Why use Social Media for Brand Awareness? 6 Advantageous Ways to Increase Brand Awareness using Social Media Marketing

There are many benefits of using social media for brand awareness. The relationship between social media marketing and brand awareness is undeniable, they are intrinsically linked in the modern world. In 2022, there were 4.59 billion social media users worldwide and that number is set only to rise. To put that into perspective, over half the world’s population has a social account. This gives businesses a huge opportunity to connect with their target audience in a personal and authentic manner.

This is half the battle, if you can make people aware and make a good first impression, you are far more likely to sell your products or services down the line. Awareness is the first stage in a customer’s journey. Before they make that first purchase they need to get a bearing on what your brand represents, and how it aligns with their own personal identity.

In this blog, we will cover 6 key areas that will help you create a journey for your target audience while tracking the results to make for an actionable next step. Read on to learn how social media for brand awareness can be beneficial to you.

 

The importance of social media for brand awareness

Now that people are being brought up with the internet being a part of daily life, it is no wonder that social media has become integral to the majority of the population.  Generation by generation, it is also becoming more and more common for people to be social media users. While only 45% of people 65 and above have a social account, a substantial 84% of people aged 18-29 have at least one profile. With this number only increasing, it only stands to reason that you should be mastering social media for brand awareness purposes as well as recreation.

 

1. The power of visual content

Using compelling visuals in your social posts helps to boost their reach and engagement. Many platforms such as Instagram are visual-based from the offset, while others give you the option of posting with or without. Visual content can come in many forms, for instance, the image about teenagers here is an example of an infographic.

 These allow for easy information consumption in an aesthetically pleasing manner. It has another benefit for your brand as it also promotes that you are an expert in your field. By displaying information as a branded infographic, users reached by your post will internalise that you know the data well enough to create content.

Of course, there are many more humanising approaches. A simple selfie of you at your workplace helps to break down the barrier between the business and the customer. It helps soften the corporate edge a brand can have, especially when it is faceless. This brings balance into the equation. Although you might be keen to get your audience further down the funnel to get some contact details or make a sale, you can’t simply bombard them with sales and offers.

Visual content showing your personality, in locations that don’t feel too foreign from the rest of the user’s feed (you don’t want to remind people too much that you’re trying to get something from them down the line), helps them to get to know you and your brand in a much more natural way.

Effectively, visual content is a fantastic tool for harnessing social media for brand awareness by construing information clearly, as well as humanising your brand and lowering the boundary between customer and business.

2. The importance of engagement

Engagement is a huge part of social media. If you’re the life of the party, people will want to talk to you. You can ask questions, stir up a debate, and ask for people’s photos and videos, there are many ways to promote engagement to work for you and your brand.

Simply liking a post also counts as engagement, as it shows that people are taking the extra effort to reach their finger all the way over to the ‘thumbs up’ (no easy feat during a scroll). After your audience is aware that you exist, the next thing you should hope for is engagement.

It shows that they are becoming more familiar with your brand and see it as worth interacting with. You have something that they value enough for them to say ‘I exist, and this post reflects part of what I associate with myself’. As unnecessarily philosophical as that sounds, the point is if a post is funny, and you laugh, you don’t have to hit the laughing face react. In doing so, you are aligning your online presence with the post, interacting and engaging with it.

If people are doing this with your brand, it means you are at least worthy of their attention, and you can then target these users further down your customer journey.

 

Creating a social media strategy

 

Before you begin throwing out content on your social channels, it is important to have a long-term strategy in place. How often are you planning to post? Who is your target demographic? What ratio of different style posts are you going to try? How often will you optimise? And most importantly – what are your goals? When thinking in a larger scope, your social media for brand awareness campaigns can have a resounding influence throughout your customer journey.

It is important to set expectations early, especially if doing this for a client. Remember that brand awareness does not necessarily translate to sales, it’s in the title – it’s about awareness. Other stages further down the funnel tackle conversions, so it is highly advantageous to have an objective based on reach and impressions rather than acquisitions. So, where do you begin?

 

 

 

3. Setting objectives

 

You can simplify your overall goals into this handy acronym – is it SMART?

Specific – Is your objective concise enough that you can easily track the results? Something like ‘increase brand reach by 10% by next quarter’. It also has the benefit of being specific to reach, as there are other KPIs that you could use. The more specific the better.

By doing so, you are making it Measurable. This is going to make everyone’s lives easier. If you are a one-person show, you can focus on one key area, and if you have a larger team, there is less room for the objective to be lost in translation. Different platforms have different analysis tools for you to use, which I mention later. The important thing to remember is to have a measurable objective from the very beginning. If your boss wants an update, well all you have to do is tell them ‘reach is up 14.2%, which means we have over-achieved our goal’. That sounds good, right?

By choosing a 10% increase in brand reach, you’ve also selected an Achievable goal. Make sure you don’t pick something outlandish with no empirical basis. If you’re not sure where to start, start small and work your way up. Better to do that than feel like a failure right off the bat.

Is your objective Relevant to your overall marketing goal? By increasing reach, how does that benefit your business? Obviously the more reach the more aware people will be of your brand, but if you can dig in and understand how it relates to your whole marketing funnel, you can have a more bird’s eye view of your customer journey. Always best to think ahead.

And with thinking ahead in mind, make sure your objective is Time Bound. By giving a clear start and end date to your campaign, you have a clear window for analysis. And your next campaign should have the same time frame for easy comparing and contrasting. Also, a task tends to stretch to fit the timescale you give it. A project with no clear end date tends to get pushed to the back of the pile, and one too far in the future will become less of a pressing matter.

When you combine all of these, your social media for brand awareness campaign will have wings.

 

4. Identifying the right platforms for your brand

 

There is a multitude of viable platforms to choose from. There is no clear best social media for brand awareness; your choice will depend on some key factors. If catering to a younger demographic, it might be that you put your efforts into TikTok. If your brand has a B2B model, then LinkedIn might make the most sense. If your boundaries aren’t so clearly defined, maybe Facebook with its gargantuan 2.39 billion userbase is a good place to start.

Just remember not to spin too many plates at once, shiny object syndrome is rife in digital marketing! It is always good to experiment, but make sure you have a strong foothold in one or two major platforms so you don’t lose focus. The best thing to think about is what you can offer that’s valuable to your audience. For instance, if you have an interesting process behind the scenes, maybe Youtube would be great for a ‘how it works’ series to boost awareness on that platform. If you own a clothing brand, an Instagram account based primarily on photos would be beneficial to show off your ranges.

Before you jump on a platform, work out who your audience is, and put yourself in their shoes. What kind of content would you like on your feed? What information would benefit you? How is it best conveyed? Video? Text? Images?

A great way to kickstart this research is to look into your competitors and peers. Where do they concentrate their brand efforts? What’s working best for them?

After you’ve identified these factors, you can make an informed decision, that isn’t based on the dreaded shiny object syndrome.

 

Measuring the success of your social media campaigns

 

After you’ve picked the most relevant social media for brand awareness, it’s time to concentrate your efforts and track that data. There are many different metrics that you could track, as already mentioned reach is a viable one. It is important to pick something that you can easily analyse and track progress. There are many tools you can use to help you with this, we will go onto that below.

 

5. Metrics to track

Here are some of the most important metrics for you to keep an eye on when concentrating on social media for brand awareness;

Reach

This is a measurement of the number of people that have seen your content. This helps you understand the size of your audience, and the potential your campaign has.

Impressions

This is the number of times a person has seen your content. This is valuable as it shows just how present your posts are on people’s feeds. If they are revisiting your posts of their own accord, that is obviously a good sign that your content is of value.

Audience growth

This is a surefire indicator that your brand is growing. As people like, subscribe, and follow your brand, they are telling you they want to see more. This means they are interested in what you have to say and see you as an authority in your field or give value to their lives in some way.

Engagement

This can take many forms, all of which have value. Making use of social media for brand awareness has the benefit of moving people from just being aware to engaging. Reactions or likes are pretty much a universal feature on all platforms and are probably the first thing people’s eyes are drawn to after your content sinks in. It’s a good metric for showing just how many people are enjoying your content and interacting with it, rather than passively viewing it.

Comments are a step further, people taking time to write something shows more intent. A share to their feed is in the same vein, as it indicates they are willing to associate your brand with their personal page.

 

6. Tools and platforms

Many platforms have their native analytics tools that you can use to gain valuable insights. Meta business suite is used for Facebook and Instagram for instance.

There are also third-party tools such as Hootsuite that provide a comprehensive look at the data, allowing you to track multiple platforms under one roof. What you use is mostly up to your preferences.

After you’ve decided on your platforms, do some research and find what is best for you and your team.

Final thoughts

 

By now you should have a grasp on why utilising social media for brand awareness is essential for your business. As the first step in a customer’s journey, it is imperative you make sure it’s a pleasant one. The awareness stage is key to building your brand’s identity, so make sure you are harnessing the full power of social media. Do the research and choose your areas wisely, then keep a keen eye on the data collected. With these things in mind, the awareness of your brand will surely grow. The sky is the limit.

If you are looking to learn more, or need a hand navigating the world of digital marketing, don’t hesitate to contact Dynamic!