How to Brand Yourself on Social Media (in 4 Simple Steps).

If you're starting a personal or professional business or project, you can't ignore your social media branding.

Social media is a place to be a brand. Almost everyone (including your mom, grandma, and great-aunt Joanie) spends half their waking hours checking various social media platforms. Plus, since the golden rule of marketing is "meet people where they are," social media offers you the opportunity to connect with your audience, deliver messaging, and convert that audience into customers. However, you can't just create a few social media profiles and expect business to start rolling in (if only it were that easy!). Just as you need a solid brand strategy for your business, you need to brand yourself there too if you want to be a social media success story. Social media branding lets you cut through the clutter (and do much more), so your target audience can easily recognize you and you ultimately get more business, leads, and sales. But how exactly do you do that?  

1. Keep your branding consistent across platforms

The most important element of social media branding? Consistency, consistency, consistency. If your website has a brand style (specific colors, fonts, and product images), but your Facebook has a completely different look and feel… Which is completely different from your Twitter… And your Instagram and Pinterest… And your Snapchat… Well, you get the idea. Inconsistent branding is confusing. Your audience expects to experience your brand the same way no matter where they live. Having a brand that's all over the place on social media hurts your overall brand, brand awareness, engagement… And ultimately your sales too. When you're creating your social media profiles, your brand DNA needs to be infused into every single one. Do you have a brand color palette? Excellent. Use those colors on your profile. Do you have a hero image people associate with your brand? Great. Use it as your Facebook or Twitter cover photo. Do you have a logo? Sweet (and if you don't, it's time to design one!). Use it as your profile picture so your audience can recognize you instantly.  

2. Create share-worthy content

A huge part of success on social media is spreading the word about your brand to new people. And the way to do that? Create share-worthy content. Content is the foundation of social media. In fact, there's an entire industry built around it: content marketing. When it comes to social media branding, you want to establish yourself as a go-to source for great content, no matter what your industry is. Your content is the foundation of your social media success and should inspire people to click, engage, and share. Visualmodo put together a nice article explaining different ways to integrate your content marketing into social media. The key to successful, recognizable social media branding is creating content that inspires your audience to share and engage. Figure out what content best connects with your specific target audience, post regularly, and watch the shares roll in. Whether you decide to focus on producing video content or memes, GIFs, or written posts, you need to make sure you're branding yourself as a company that creates killer content.  

3. Add stunning and inspiring visuals

Speaking of content, you can't talk about social media branding without mentioning images. In fact, some platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are based entirely on images. Images boost engagement like crazy. Facebook posts with images get 2.3x more engagement, and tweets with images get 150% more retweets than tweets without. If your imagery isn't a priority in your social media branding strategy, you're going to fall flat. When creating brand imagery for social media, stay true to yourself, capture your audience's attention, and look great. Now, keep in mind, your images don't have to be solely based on your product, service, or yourself (if you're a personal brand). As long as they're on-brand, they'll work. Bottom line: social media is a visual-heavy place, and therefore, to succeed in social media branding, you'll need killer imagery. Figure out what killer imagery means for your brand, and then post it on image-driven platforms.  

4. Be social

Our final tip is this: it's called social media for a reason. If you want to find success with social media branding, you actually need to be social. When one of your followers tweets at you, tweet back! If someone asks a question on your Facebook page, answer it! If someone comments on your Instagram post, comment back right away! Social media is a conversation, so it has to go both ways. Build your brand on social media to be social and engage with your fans. The more engaged you are, the more engaged they are!  

Get out and brand

You know you have what it takes to win the social media branding game. So what are you waiting for?