How can social media simplify your brand's message?

Create engaging, straightforward content that aligns seamlessly with your brand identity. Utilize visuals, as humans are naturally drawn to images over text. Ensure consistency across all platforms for a unified brand image. Encourage audience interaction through compelling narratives. Deliver a clear, relatable message that resonates with your target audience. Regularly assess and refine your approach to maintain a dynamic and impactful social media presence.

Simplify your brand's message in the following ways; + Trim the excess; be concise + Embrace visuals; speak visually + Hashtags amplify your message + Engage in conversations + Consistent beat builds brand recall. + Authenticity is your backstage pass.

Social media simplifies your brand's message through concise content, visual impact, and consistent branding. Target specific demographics for tailored communication, engage in real-time interactions for clarity, and use storytelling to make complex messages relatable. The feedback loop ensures adjustments, while shareable content extends your message's reach organically. In essence, social media streamlines communication, making your brand's core ideas accessible and resonant in a fast-paced digital landscape.

Ensuring that all of your social media content is aligned to your brands core values is key - after all, everything you post is a representation of the brand and it is your job as a social media marketer to ensure its protection! Review tone of voice, personality and any creative alignment that you should make prior to building your content strategy - if these documents are not already available, connect with internal stakeholders and the SLT to build them! Not only are they crucial for social media marketing managers but they are also really valuable to other teams within a business such as design, sales and HR!

Another thing I’ll add to this is value. Adding value to all the points mentioned above will solidify your brand and content that is pushed onto social media networks. You can create top notch content, but if there is no value, there is no brand.

It's ideal to have a presence across various platforms. Take Gary Vaynerchuk as inspiration—he's active on major platforms. If you lack a team like his, concentrate on platforms popular with your target audience. For instance, if you're targeting Gen Z, prioritize TikTok and YouTube. I recommend investing 80% of your efforts in the primary platform and allocating 20% to others. A compelling example is Vine; when it disappeared, creators who went all-in had to start from scratch on different platforms.

Consider your bandwidth. Don’t commit to many channels and then not have the time or the resource to nurture and dedicate the attention they need to be valuable. Otherwise you’ll just end up posting for the sake of it.

Firstly consider what your objectives/goals are for social media. Collaborate with stakeholders internally and ensure alignment on this as certain social media platforms are better suited for specific objectives. Also consider your teams size as this will influence where you can really make your mark via social media. I've worked as a team of one in previous roles and focusing on just two social media platforms was a challenge; remember that it isn't simply 'making a post', to be really successful you/your team will be planning an editorial calendar, conducting community management, putting together social monitoring/listening, pulling reports and (potentially) even developing your own creative. Don't bite off more than you can chew!

You should choose platforms that your customers are active on. These are the top platforms for each marketing focus. Top 3 B2B platforms: - LinkedIn - Youtube - Facebook Top 3 B2C platforms: - TikTok - Instagram - Facebook

Creating the right message and tone for the right platform is key to showing up authentically. Your message will never get through if you’re trying to make your LinkedIn the same as your Tiktok. There are lots of similarities between platforms where you can use a similar message and creative, but the main thing to focus on is what the consumer is on that social site to do. Are they networking? Learning? Consuming content? Chatting with friends? These can help you better tailor the message to the channel!

Ensure that everything you are publishing on social media is aligning to your brand's identity. This doesn't stop at creative, but also the tone of voice, personality and manner in which you engage with your community. Whilst this can be different across different social media platforms, ensure that it is consistent with everything you do on a given platform - otherwise this can confuse and alienate the most active engagers that form part of your overall community.

Consistency and Congruency to your vision are the keys to brand success because they create space for the audience to have an opportunity to be aware, understand, and trust. With visual identity, you are inviting people to enrol if they like by purchasing a product or service or just signing up with the expectation they get what they are promised to receive.

Keep your brand style the same. The only element you should flex is your tone of voice for each platform, even then don’t tip the scales as you may have the same followers across different channels who will notice this and may question your authenticity.

Visual consistency is key on social media because you never know what post will get a new consumer to your page. You want to make sure no matter what touch point you’re creating that it feels consistent. Consider if you did a thread, people may only be exposed to one in the middle of a series. So the rest of the series and your page should be very consistent so people know they have found the next or previous post that got them hooked!

As obvious as it may seem, never forget that "a picture is worth a thousand words." When utilizing social media, all elements—your logo, tone, colors, fonts, and more—converge to create a cohesive aesthetic that can communicate far more to the consumer than a mere company name or headline. Consider a cologne or perfume commercial; they skillfully present imagery that captures the scent and emotions evoked by a fragrance. This is the mindset you should adopt for your social media presence: "How can people gather an understanding of what we're about with just one glance?"—and then follow up with the remaining details.

To my point above, while it’s good to be consistent on branding and style, your brand tone of voice has the freedom to be adjusted to suit the different audiences across the different social channels.

Following up on my previous comment (and now using food metaphors), the tone is the meat of your sandwich. The aesthetics and imagery will grab people's attention, much like appealing plating or packaging. However, the tone is what convinces people to order your food; it's the list of ingredients and the vivid picture painted in the description. To make a lasting impression, it's crucial to employ a clear and consistent tone. Once you've piqued people's interest with imagery, they want to understand what you're truly about. An inconsistent tone not only confuses readers but also portrays a confused image of your brand.

Creating a clear and concise tone of voice gives your audience a better user/customer journey. Example: When a member sees your message on a social post and clicks it, they will land on a website landing page with the same messaging. If there is a video on the landing page, it will have the same messaging and the same tone of voice. Result: Implementing this method across your channels and campaigns will ensure that your audience starts to recognize your brand and keep your brand top of mind when in a buying situation.

Remember that tone of voice goes beyond what you write as a description for your content. You should also be responding to comments regularly and interacting with the community, where this voice will really shine! If you're working with multiple people, or preparing for succession planning, I suggest making a document to reference with how your brand voice would respond to different queries. Are you exciting and energetic? Serious and to-the-point? Joking around with fans? This will all depend on how your brand sells to your customers, and having a good idea of your target demographics is critical!

Long gone are the days of maximising your 'post quota' to ensure that you are seen as often as possible on a social media timeline. Before publishing a post, consider the goal that you are hoping that this post/series of posts are going to achieve for your business, is it going to do so? Also consider the creative, the copy, the formatting of the post - does this align with your brands values and will it likely be engaged by your community in a suitable way? Finally, consider if you are going to be boosting/amplifying the post via paid social - if not then consider your A/B tests as to the optimum time to publish. If so - consider your targeting and being confident that you have built out your campaign objectives in a concise/clear manner.

Social media has shifted from passive entertainment to active value proving. People aren’t going to hang around for you to get to the point like the hay day of TV. You have a small window to prove value (or prove you’ll get to the value) before you lose attention. Keep your hooks strong and make sure to pay out on them to keep consumers coming back and trusting your brand!

Deliver content that resonates—content that's meaningful, valuable, and captivating for your audience, rather than inundating them with frequent, haphazard posts. At my museum, we have shifted our social media presence to present more historical information and facts, while painting a picture that evokes strong emotions from our followers. We had seen a clear trend of higher engagement with this type of post, and have broken engagement records since adopting this change.

Don’t post for the sake of posting. Think about your objective for the post and how you want the audience to feel and what you may want them to do. Always opt for quality over quantity!

Something important I think about with social media is controlling your narrative. Whether you like it or not, people could be discussing you on social media, and being there to define the narrative surrounding your brand, and responding to any good or bad press you might receive can only strengthen your brand image. Most importantly, have fun! The tone that you have creating the content comes across more than you think in the final version, and social media is after all, entertainment. Make sure you are having just as much fun making content as you want your audience to have consuming it!

Remember that social media can be 'shop window' for a lot of people: it is how they will see the brand at a glance and may be the main point of contact. While social media might have a lighter tone of voice than other marketing platforms, make sure that it does hold up the values and that there is a key call to action.

Social media offers a platform to streamline and amplify your brand message. By utilizing various social channels consistently, you can reinforce a cohesive message across different platforms, ensuring your audience receives a consistent and clear understanding of your brand's values, mission, and offerings. Additionally, through targeted content and engagement, social media enables you to directly connect with your audience, refining your message based on their feedback and preferences. Overall, it simplifies your brand message by making it accessible, consistent, and tailored to your audience's interests.

By making it fun! Social is a green place to tell a story. You can use it to tell your brand's story in a way that can inspire or entertain your audience. It's a great space to connect with your audience on a more personal level.