To make sure you represent your brand consistently across your channels and to protect it efficiently on social media platforms, here are some tips on things to look at and consider for your social media profiles:
Protect your brand
Protecting your brand is incredibly important because once you have started to build upon your reputation, how you behave and use your social media can make or break your reputation.
Put policies in place
A social media policy is a corporate code of conduct that provides guidelines for employees who post content on the Internet either as part of their job or as a private person. By creating a social media policy for your company, you are setting up processes and protocols for you and your company to follow, as well as being able to hold employees responsible for their actions on social media.
Define approval processes
Approval processes are very important to make sure that everything that is promoted online is in line with your social media policy. There are some social media tools like Sprout Social that have workflow approvals which will allow more senior members to approve social media posts written by other team members before they are published. This way, you can ensure all posts comply with your brand’s message, that the spelling and grammar are both correct and that the message is aimed at your target audiences.
Monitor channels for brand mentions
It is very important to continually monitor your social media channels to better engage with customers and deal with customer complaints or issues, as well as keeping an eye out for any other positive or negative brand mentions. You can type your name in the search bar to find anything relevant, or use tools such as Mention, Topsy or Talkwalker that can track your brand online.
Tread softly with interaction and engagement
Social Media is a great way to communicate with your audience as you are in direct contact with your customer, building a relationship with them. However, it must always be conducted in a professional manner and extra care has to be taken with complaints and issues, so that you can deal with them in the best possible way and to ensure your responses do not get misconstrued. By responding to complaints, other customers see that you provide a good customer service, which means they may overlook a bad review in the first place.
Brand consistency
Create headers in line with your brand so it is easily recognisable on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook – headers are a great way to provide more detail about your brand or perhaps to showcase an event, offer or incentive. Make it eye-catching and include your branding or any key messages so that your brand is easily identifiable.
Use your brand logo
Using your brand logo across all of your social media platforms will keep your brand consistent, building a recognisable image. A brand needs to be seen seven times before someone remembers it.
Tools like Sprout Social have workflow approvals which allow more senior members to approve posts written by other team members.
Keep handles the same across your social channels, to make it easier for customers to find you, make your @handles are the same. If they cannot be the same, make them as similar as possible by using underscores. If you create your own campaign, you can use the same hashtag on all of your channels.
Promote your social media profiles
There are many ways to promote your social media profiles. You can have email footers with links in your signature to each platform; your website should have links to your Social Media channels in your contact section, as they may have found your brand name, but not necessarily knew what your social media handle would be.
Blog posts are another great way to link back to your social media, especially if you add share buttons to them. It makes it easier for users to share your content.
With an incredible increase in the number of companies online, there is heavy competition between brands, so it’s even more important for to stand out and be recognisable in your local area.
Tara Dulake, Digital Marketing Director www.theoraclegroup.co.uk
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