Overcoming Obstacles When Branding with Social Media

When dealing with your business’s brand, you certainly understand that there are differences between enhancing your brand through traditional channels and through social media channels. When it comes to social media, there are obstacles that you must overcome.

Social media can do so much for your brand

If you have been acting in a traditional brand manager fashion for a long time, you may find it rather difficult to switch your thinking to marketing your brand through social media channels. One of the areas that may require a light hand is your target audience. When interacting with your target audience through social media channels, you need to be respectful of them.

When you market your brand in a more traditional way, you will probably experience more blind acceptance of your content from your audience. In other words, your target audience members will read your content, not question any of what you have said, and then eventually get to the point of buying your products and/or services. It couldn’t be any more simple.

However, when you market your brand on social media channels, it is another story. The first mistake that you will want to avoid is thinking that you can simply take the approach that works well for you with traditional marketing and applies that to your social media efforts. It just doesn’t work the same. That is the first obstacle that you will have to overcome. Additionally, you will not be able to capture the same tangible results that you are able to capture with traditional marketing.  

Social media just doesn’t work the same as traditional marketing

In your role as brand manager, you need to understand clearly that social media does not function (and was not built that way) the same as other marketing channels. You need to erase that way of thinking and approach it entirely differently. The first step that you should take is to consider you content as a product and/or service that you are trying to sell to someone else. In many respects, when you are marketing your brand on social media channels, your content is your product and/or service. You need to engage your target audience and you also need to get them to willingly share the content that you are sharing with them. The viral potential of your content is critical to your success when you are dealing with social media. 

Your approach to communicating with your clients must be different with social media

When you are marketing your brand traditionally, effective communication may not be essential to your business’ success. However, when it comes to marketing your brand with social media, it is extremely important to your success. You may not feel as though your effective communication has a lot to do with the end result (the decision that your client makes to buy your products and/or services). However, when you are marketing with social media, communication with your clients is essential to your success. One effective way to combat that issue is by understanding how important it is to connect with your target audience members and a great way to do that is through your content. People always respond to content that makes them feel something. So, make them feel something.

Never assume that you understand what your clients want to read on social media without actually asking them

When it comes to traditional marketing, it is easy to make certain assumptions about your clients and prospective clients. However, it doesn’t work the same way with social media. It is the easiest (and most important) thing to do with your target audience. Ask them what they want to read. They will be more than happy to tell you. Then you can customize your content to fit their wants and needs and you won’t have to play any guessing games. A great way to accomplish this is by using your staff members to find out what your clients and prospects want and need. It will save you a great deal of aggravation and work in the long run. At that point, you can write content that is spot on for that particular situation and for that particular group of people.

Conclusion

As important as it is to market your brand with social media as well as with traditional marketing approaches, it is also critical to your success to understand the obstacles that you will (or may) encounter and to know what to do to overcome those obstacles. Additionally, your content must appear on multiple platforms, which can be extremely challenging at times. That can be time-consuming and it can cause frustrations that you don’t experience with traditional marking methods. With the right combination of traditional and social media marketing, you will be soaring and your business will be a raging success before you know it!

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