Want to know how many people are on Facebook? Take a guess? Well, it’s estimated that more than one billion people are active on Facebook today. That’s why it’s vital to stay connected and share your brand to an ever growing and popular network.

With these numbers, I won’t lie; you will have an endless flock of competitors trying to round up your followers. But it’s not a monumental task to create a strong brand identity and presence on social media and get ahead of your competitors.

And as a business looking to invest in social marketing to drive brand awareness, Facebook is an essential place to start.

So firstly…

Have a strong brand identity

Being mindful of your brand identity is key in building up awareness and making your brand memorable.

What is your messaging? The tone of voice you want to convey? From here you will have a solid foundation to start from. As a starting point on Facebook, I’d recommend:

• Determining your audience and buying persona before posting content, in order to target your messaging appropriately.
• Reaching out to a relevant and engaged online community. By monitoring and participating in these groups you will increase your reach and brand awareness.
• See what audiences your competitors are attracting and build up your connections.
• Are there influencers in your related field who you can engage with? If so, they can be a valuable asset and spokesperson for elevating your brand. Here is a great way to finding fans and influencers on Facebook.

When it comes to developing and promoting your brand identity on social media, the key is to be consistent. Not just with your messaging and tone of voice, but also visually. Creating original content is a fantastic way to draw in more followers, stay unique and be on brand. A great example of this is Coca Cola, who consistently create original branded gifs, videos and graphics, that positively promotes their brand and message. Okay, let’s be fair, Coca Cola have a colossus marketing budget, but creating your own graphics is simple enough; I like to use the online tool Canva when I’m on a tight timescale. And it’s free!

It’s certainly worth investing time and money into your marketing budget for gifs and videos, especially if this seems the most appropriate and optimum way of sharing your brand.

One of my favourite Facebook brand pages is Innocent Drinks. Their messaging couldn’t be clearer. With their funny and often quirky remarks on current news and sometimes dramatic but always enjoyable tone, you get an instant sense of what their brand is about. They don’t oversell and promote their products, they attract their followers through their tone of voice. And by humanizing the brand they have created a very popular and strong identity.

Creating valuable content

Once you have solidified your branding, determined your tone of voice and done your market research, you now need to create some content. This is the fun part!

If you really know your business (and your customers) inside out and are the experts in what you sell and do, then creating valuable content for your audience should be a relatively easy task.

Want to know what makes a good bit of content? Make it shareable! This is can be done so simply and is imperative in building your brand awareness. As part of your branding and content strategy, your content should include:

• Visuals (images, infographic, gifs or video) – Content with relevant images gets 94 percent more views than content without.
• Valuable content that shows thought leadership by sharing industry news, recent updates, blogs.
• Be consistent – this comes back to being thought leaders in your area. If you can be consistent in producing informative and relevant content to your audience, then you will be seen as a knowledgeable and viable resource. You also need to be consistent in the amount of posts you send out. You don’t want to be that brand that spams your followers’ news feeds every day. It’s a huge turnoff.
• Personalised content that humanises your brand and perhaps tells a story. It will show your audience that you’re not just interested in generating profit and using social media for selling.
• Tagging people and including locations may seem like a nuisance, but if it’s relevant then it can boost your posts to an expanding network of those people and places.
• Make sure to create snackable content, that is short, quick and easy to digest. Who wants to read through an essay worth of content when skimming a news feed?

Paid Advertising

Achieving high levels of organic traffic is becoming more and more rare and difficult, as businesses compete in a noisy and busy social playing field. Although not a guaranteed conversion tool, paid advertising does help build your brand and get you seen by your targeted audience. It’s a slow burner but well worth spending the time and money to really see the ROI.

Facebook is a familiar platform for most people today and its fast becoming a hangout for shoppers to delve deeper into a brand, get connected and of course shop! So boosting your efforts with some paid advertising will encourage users to finally make a purchase when they’re ready. Here are some handy tips to create your Facebook Ad.

If you are lucky to have a sizable budget for your social media activity, then I would certainly recommend Facebook paid ads. Even if you don’t? I would still recommend doing your research and testing the waters with some paid advertising, because if you want to see any real concrete results, you will need to have a combination of organic and paid. It will not only help drive your social goals but will boost your brands reach and awareness to your target audience.

Need help with your Facebook Page? Then get in touch with our Ignite team today!