It’s no secret that having an online presence is necessary for being in the know, but coming up with an engaging social media profile isn’t always intuitive. Not everyone can be a hashtag wizard or a Twitter expert, and when your follower count has been stagnant for months, it’s easy to feel anxious.
While digital branding may be a relatively novel business strategy, the concept behind it is not. At the heart of branding is the consumer. For any business out there, nurturing this customer relationship is key.
To help you discover your unique and authentic brand image, we’ve pooled tips from some of our branding gurus within the WeWork community.
1. Find your voice
Jilly Hendrix and Felicity Sargent co-founded You Do You (Dot) Me to help others generate their own unique brand stories. They start the process by gleaning a captivating brand voice for every client. They believe that the voice of the brand is at the core of every business and is fundamental to developing the brand’s online image.
For those in the infancy stages of their companies, Hendrix and Sargent emphasize the importance of separating personal and brand voices. When a project is so close to your heart, as is the case with many startups, it is easy to confuse your personal voice with that of the brand, which can send mixed messages to your consumers.
2. Discover your audience
According to Sam Bays, founder of Spoke Creative Strategies, understanding who you are selling to is at the crux of branding.
“There are a lot of ways that you can actively grow your brand, but the heart of branding itself relies on getting close to your audience,” he explains. “You can have the sharpest-looking logo and the most on-point, brand-bedazzled website in the world, but if you’re trying to sell lawnmowers to cats, your brand will miss the mark.”
Bays suggests really getting to know your audience and it wants.
“Too many companies rush this process because it isn’t directly income-generating,” he explains, “but I promise you that a really fine-tuned brand that understands its audience will make leaps and bounds of profit in the long run.”
What can you do to get to know your consumers? Bays recommends giving them your time. Put your feelers out and listen. By personalizing the experience, whether it is through a personal email or an invitation to a Skype call or coffee meeting, you can learn directly from your most invested clients.
Be sure to ask pertinent questions, like “What makes your product stand out?” or “What do you think can be improved?” Most likely, your gesture of reaching out to them will motivate your clients to give you solid suggestions that can really elevate your business.
3. Stay true to who you are
The social media realm is fast-paced, and brands too often fall into the trend trap. However, the true merit in social media comes from maintaining brand authenticity. Gary Forman, founder of Gary Forman Creative, believes a brand is simply an extension of its creator.
“A brand isn’t something external that we construct; it’s a clear, compelling and unique means of conveying the essence of our identity,” he says. In that vein, developing a brand, especially a startup brand, is like a journey into self-discovery.
Forman cites Michelangelo when he suggests chipping away at the big picture to reveal the core of the brand: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”
This bare bones idea of genuine branding should also be applied to the social media platforms you opt to use. Not all brands need to be on every platform out there, and being selective in choosing the platforms that work with your brand adds to the credibility of your voice.
4. Create a brand experience
A brand should go deeper than surface-level glitter and glam. While the packaging, whether it’s the logo or website design, should undoubtedly be held to a high standard, what is equally important is generating the core environment that reflects your brand.
Thomas Graff, vice president of JP Linguistics, believes “building a brand is like building an experience: all details matter from all angles.”
The language company holds classes at its WeWork Soho office, where “students walk into the space and feel a sense of vibrancy and relaxation because of the colors, the wooden tables, the wallpapers, which all bring energy to our brand.”
Your brand’s vibe should permeate throughout all aspects of your marketing strategy.
5. Less is more
Hashtag campaigns are a great way to garner interest and participation among followers, but the key is to run them artfully.
“Hashtag campaigns are all about telling a story,” says Sargent, so dumping a sea of hashtags on every post is not only unsightly, but it also adds nothing of value to your social story. Sargent suggests keeping your hashtags simple yet inviting, so your followers will more readily want to interact with your campaign.
6. Engage your consumers
As a brand, you should stay up-to-date on trending news so that you can engage with your consumers in real time. Delve deeper into the analytics, and figure out what drives numbers up. Then set small goals and personal milestones. And while impressions are a good indicator for your brand’s progress, numbers do not always tell the whole story. Growing consistently is a surefire way to gain meaningful followers.
7. Be consistent
Consistency can lead to interaction. A brand that is coherent in its message and mission across the board easily attracts meaningful attention. When your brand has scheduled posts with corresponding tags, followers can have something to look forward to and participate in. Consistency should be maintained through authenticity of brand voice, regularly scheduled posts, and visual coherence.
8. Share the spotlight
Social media takeovers are a valuable tool for boosting traffic. Setting up a monthly takeover with social media influencers can really help put your brand out there. Takeovers are all about partnerships, so finding the right brands and people to takeover is very important. As in any partnership, synergistic growth is the focus, so maintain relationships with brands that let you remain authentic to your voice, and allow them the same liberty.
9. Be introspective
“Customers will gravitate toward brands that quickly and clearly let us know what they are and why they matter,” says Forman.
As obvious and to-the-point as your product or service may seem to you, it’s important to remember that you’ve been working on your brainchild for months or years. To the outsider, what your brand represents may not be so apparent.
Marcia Stepanek, founder and CEO of BrandStories Studios and multimedia strategy and cause video professor at Columbia University, argues that “few organizations today make their purpose known well, and the most effective way in today’s media world is with a short, 59-second video that profiles the impact your efforts are having on others.”
To guide you in clarifying your brand’s purpose, she suggests asking yourself and your colleagues some revealing questions about your company:
What is the purpose of your organization? Why does it need to exist?
What is your company’s highest point of contribution—what does it do that others simply cannot do at all, or as well?
When people think of you, what adjectives come to mind versus what adjectives do you want to come to mind?
Who do you exist to service, and what do they care about?
Your brand, like your company, is constantly evolving. Just remember: a great brand story is memorable and speaks to people across all barriers. When you have found your voice as a brand, the story that you build is sure to draw attention because it rings true to who you are.
Photo credit: Lauren Kallen