Size Up Your Social Media Brand

It’s not news that brands are using platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat to grow their social media presence. But is your social media delivering the business results you want? With users becoming more aware of paid advertising, and misleading engagement results due to the rise of ad fraud accounts, it has become increasingly challenging to measure your success.

1. Knowing where you stand is the first step. Tools like Brand24 will help you access key brand strength metrics such as awareness, reach, engagement, and association.
   1. Your social brand mentions break down the number of times your brand is mentioned across each social channel.
   2. The reach of brand mentions shows you the influence and number of followers of those who talk about your brand.
   3. Sentiment illustrates your total number of positive and negative brand mentions during a given period.
   4. Social engagement tracks the total number of social likes, comments, and shares your brand is garnering.
   5. You can then follow up with online surveys to assess your brand association by tracking things like your overall social brand strength, your competitive strength, and the reasons behind both.
2. Once you have a handle on your social media brand, you can refine your strategy to focus on the following:
   1. Branding presence
   2. Reaching specific audiences
   3. Recruiting social celebrities or sponsors
   4. Raising the quality of mentions
   5. Interacting with followers in promising ways
3. What else can brands do? It’s important to be aware that audiences know when they’re being sold.

“86% of the people are confident in their ability to identify content as ‘con’-tent marketing” – Clutch

Consumers are looking to learn from and be entertained by branded social media content. Be as authentic as possible at educating and entertaining your audience. Most brand marketers these days partner with authentic social celebrities and/or sponsor their content as a way of reaching a specific audience.

Everyone already knows that social media provides a huge opportunity for brands to extend their reach, but the trick is to assess your standing and make the right improvements to steer your brand in a successful direction.

Based on How Effective Is Your Brand on Social Media? Here’s How You Can Measure That by Julia Cupman.