing you to share unrestricted statuses, blog shares, stories, images and videos etc. For someone knew to social media its great to explore your creative marketing skills with different types of posts and see what resonates with your audience.

Create a business page on facebook and get started. You can manage your analytics, Share brand related content and offers, services and goods over the site which is create to turn your audience into customers.

Facebook does have some disadvantages however, it can get messy with the amount of content that is available and sometimes more isn't always more and your message can sometimes be lost in the timeline. Make extra effort to make your content stands out on the facebook feed.

Instagram in my eyes is equally as good as facebook to access your audience to solve their problems. It is a platform that is highly visual both for photo and video and also the new release of ‘instagram reels’ brings in a tik tok style feature to appeal to the younger audience.

Instagram too has a large audience with over 1 billion monthly active users. Giving you a vast amount of people in which you can identify your audience.

The great feature about Instagram is the explore page. The explore page is an algorithm driven feature that can give your brand maximum exposure should you be lucky enough to get onto it. The explore page is comprised of posts with high engagement, photos that have been liked by people that have posted photos you have liked (slightly confusing so read that again and understand it) and posts from similar accounts to you. For your brand, instagram explore page should be your goal for maximum exposure.

Like Facebook Instagram does have a few downsides. The follow system is in the hands of the audience as opposed to the facebook friends model where once you become friends, your friends see all your content. So you have to work extra hard to genenrate those followers but if you are solving your audiences problems the followers should come.

LinkedIn for me is the next best social platform purely because you can connect with professionals within your industry and not only share your content but consume content that industry experts are sharing. This allows you to open up your personal network and also gain exposure for your brand, industry knowledge and build collaborations with similar people in your position.

LinkedIn also shares content on your home feed that you have liked and shared with everyone in your network. So if you are putting out content that is engaging then you can quickly accumalate a lot of eyes on your content very quickly. If your content is good then your exposure can easily out perform any other social platform.

The downside to LinkedIn is (i believe) that it is not fully appreciated and it is not seen as important as other social media platforms. It has 310 million monthly active users which is a fraction of the audiences that can be accessed elsewhere. Although the numbers are smaller i think you do get a higher quality of users.

Twitter has obviously done great things in the social networking world by creating the hashtag. Hashtags are now everywhere and i strongly suggest you use them, not only on twitter but on all your social media platforms. Dont go overboard with them and use a maximum of 3 would be my suggestion. The beauty of hashtags is that every social platform now uses them as a way to generate greater exposure for your content.

Twitter’s restriction of 140 characters is a positive feature as it allows you the user to be more concise and also doesnt clog up your twitter feed like you might see in other platforms with no restrictions.

Twitters downside is that you have to be more pro-active in your tweeting and create a higher volume of tweets to engage with your audience as just as quickly as you have been seen then you are gone. Which can be difficult to keep both the volume and the quality high.

Its important to use all 4 of the social media platforms i have mentioned above and use them in the correct way. In doing so you are giving yourself and your brand the greatest possible chance of getting out there and solving your audiences problems with your product of service.

Just remember that cosistent helpful content is key. Target it towards a specific audience type and your great brand will shine. Good luck!

If you want any more information on how best to market your brand on social media then either contact me through my social links above of email me on: james.a.holmes1@gmail.com