Let’s face it: Practically everyone knows how to make a social media account. There are more than 4.33 billion social media users across the globe, so it may feel nearly impossible to make your brand heard on social media.
How do you create lasting connections with others on social media?
Over half of the world’s population use these digital platforms, so it is vital for your brand to be authentic, relatable and analytical to stand out and achieve those engaged relationships.
Keep It Real
That’s right – authenticity is key when using social media. Being real with your followers can forge a deeper relationship with consumers, encouraging brand loyalty while also sparking the attention of future patrons. 86% of consumers say that authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support, so the route to success is by infusing your social platforms with — well, you.
Social media is a simple and inexpensive way to showcase your brand’s qualities. Staying true to your brand on social media will promote growth and support from followers. Users will have the opportunity to interact, discover and get to know your brand, and they will value the sense of sincerity.
However, keeping your presence genuine while also positively representing your brand can feel like a steep task. Not only is the competition fierce, but these platforms are a fast-moving space. Social media consists of carefully selected, filtered moments. It’s challenging to ignore conforming to the picture-perfect expectation of today’s social media.
Let your brand speak for itself and avoid falling into the depth of conformity.
Discovering your brand’s archetype is a useful way to familiarize yourself with these concepts. Archetypes represent values, traits and a pattern of ideas for your brand. With more than 500,000 brands worldwide, consumers are searching for a brand that makes them feel validated and heard. By choosing an archetype, your customers feel more connected to your brand and feel as though they can trust you – making them more likely to convert.
Well-known brands have applied and leveraged their archetypes. Brand archetypes can connect with an audience emotionally and personally, which is important when constructing a strong social platform.
Red Bull deploys The Explorer archetype throughout its advertising; this archetype taps into their audience’s desire to travel and discover new places, people and worlds.
The brand’s social platforms reflect this fearless personality. Red Bull’s Instagram account illustrates the excitement that comes with exploring and taking risks, which appeals to their thrill-seeking audience.
Archetypes are no joke – since the implementation of Red Bull’s dauntless archetype in 1987, the company has sold a cumulative 75 billion cans. Red Bull’s strategic branding stands out from the rest – each social media post tells a miniature story about an athlete or daredevil, giving the audience something to connect to. Red Bull’s method of storytelling is the perfect way to create a bond with an audience because it shows the brand is genuine.
Archetypes can be used as a method of storytelling, attention-grabbing and diversifying your brand. Although it’s not a necessary step in developing your brand’s voice, it may be the stepping stone in molding your followers to a loyal audience.
Humanize Your Brand
One of the best ways to build strong relationships with your audience is to be human. While you don’t have to be overly casual or funny, there are many ways for your audience to meet and enjoy your brand’s voice.
Brands that engage on social media channels have higher loyalty rates from their customers. Engagement with your audience quickly builds rapport and offers chances to convert followers into clients.
When you’re starting to humanize your brand on social media, implement these tricks to further diversify your brand and forge those vast connections:
- Engage in ongoing conversations and become part of the story.
- Look for ways to show up in different channels and talk about what people are talking about (i.e., hashtags, joining an event, participating in various discussions).
- Be intentional. Intentional content helps you stay relevant, but authentic engagement takes you a step further.
One of the best ways to engage with your followers and sound relatable is to jump onto popular trends, topics and hashtags.
But jumping on a trend isn’t as straightforward as it seems – social media is an intricate, noisy world of people and discussions. How do you cut through the digital noise and identify trends that your followers will appreciate?
Turn to your audience to learn their likes (and dislikes).
Instead chasing viral moments, brands need to use media that is already on-trend for their brand, industry and audience. By participating in relevant trends that relate to your brand’s core, you will start to build stronger bonds with your followers.
For instance, BCom works to be bold, authentic and all in all the time in everything we do. Our page is open, relatable and consistent. We jump on trends that relate to our brand.
BCom was all in on the Bernie Sanders mitten movement.
At President Biden’s inauguration, an image of Bernie Sanders wearing mittens went viral on the internet, sparking hundreds of photoshopped memes on social media.
Around this time, BCom sent an email newsletter promoting internship applications — featuring a photoshopped image of Sanders sitting with our team. The email asks, “Got a Berning Passion for Digital?” It caught the attention of many subscribers, because it was relevant, simple and related well to our brand.
Humans relate with and trust other humans. If your brand is coming across as untrustworthy or unrelatable, your followers may not feel as inclined to choose it. Humanizing your brand tells your followers that you care, which develops lasting relationships.
Dig Into Your Data
Your followers tell you what they want to see. Can you translate and replicate that information?
Social media analytics simplify data from thousands of networks, people and activities. Lucky for us, nearly every platform provides a form of insight into your followers’ likes and dislikes.
Analytics help companies address trends, conversions and potential competitors. These insights can be used to drive strategic decisions for your social platforms. Thus, building relationships with your audience – you have the upper hand when it comes to distributing content that your followers will connect with.
Martin Bionics, an orthotics and prosthetic service, hired us to capture leads and fill appointment slots in all five locations across the U.S. Our paid media strategy gathered just that – while also connecting amputees with life-changing technology. Read more about it here: BCom Blog: Some Heroes Build Limbs.
We understood that the amputee community is tight-knit; the community consists of support groups and friendly faces. We needed to compose a strategy that proved the technology was worth talking about.
How did we do it? Data, data, data.
We tested our client’s website and examined the pages, buttons and traffic sources that were generating the highest results.
Next, we targeted audiences on multiple levels and platforms – Facebook, YouTube and Google keywords – garnering the attention of users interested in large amputee organizations + others who have previously engaged with national competitors.
We dove into Martin Bionics’ data, discovered what its audiences were looking for and made connections with 2.1 million users within the first six months of our campaign. Facebook acquired over 29,000 post reactions and 6,600 shares – all thanks to our high-quality leads and authentic, vast connections. Most importantly, our campaign spread awareness about the Socketless Socket™ and gave amputees hope for the future.
What's Next?
Building meaningful connections on social media is no small task. Still, an authentic, human and data-driven social media strategy is the key to successfully creating relationships and diversifying your brand.
We specialize in creating authentic digital marketing and we always deliver results to our clients. See who we’ve worked with and how we used creative content and strategy to establish a presence on social media.
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