We live in an age where everything is branded. Right from celebrities to politicians to businesses. We recognize services and products by their brand names. We associate emotional values to products by their brands to the extent that brands stand for esteem, class, and status.

With the advent of social media, the process of branding both personal and organizational has changed drastically. Social media opened the floodgates for brands to express themselves and reach out for newer and more audience.

Initially, FMCG makers, product manufacturers and marketers started having their presence on social media branding themselves in a positive way. Later, almost all the major companies started realizing the importance of having their presence on the social media. Now, even SMEs and startups have social media branding as a mandatory marketing strategy.

Hitherto, branding of a company, product, and person was in the hands of advertising agents. This involved elaborate and expensive campaigns on other media like the newspaper, TV, radio, and billboards. Internet has changed everything. With the arrival of social media channels, brands found new methods of constantly engaging with their followers, which was not possible with earlier media.

Why social media branding?

Every year, as the reach of internet is growing and the number of Smartphone users are growing, there are millions of users who constantly engage on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn. Now, this presents a great opportunity for companies small and large, to convey their brand story to these millions. The purpose here is to create content that imparts the idea of the brand and generates positive engagement. Once an engagement is created, the brand has loyal followers who associate certain values and attributes to a brand and thereby products.

Having said this, for readers who might want to leverage the power of social media, here are 5 effective ways to improve digital brand image.

1. Create a digital presence: Creating a digital or social media presence is the first step towards attracting the attention of the millions of digital media users. This might look like an obvious message, but the catch here is that one has to plan the channels that suit the business. Not just that, after having chosen the suitable digital channels, one has to plan their arrival and presence on the channels. Remember, it has to be perfect right from the word go! From the designs to the content that carries the brand message, one can’t afford to go wrong.
2. Manage your Content Marketing: While imparting messages to your audience is not just enough one has to manage the content of messages. Typically, content of the messages are categorized into three stages. Brand Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. Content has to be generated and disseminated to followers as per these stages.
3. Measure your Approach: Content generated and placed on the social media channels is not the end of the show. A brand has to constantly take the litmus test and measure the reach, engagement levels, and conversion rates for the content generated. This is the core aspect of any social media strategy to be successful.
4. Retaining fans & followers: Retaining existing loyal fan base is like having money in the bank. Remember a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush! All your digital marketing efforts should first concentrate on creating content that aids in retaining existing fans.
5. Professional Help: Taking the help of professional digital marketing companies might prove to be good. With a professional agency working for you, there would be more time to work on core business activities. Choose a professional agency that can understand your business needs, your brand story, and your target audience.

Digital marketing is here to stay and with more and more businesses in Hyderabad opting to go on the digital landscape, we at SmartSocialBrand are here to help you understand the contours of this landscape. If you need any assistance, please comment and we will reach out for you…