7 Strategies for Building a Social Media Presence for Your Brand

Ever wonder how some brands build a solid following on social media while some fail to bring theirs off the ground?

If yes, you’re not alone.

Building a social media presence for your business is a whole lot; You have to create content consistently, stick to a thorough posting schedule, monitor analytics, and fight to get in the favor of the ever-changing algorithm.

While smaller brands struggle to stay in the favor of the algorithm, bigger and more successful brands have discovered better strategies to grow their social media presence.

In this article, we’ll breakdown 7 strategies for building a social media presence either from scratch or if you have a smaller following. We’ll show examples from brands like Amazon, Coca-Cola, and MTN that you can implement.

What is a social media presence?

Social media presence refers to how present a person, business, or brand shares content on their chosen social media platform(s) and interacts with other users. Social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Telegram, YouTube, and others have become the foundation for social interactions and relationships.

Each brand tends to have specific social media channels that are commonly associated with them. For example, LinkedIn and Twitter are ideal for professional networking and B2B companies, while Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest cater to B2C companies and E-commerce brands. TikTok is suited for a younger audience mostly interested in entertainment.

Good to know: A robust social media presence is not just about creating a profile or occasional sharing of links or posts but also about creating resonance with the audience and building a relationship with them. In other words, success is not only measured by a brand’s visibility.

Why is it essential to have a social media presence?

Social media presence is the influence individuals or organizations create on social media platforms. It establishes credibility and deepens connections beyond initial marketing. Other benefits are:

• A social media presence allows individuals and businesses to expand their reach beyond a particular location. Brands can target a broader audience since Sprout reports that 91% of customers rely on the power of social media to connect people.
• Secondly, having a social media presence enables brands to display their brand personality and values, gaining them a competitive edge.
• Furthermore, having a social media presence allows brands to engage with their audience, establish relationships, and cultivate brand loyalty.

Tips for building a social media presence for your brand

Here are some essential tips for building a solid social media presence for your brand:

Pick the proper social media channels for your business.

Rather than maintaining a presence on too many platforms, focusing on a few relevant social media channels for your audience is better.

To find the right social media channel, brands must identify their target audience’s interests, demographics, and behaviors to shortlist the social media channels that align with the brand’s goals. Brands that sell visual products, like Sephora and Etsy, can leverage social network user bases such as Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest to share relevant visual content with a vast audience.

Set platform-based goals

Creating intelligent goals for social media channels enables brands to maintain focus, track progress, and evaluate success over time.

Tailoring your goals for each platform is important to planning and coordinating your social media strategy. For example, a brand’s goal may be to increase its Instagram followers by a significant margin — say, 1,000 new followers in the next three months. Therefore, measuring progress is crucial to achieving the goal by monitoring the number of followers using tools like Instagram Insights or third-party software.

Also, it’s essential to consider factors such as current followers, engagement rate, resources, and time available for growing the brand’s presence on the platform.

Finally, you can form a clear and actionable strategy to grow your brand’s Instagram following by aligning the goal with the brand’s objectives, such as building brand awareness or increasing visibility among potential customers.

Understand your audience

Understanding your target audience and customers on social media through surveys, interviews, trends, and feedback improves communication style and content resonance.

It helps connect with specific demographics like teenagers through casual language and emojis and allows for appropriate content focus, such as career development, relationships, or personal growth for young adults.

Knowing your audience also helps identify the optimal platform to engage them as they are most active.

Interact with your audience

Build a loyal relationship with your audience through sincerity, friendliness, and attentiveness. Also, increase engagement with followers by responding to comments and messages. Then, organize contests, Q&A sessions, and share user-generated content to build a social media presence and create a community. Customer feedback can help improve products and services.

Good to know: Social media channels have become a go-to source for reviews, recommendations, and purchase inspiration. This results in better awareness when customers are making purchasing decisions.

Develop a posting schedule

Developing a posting schedule ensures consistency and credibility with your audience. Plan how often to post and adhere to the plan.

How do you develop a posting schedule?

• Determine the best posting time for your audience to increase engagement rates.
• Develop a content strategy and use scheduling software to plan and track post performance.
• Establish a content calendar to streamline workflow and track posted content.

Create and Maintain Brand Consistency

Consistent branding across all social media channels creates a unique and recognizable voice and mission.

Use the same logos, fonts, color schemes, images, descriptions, and business information on all online assets, including the website and social media profiles. These set your brand apart from competitors.

For instance, The Adobe brand is recognizable for its iconic red, white, and black logo. The company ensures brand consistency by using this logo across all its marketing channels, including its website, social media, and product packaging.

Know that it is a long game

Building a social media presence requires significant time and effort. Brands must stay patient and persistent, creating content that connects with their audience and focuses on long-term goals.

Shortcuts may offer short-term benefits but can harm a brand’s credibility and integrity in the long run.

Keep producing content that offers solutions and addresses relevant issues to avoid discouragement.

Examples of brands with unique social media

Many companies excel in social media marketing, and there are several good examples to draw inspiration from. Let’s explore some of these brands.

Slack

Slack is a communication and collaboration platform for companies of all sizes. They use social media to engage different segments of their target audience, sharing content on remote work, technology and innovation, company news, event coverage, work-life balance, and productivity tips.

Source: LinkedIn

For example, Slack fosters engagement among customers by asking questions on its LinkedIn page and showcasing customer (Spotify) testimonials.

Source: Twitter(X)

Its Twitter page above gives industry insights to its customers on productivity tips and new products (Slack GPT), creating awareness and customer engagement.

Hubspot

Hubspot’s social media strategy centers on inbound marketing, sharing informative content such as blog posts, eBooks, webinars, and podcasts to engage its target audience and assist businesses in enhancing their marketing, sales, and customer service.

Source: Facebook

On its Facebook page, Hubspot updates its audience about CRM’s digital payment capabilities, which provide a seamless experience for businesses and customers.

Source:LinkedIn

Hubspot uses its LinkedIn and Twitter pages to ask questions that spur interaction with the audience and discover audience interest regarding the social media channels they are learning from.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a digital marketing platform providing solutions for search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, content marketing, and social media management. They have a presence on various social media platforms.

Source: Youtube

SEMrush uses YouTube to share valuable video tutorials and host webinars on digital marketing featuring industry experts on their social media platforms.

Source: Twitter(X)

Semrush’s CMO is featured on this Twitter page, speaking at a web summit in Rio and showcasing the brand’s marketing expertise, which can help build trust and credibility.

MailChimp

MailChimp offers a range of tools to help businesses manage, send, and create email campaigns for marketing purposes.

They maintain a consistent brand image and messaging on all social media platforms using the same logo, tone of voice, and visual design.

Source: LinkedIn

MailChimp uses the Q&A to learn about its audience’s technology used for business and apply the insights to improve services, build community, and create engaging content.

Source: Twitter(X)

MailChimp’s upcoming thought leadership event will feature marketing professionals sharing valuable insights and sparking networking opportunities. In addition, it has created buzz and engaging content on its Twitter page.

Amazon

Amazon is an outstanding example of how brand awareness can be developed and nurtured through multiple platforms. Besides maintaining distinct messaging and voices across social media profiles for each of the company’s owned brands and services, Amazon’s unique take on Twitter gives a nod to its overarching brand identity.

For platforms like Snapchat and Instagram–where Amazon can more directly promote its products — hashtags, influencer marketing, and other strategies are being put to use.

Overall, Amazon’s strategy rotates around creating an enlivened community, fueling conversations, delivering discovery to the more than 100 million (and counting) followers it has amassed across a variety of profiles. Plus, its diverse strategies include incorporating performance-based feeds, with many posts yielding glowing comments and a nearly perfect five-star rating.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola’s approach to social media isn’t simply about sharing stories that warm the heart or posting user-generated content. Instead, it has centered on creating a lineup of interactive and immersive campaigns that include #ShareACoke and #TasteTheFeeling to bolster community engagement and creativity. Additionally, the brand backs these campaigns up by using video advertising, sponsored marketing initiatives and even known sponsorships with Instagram and Facebook to ensure its visibility remains high during the most important sponsored times of the year, like Christmas or any other festive season.

They also illustrate that their brand is for everyone, as it says, “regardless of race, or gender–it’s still closely tied in with all of the people of the world — in just about every single social network known to man.

MTN

Influencer marketing for MTN Nigeria is more than about product promotions. The company also joins forces with influencers on brand campaigns and community engagement initiatives. By partnering with influencers from various verticals including entertainment, sports and lifestyle, MTN Nigeria creates varied, engaging content that aligns with its target audience. Using influencers to promote their CSR efforts and community initiatives further also strengthens their brand and association with their target demographic. By aligning with key influencers, MTN Nigeria effectively utilizes social media to connect with consumers, deepen engagement and support its place as a leading telecom provider.

Problems that brands face when building their social media presence

Building a robust social media presence is becoming more demanding today because of the growing competition from other brands vying for consumer attention. However, identifying these challenges can help brands succeed. Let’s examine these social media challenges and their potential solutions.

CHALLENGE #1: Choosing the proper social media channels

Selecting the right social media platform is daunting for a brand’s social media presence due to each platform’s unique audience and features. So, nowing the target audience’s preferred platform is essential to developing relevant content.

Furthermore, keeping up with evolving features and algorithms requires constant research and adaptation of social media strategies.

A wrong platform choice may lead to low engagement rates and visibility, hindering brands’ social media marketing objectives.

Solution

• Know your target audience and where they spend time online to choose the right social media platform or platforms. Then, research different platforms that align with your goals and audience, considering content type, posting frequency, and engagement level.

CHALLENGE #2: Declining or stagnant audience engagement

Declining or stagnant audience engagement means the audience interacts less with your brand’s social media content, causing reduced visibility, reach, and impact.

The content may need to be more relevant to the target audience, leading to decreased loyalty and negative impacts on the brand’s reputation and sales.

Solution

• Keep social media followers engaged with top-notch content and interactive features such as Q&A, events, and questions.

CHALLENGE #3: Content Creation

Content creation poses a major challenge for brands because engaging content requires significant time, effort, and resource investment.

Creating quality and fresh content that aligns with their brand goals while being relevant and informative to their audience can take time and effort.

Solution

• Outsourcing content creation to professionals such as freelance writers, designers, or agencies ensures high-quality, consistent content aligned with the brand’s values.
• Another way is to use user-generated content to showcase their community, provide social proof, and demonstrate their commitment to customers and industry expertise.

CHALLENGE #4: Inadequate communication across departments

Inadequate communication among teams like sales teams, marketers, brand managers, product teams, graphics designers, and content creation teams can cause misalignment in goals, strategies, and execution, leading to inefficiencies, redundancies, and missed opportunities that result in delays in decision-making.

Lack of communication can impede creativity and innovation, as employees may need more information and resources to generate new ideas and solutions.

Solution

• Buffer, a social media management platform, fosters a culture of transparency and open communication, which enables cross-functional collaboration and knowledge sharing. They also use various communication tools like Slack and Zoom to ensure that all team members are well-informed and aligned.

CHALLENGE #5: Creative Roadblocks and Burnouts

Brands may need help with burnout or creative roadblocks — the inability to generate engaging content — which can be downright frustrating.

This results in a stagnant social media presence with lower engagement and limited follower growth. Rushing to produce content can also compromise quality, leading to posts that fail to resonate with the audience.

Solution

• Brands can avoid burnout by establishing realistic goals and expectations for their social media presence in collaboration with their team. It reduces the pressure to produce new content every time.
• Also, automation and scheduling tools can streamline a brand’s workflows, reducing the time and effort required to create content.
• Brands can prevent creative roadblocks by investing in resources and training to keep social media managers updated on the latest trends, tools, and strategies, which can inspire new ideas.

CHALLENGE #6: Measuring ROI

Measuring ROI on social media becomes difficult due to the absence of a direct link between building brand awareness, engagement, and financial impact.

Tracking and attributing sales or conversions to specific social media campaigns or posts is difficult.

Social media metrics like likes, shares, and comments may only sometimes correlate with financial returns, making it difficult for brands to measure their social media efforts’ ROI accurately. As a result, investing time and resources in social media can take time to justify.

Solution

• Brands can use the built-in analytics tools provided by social media platforms to track performance metrics. In addition, brands can monitor essential metrics such as engagement rates, clicks, referral traffic, bounce rates, sales, and conversions, which offer valuable insights into their success.

CHALLENGE #7: Right Social Media Strategy

Creating the right content strategy can be intimidating. However, with a clear content strategy, brands may find it easier to produce relevant, consistent, and compelling content, which leads to engagement from their target audience.

Also, the right content strategy can bridge the communication gap among team members, resulting in clear goals and objectives and a consistent and productive social media presence.

Solution

• Conduct research to learn about your target audience, and use this information to tailor content to their preferences and needs.
• Create content that aligns with your brand’s goals on the right social media channel.
• Implement a content calendar. It organizes and plans content. It includes topics, formats, publishing dates, and responsible parties. This tool helps ensure on-brand messaging.

Conclusion

With a social media presence, brands can connect with their audience, develop a consistent brand image, generate valuable content, and establish a lasting brand image, generate valuable content, and establish a lasting impression. So, start developing your brand's social media presence today!