Role of Social Networking in Branding across Social Media Platforms

Branding is a holistic approach to reach out to the target audience, connect with them, get products known, build brand image, and create and manage market reputation. Branding activities were limited to electronic media before digital media took the world by storm. Electronic media-based branding, mostly in the form of advertising, was not instantly measurable in terms of outcomes, which social media made possible. Performance of all branding activities across digital media platforms including social networking sites is measurable in real time. Creative branding ideas make things spread like wildfire on social media. Evidently, social networking plays an important role in branding. The better you do social networking, the more effective branding is.

Social media can take your branding efforts to the next level in two major ways: influential marketing and social media advertising. Influential marketing, as the name suggests, comprises social networking and relationship with influencers in the online social space. Join geo-specific groups on Facebook and identify influencers with a good number of followers in your niche. Do continue networking with them by liking or sharing their posts and interacting with them through comments. Formulate creative strategies to connect them with your brand so they talk about it in their circles. Thus your reach will multiply through influential marketing. Make sure to keep in touch with the influencers even after the campaign is over.

You can make the same approach to your customers even though they are not influencers. Happy customers are not only returning customers but also marketing mediums. Go beyond the limits of doing business with them to build relationships with them online through social networking. Don’t hesitate to request your happy and satisfied customers to write a few words of review on your business’ Facebook page or make a tweet recommending your business on Twitter. No doubt, they will do branding through word of mouth offline. Since social media conversation influences or helps to make buying decisions, it’s necessary to do social networking with your existing customers too.

Social media contests are tried and tested branding efforts. Tap into the popularity and power of bloggers to push branding of your business through social media contests. Connect with top bloggers in your niche and let them participate in the contests. The winning bloggers will endorse your brand across social media. There is a proven record of branding through social media contests by biggies in every industry.

The judicious use of social networking in branding is full of benefits for businesses. It helps to keep a watch on competitions and their activities in the social media space. It fetches organic traffic from social media through shares, comments and group submission. The level of digital branding is in parallel with the number of social media shares. Social networking driven branding efforts generate relevant data about your customers and prospects in real time. The data packs in customer insights which help to redefine existing branding strategies and develop new ones with the focus on the business goals.