Building a Brand on Social Media

Module One: Defining the Terms

This Module Will Cover:

 What is Branding?
 What is Social Media?
 What is Social Media Branding?

What is Branding?

What comes to mind when we say “brand?”

What is a Brand?

 Meaning
 Value
 Information
 Marketing
 Sales
 Emotions/feelings
 Senses
 Making your mark/marking your territory
 Reputation
 Perception

There are many definitions of a brand, but our favourite comes from Simon Middleton, a British brand
expert. In his book Build a Brand in 30 Days, he says, “Brand is about meaning. Your brand is everything
that your customers and prospective customers think, feel, say, hear, read, watch, imagine, suspect, and
even hope about your product, service, or organization.”

What’s in a Brand?

Your brand can include:

 A catchy name
 A logo (an image) or logotype (words associated with an image)
 Trademark colours
 Characters
 A particular style, look and feel
 An attitude
  A set of feelings and values
 Anything you want!

What is Social Media?

What comes to mind when we say “social media?”

What is Social Media?

 The names of specific platforms

 Interacting with others
 Videos
 Audio
 Blogs
 Likes
 Followers
 Friends

Social media is a term used to describe how people interact, create information, share information, and
build communities in a virtual environment. Social media, in its current state, started to evolve with the
rise of the Internet in the mid-1990s.

The Rise of Social Media

The 1960s-1980s
During these decades, the foundation of the Internet and social media began to be established. In 1969,
ARPANET was established, followed by the first commercial Internet service (CompuServe). Internet
services continued to grow over the next 30 years with the addition of IRC (text-based chat), BBS
(Internet bulletin boards), and ListServ (electronic mailing lists).

The 1990s
During the 1990s, the Internet as we know it today started to take shape. Services like The Palace,
GeoCities, Six Degrees, Napster, Classmates.com, and Blogger were all started during this decade.

2000-2010
Social media and the Internet as we know it grew exponentially during this decade. 2003, in particular,
was a big year, with the introduction of Skype, LinkedIn, MySpace, Plaxo, SecondLife, del.cio.us, and the
first version of Facebook. Wikipedia, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Tumblr, Reddit, and Posterous were
also founded during this decade. As well, the first iPhone was launched in 2007, changing the face of the
Internet dramatically.

2010-Present
Social media continues to grow. Google+ and Pinterest have joined the list of successful social media
networks. App-based social media platforms, such as Instagram and Vine, are also becoming more
popular. The mobile device market is growing, too; the first iPad was launched in 2010 and Microsoft
released the Surface two years later.

What is Social Media Branding?

Social media branding is about making sure that your brand is the same online as it is offline. It’s about
creating a constant, consistent, responsive, engaging experience for the customer every time they
encounter you on the Internet.

Your social media presence is about building relationships with each customer that encounters your
brand. That requires:

 Creating a strategy that supports and strengthens your brand

 Identifying how to provide value to customers in meaningful ways
 Humanizing your brand to build connections with your audience
 Module Two: Building Your Social Media Branding Strategy

This Module Will Cover:

 Key Ingredients for Your Branding Strategy
 Pre-Assignment Review

Key Ingredients for Your Branding Strategy

Social media marketing is an ongoing process of identifying your audience, engaging them, and keeping
them engaged, so that when they need your product or service, they think of your brand. There are five
key elements to a strong social media branding strategy that will support this process.

What Do You Want the Brand to Say?

To begin, identify what your brand is all about. This includes the things that we discussed in the pre-
assignment, like:
 Brand name
 Logo
 Trademark colours
 Characters and icons
 A particular style, look, and/or attitude
 Feelings and values

Now, identify what changes will be made to your brand for social media. (Perhaps you want to be a little
bit more casual online, for example.) Keep in mind that in order to maintain your brand’s integrity, your
online and offline efforts should be consistent with each other.

What is the Brand Saying Now?

You need to know what your brand looks like online right now. This includes:
 Seeing what people are saying about your brand on every social network
 Googling your brand
 Establishing benchmarks for any existing social media tools (e.g. how many Facebook likes you
have, or how many visitors your website has per day)
 Using analysis tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to provide in-depth data

From this information, you can create a picture of what your brand currently says via social media. This
should include its public perception, the values it embodies, and its persona.
How Will the Brand Come to Life?

Now, you can create a plan for how you will create your desired social media brand. This will include
building an audience profile, creating a budget, identifying what platforms and tools you will focus on,
creating a strategy for building a presence on those platforms, and crafting engaging messages that
bring your brand to life.

What Resources Will We Have?

It’s important to be realistic when creating your strategy. Identify the technical resources, budget, and
people that you will be able to leverage for your branding campaign. (This information should come
from your marketing budget.) Make sure to identify any training or upgrades that might be required,
too.

How Will We Evaluate Our Progress?

Finally, develop a plan for checking in on how your brand is doing. This might include:
 Setting up tools like keyword alerts, Google Analytics, or social media tracking software (like
HootSuite or Radian6)
 Identifying what metrics to track and how often to track them
 What changes will indicate significant progress or cause for concern
Pre-Assignment Review

Identify the elements of a brand from your organization (or of a brand that you are familiar with).
Consider these questions with respect to that brand:

 What is the brand name?

 What does the brand’s logo look like?
 What colours are associated with the brand?
 What characters, people, or icons are associated with this brand?
 How would you describe the attitude or feel of the brand?
 What values does the brand espouse?
 Is there anything else significant about this brand?

Now, consider these questions the following questions in light of that brand:

 What social media presence does this brand already have? (Consider things like Facebook pages,
Twitter accounts and hashtags, YouTube channels, websites, and blogs.)
 What are the social media areas doing well?
 What could social media areas be improved upon?
 Identify how each brand element will translate to the social media brand.
 Module Three: Identifying Your Social Media Audience

This Module Will Cover:

 Building an Audience Profile

Building an Audience Profile

Your first step in your branding strategy should be building a detailed profile of your target social media
audience. This will help you choose the right forum and messages for your brand, ensuring that it
connects with customers and sends the right message.

Building a social media audience profile is very similar to building a traditional customer profile. You will
want to find out:

 Who wants, needs, and buys our product or service?

 What do these customers look like, in terms of age, ethnicity, religious preferences, political
preferences, ideology, etc.?
 Where do these customers shop, work, live, and play?
 What do social media networks our customers participate in?
 What kinds of activities do our customers do on social media?
 What other online activities do our customers do (e.g. reading blogs, watching videos,
shopping)?
 Module Four: The Key Social Media Platforms

This Module Will Cover:

 Choosing the Right Platform for your Brand
 Looking at the Options

Choosing the Right Platform for Your Brand

Now that we know who we’re going to target, and how much money we have to spend, we can start
identifying the forums that we’re going used to bring our brand to life. Most social media platforms have
a unique focus, so consider this in your planning. Here is a brief list of the most popular social networks
at the time of publication.

Facebook

Facebook is currently the world’s most popular network, with about 1.2 billion users in 2014. Businesses
can create pages, post status updates, share pictures and videos, and communicate with customers.
Facebook has also recently added support for hashtags to help users find information and connect with
their interests. As well, Facebook apps can add functionality to buy products, request samples, and
participate in contests right from the site. Your Facebook page should be an integral part of your social
media branding strategy.

Flickr

Flickr is a photo and short-video-sharing site that is owned by Yahoo. Their focus is on making photos
accessible and giving user’s ways to organize them. You can use Flickr to strengthen your brand by
uploading images, tagging them appropriately, and linking back to your website.

Foursquare

Foursquare is a location-based social network. Users check into locations on their phone, earning points,
unlocking badges, and receiving coupons. Users can also leave tips and recommendations for others.

Google+

Google+ is one of the newest social networks, although previous social media efforts by Google (such as
Orkut, Wave, and Buzz) date back to 2004. Google+ allows users to organize people into circles and then
share information with each circle. Google+ also includes Hangouts, which allow users to video chat with
each other. Many companies have used this feature to connect with customers and create a casual,
friendly, approachable brand.
Instagram

Instagram is a mobile app that allows users to create, edit, and share photos and short videos via
Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. Businesses can use Instagram to visually promote their brand and
create awareness.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network for professionals. Users and businesses can create pages and connect with
each other. You can build your brand’s trust and credibility by hosting groups, answering questions, and
creating a page that provides value to readers.

Pinterest

Launched in 2010, Pinterest is among the most popular social networks. It allows users to pin websites,
recipes, photos and maps to virtual pinboards. These boards can be accessed by other users via a feed
or search, or boards can be kept private. For businesses, Pinterest offers the opportunity to showcase
products, share ideas, and provide incentives. Companies like Etsy, Kraft, L.L. Bean, Lowe’s, and
Nordstrom have been particularly successful in using Pinterest to promote their brand.

Quora

This question-and-answer website is crowdsourced, providing a great opportunity for businesses to

establish credibility and provide value to their users.

Snapchat

This mobile app allows users to create “snaps” of photos, videos, and text and share them with
recipients. These snaps are only available for one to 10 seconds before they are deleted. If you want to
establish a brand as young, hip, and fun, this is the place to be.

Tumblr

Tumblr allows users to share whatever they want (photos, music, videos, text, etc.) from the Tumblr
website or mobile apps. It’s a great tool for establishing brand awareness since pages are highly
customizable. It also gives users a central place to share things from.
Twitter

The world’s second-largest social network allows users to post 140-character updates (“tweets”) which
are shared with their followers. Businesses can use Twitter to post news, share links, answer questions,
interact with customers, and much more. Hashtags allow users to organize information and find
information that they’re interested in. Twitter should be a part of your branding strategy.

Vine

Vine is a mobile app launched in 2012. It is now owned by Twitter. It enables users to record and share
six-second videos. Brands like Dunkin Donuts and Columbia Records have used it to connect with a
younger demographic.

Vimeo

Vimeo is a video sharing site that focuses on high-quality, creative videos. They were the first video
sharing site to support high-definition videos. They also offer more video customization and editing tools
than other video sites (such as YouTube).

YouTube

Owned by Google, YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine and the biggest video site on the
Internet. It allows users to upload and view videos on virtually any topic. Videos are an essential part of
establishing your social media brand, whether you offer helpful how-to videos, chats with experts in
your industry, vlogs, or funny cartoons.
Looking at the Options

Here are some ways that these networks could be used in an example of a value-oriented fast-food
chain, for instance.

Facebook

 Showcase logo with a profile picture

 Showcase key products with cover photos and albums
 Strengthen the image of the brand as family-friendly with stories, photos, and videos
from families enjoying our product
 Strengthen the image of the brand as fun with offbeat questions and polls that engage
target demographics

Google+

 Create a vibrant, fun landing page that matches landing pages on other platforms to
ensure brand integrity
 Give posts a more adult feel to focus on young professionals
 Focus posts on healthier options and community projects to enhance brand image

Instagram

 Engage younger demographic with pictures of people enjoying our food and activities in
our communities
 Use custom and popular tags to establish brand values
 Link to Facebook and Twitter to enhance the demographic reach and brand impact

LinkedIn

 Create a company page that highlights our employees’ achievements to promote the
company brand
 Offer support and advice to leadership and entrepreneurship groups to create a trust for
the brand
 Encourage employees to link to us
Quora

 Enhance brand’s family focus by answering nutrition questions (not necessarily those
that promote the product)
 Increase community presence by answering tourism questions for the areas that we
serve

Twitter

 Create a vibrant, fun landing page that matches landing pages on other platforms to
ensure brand integrity
 Use custom and popular tags to establish brand values
 Be active in following and retweeting others

YouTube

 Create a vibrant, fun landing page that matches landing pages on other platforms to
ensure brand integrity
 Create and share videos of people enjoying our food and activities in our communities
(particularly fitness activities)
 Create and share videos showing people how to make some of our recipes at home
 Module Five: Creating Brand-Focused Messages

This Module Will Cover:

 What’s in a Message?
 Making Connections
 Dealing with Negative Feedbacks

What’s In a Message?

There are four important elements of a successful social media message.

Two-Way Communication

Listening to what others are saying is the single most important aspect of engaging with social media.
This will help you find out:
 What customers are interested in
 What customers are saying about your brand
 What customers are saying about your competition

Without this information, it is far more difficult to build a message that will engage your customers.

Successful messages take communication the other way, too, by encouraging your customers to do
something when they read your message. This might be sharing it with others, watching a video, reading
your blog, or liking your Facebook page. Your goal is not to sell to your audience (at least not right now),
but to engage with them and build a relationship with them. Then, when they need your product or
service, they know where to find you.

Storytelling

Nothing engages people like a story. Stories will tell people what your brand is about and how it can
make their lives better.

Which of these tweets would you find more engaging?

 #Carry-All luggage is the best!
 #Carry-All luggage has the right bag for you. Check out our products at….
 Entrepreneur Sarah says she can’t live without her #FlyAway briefcase bag. Find out why at…
Transparency, Honesty, and Authenticity

Make sure that your brand’s message is genuine. Social media is about human interaction. If your
messages sound programmed and automated, customers will be turned off of your brand.

This will vary by brand, of course. Some industries (like finance and pharmaceutical) may have legal
regulations governing their online conduct. Do what you can to make your messages feel real.

Consistency

Another key element of building trust is consistency. Your brand’s message should be consistent across
social media platforms. Your approach may vary depending on the targeted demographic, but your
brand’s values should be the same.

To build brand integrity, keep your social media handles the same whenever possible. This will help with
search engine rankings, maintain brand integrity, and build trust.

Dealing with Negative Feedback

Respond, Don’t Delete

Negative feedback is inevitable, especially on social media. However, it can be an opportunity for your
brand to show that it cares what customers think. It can also be an opportunity to solve problems before
they escalate, improve your product, and build brand loyalty.

Never delete negative comments (unless they are extremely offensive and/or violate the terms of your
social network). This tells customers that you don’t want to hear what they have to say and that they
aren’t important to you. Often, deleting negative comments can snowball into a firestorm against your
brand, creating more damage than the original comment.

Post Publicly, Then Take It Offline

The best way to handle negative comments is to reply to the comment publicly, and then take it offline.
For example, let’s say that Bob Smith posts this comment on your brand’s Facebook page: “CarryAll
luggage sucks!!! I just bought one of their overpriced bags, and it fell apart on my first trip. Don’t buy
their junk!”

You could reply with something like:

 “Bob, we’re so sorry to hear about your bag. If you e-mail us at [email protected], we’d be
happy to help.”
 “Sorry to hear about this, Bob! We offer a lifetime guarantee on all of our products and would
be more than happy to replace your bag or refund your money. Please e-mail us at
[email protected] so that we can get your contact information.”
In some industries, saying “I’m sorry” can be viewed as a possible liability. If this is the case for your
brand, find other ways to interact with customers. A message like, “Thank you for sharing your
experience” should avoid liability issues but still send a response message to the customer. Work with
your legal team to develop responsive, responsible answers to your social media audience.

If You Break It, Then Fix It

If you make a mistake on social media, confess to it, fix it, and apologize. Broken links, typos, and factual
errors happen to the best of us. Owning up to your mistakes will make your brand seem real. Fixing the
mistake shows your customers that you can be counted on.
 Module Six: Building Customer Trust

This Module Will Cover:

 5 Effective Ways to Build Customer Trust
 Making Connections

Be Authentic
The word authenticity has never been thrown around more than in the past few years when describing
what people are drawn to. Sometimes words lose their meaning if they’re repeated too much.

Customers love a good, real story: something purposeful from the founding team that runs through the
company’s every fibre. They want to message that speaks the truth, and that represents an honest
reflection of the values they preach.

Be Human
There is nothing worse than a generic, not relatable consumer-facing brand. Humanizing your
interactions and customer marketing touchpoints, especially social media channels, will help you make
those important trust-building connections.

Audiences want to know that there are actual humans behind their favourite brands. They love being
able to interact with them and getting glimpses into the synergy behind the curtain. Show that you care
about your tribe by including its members in conversations, and put your brand personality on display to
humanize it.

Be Transparent
In today’s market, customers care about much more than the end product. They want to know where it’s
made, who made it, what the work conditions are, how long it took from start to finish, what the cost of
the supply chain is, what the carbon footprint of each item is… and the list goes on.

Customers as so well informed due to the advancement of technology that not relaying all the important
facts can hurt a business. Gone are the days where people could sweep flaws under a corporate rug.
Access to information is pervasive and expected, and if a company doesn’t provide satisfactory answers
to consumers’ line of questioning, they’re going to go spend their money elsewhere without batting an
eyelash.

Use UGC
In case you haven’t heard, user-generated content is a very effective method to make your products
appealing. When people see an item portrayed in a lifestyle scene by a real person, as opposed to a run-
of-the-mill product shot, it enables them to portray themselves in that same scenario. In short, UGC
drives sales. In long, it does much more than that.
Stay in Your Lane
If you’re a plant retailer, don’t start posting about foods. Not only would this be super confusing, but
diverting from your area of expertise can make you lose all credibility. And once that’s gone, there goes
the trust. It takes a long time to build and the smallest thing to destroy it.

Making Connections
The things people or companies, do or don’t do, online can have a drastic impact on how they are
perceived, and, in the case of businesses, their bottom line. Take these case studies and divide them into
two areas: Builds Trust or Breaks Trust.

After actor Kevin Smith was ejected from a Southwest Airlines flight, he angrily tweeted about his
experience. Southwest Airlines tweeted back promising a phone call but made no other online response.

In 2010, The GAP launched a new logo that was mocked throughout social media. Days later, they issued
an apology on Facebook and reversed the change.

When images of a particular pant style ignited a firestorm on fashion brand Loft’s Facebook page, they
apologized. They also posted images of real women from their head office wearing the pants in order to
regain customers’ trust.

When a Twitter user tweeted about his negative experience with British Airways’ customer service,
British Airways took over 12 hours to respond. They did not apologize, but rather explained that their
Twitter feed was only monitored from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Module Seven: Developing a Communication Strategy

This Module Will Cover:
 Developing Social Media Guidelines for Your Brand
 Letting Others Speak for You

Developing Social Media Guidelines for Your Brand

Establishing guidelines for how your brand will act on social media is tricky. You want to make sure that
the people representing your brand on social media have plenty of flexibility and the ability to be
spontaneous. You also want to make sure that they represent your brand accurately and positively.
Work with your social media team to build a set of flexible, sensible guidelines that will support your
brand.

Ground Rules

The first part of your social media guidelines should set out some ground rules. This should include
statements like:
 All messages should reflect our brand’s values and support our overall social media strategy.
 All messages should also support our company’s values and strategic plans.
 All messages should be well designed, without spelling or factual errors.
 Employees must not post on social media while intoxicated.

Response Timelines

Outline appropriate response timelines and methods for each platform. If more research is required,
reply to the customer and give them an updated time frame.

Roles and Responsibilities

Each platform should have one person assigned to it to maintain the profile page, make updates, and
manage the brand. There should also be a backup person. (Depending on the size of your social media
presence, one person may have more than one platform.) Social media never turns off, so ensure that
you have someone monitoring each account at all times.

This section should also outline who brand representatives should go to with questions, suggestions, or
problems.

Letting Others Speak For You

Turning Customers into Ambassadors

Your customers’ stories and experiences are a valuable tool in supporting your brand. They conform to
others that your brand is real and genuine. They can also provide support when dealing with negative
feedback.

Find the people on social media who are already advocating your brand and support them. This might
include special VIP bonuses like:
 Coupons
 Sneak peeks
 Product samples
 Giveaways
 Exclusive contests

Case Study: The Fiskateers

During a 2006 rebranding campaign, Fiskars realized that although the crafting market was growing,
there was no clear market leader. In fact, their market share was dropping. However, the online crafting
community was growing, and the crafting demographic was becoming younger.

Fiskars decided to help grow the online crafting community. They hired four women for 15 hours per
week as Fiskars ambassadors. Their task was to build and manage a blogging community of people
passionate about crafting. The women also attended trade shows and taught scrapbooking classes at
local craft stores. Their goal was not to promote Fiskars, but to support crafting in whatever way
possible. However, Fiskars did encourage product feedback, and in several cases, the changes suggested
by the online community were extremely valuable and saved the company money.

This campaign generated a huge brand following, known as Fiskateers. The Fiskateers community has
grown extensively over the last decade and now has a presence on Facebook and Pinterest in addition
to their blogs, forums, and in-person events.

Building Partnerships

Another way to build brand credibility and visibility is to share the work of others using social media.
Just make sure to be fully aware of what you are sharing: check into the background of the author, scan
pages, and read articles before you share them with your audience. When sharing, always credit the
original source. (On most social media platforms, built-in sharing functions allow you to link directly back
to the original author/page.)

You can also consider allowing others to post on your blog, or having someone from your brand guest
post on other blogs. Just make sure that the information being published supports your brand and its
values.
 Module Eight: Reviewing and Revising

This Module Will Cover

 Evaluation Tools
 Signs of Trouble
 Choosing a Course of Action

Evaluation Tools

Your social media marketing plan should have some data monitoring tools in place, like Google
AdWords, keyword alerts, or specialized software suites. Tap into these tools to see what people are
saying about your brand online.

Signs of Trouble

Here are some signs that usually signify trouble in a brand’s social media presence.
 There is a downward trend in visitors to your social media pages.
 Your social media presence is one-way: your audience is not replying to you or sharing
your updates, and/or you aren’t interacting with your audience on social media.
 There are more negative social media articles, posts, comments, mentions, etc. than
positive ones.
 Your social media pages no longer reflect what your brand is about.
 Your social media presence is inconsistent.
 Your brand is missing from important social media platforms.

Choosing a Course of Action

Work with your marketing team and your social media team to get your brand’s online presence back on
track. Check over the key strategy elements that we discussed earlier in the course:
 Determining what you want the brand to say
 Determining what the brand is saying now
 Reviewing your audience profile, budget, target platforms and tools, resources, and
overall strategy for those platforms
 Checking your target metrics against real-time data

Determine what is working, what isn’t, and devise a plan to fix it. Be sure to try one thing at a time so
that you can create an effective solution for your problem.
Final Verdict

If you want to learn about Building a Brand on Social Media efficiently, the importance of a solid
understanding of the concept of branding, social media, branding strategies in social media, key social
media platforms, brand-focused messages, handling negative feedback, building customer trust and
communication strategy are immense.

Throughout this Building a Brand on Social Media course, you will learn how to build a brand
successfully in social media. This course will give you a clear idea about terms related to social media
branding, strategy to social media brand as well as about various social media platforms and identity of
platforms that fit your brand. The course is designed to increase your social media communication
efficiency, dealing with criticism and negative feedback and strengthen your brand name along with
revising your strategy. Overall, this course will give you the opportunity to pursue a wide range of
knowledge for a rewarding career or a scope to pursue more courses at a higher level.