Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools available, but to fully harness its potential, businesses need to establish a consistent brand.
Why is consistent branding important?
Staying “on brand” within and across social media platforms is crucial for creating brand recognition, credibility and loyalty. It signals to both potential and existing customers that your brand is established, dependable, trustworthy and engaged.
Social media is a fast-paced world that thrives on novelty, but studies have shown that consumers are also affected by familiarity bias, which means they favor the consistent and the familiar. Successful brands need to both keep their content fresh and engaging and create enough continuity in their messaging to give users the feeling of dependability and familiarity.
So what is the most effective way for a company to develop a strong brand and continue to stay on brand through growth and transition? The secret boils down to one word:
Strategy.
In an article featured in Small Business Trends, ATX Web Designs founder and CEO Daniel Griggs advised businesses to create a strategy and system for their social media posts.
While it can be time-consuming and even tedious at times to plan and schedule social media posts, this process will give you the most return on your investment. Creating a strategy and schedule for your social media posts allows you to think about the content you want to present, cross-promote, synchronize posts and make sure each piece of content matches with your brand and company vision.
Developing brand guidelines and a style guide is a must for maintaining brand consistency. There are many aspects beyond the actual content to consider when establishing these guidelines, such as
- Tone and personality
- Visual design
- Multimedia
- Font and color scheme
- Logo
- Offline and internal marketing
Utilizing a content calendar and post scheduler will help ensure that all these aspects of your social media content represent a consistent brand and are in line with your company’s greater vision.
There is no shortcut to creating and maintaining a cohesive online brand and presence. It requires pre-planning, strategy and commitment. Most of all it takes time. Building trust with your consumer base requires patience and consistent effort but the results will boost your credibility as well as your bottom line.
If you’d like to develop more brand cohesion throughout your website and mobile app, ATX Web Designs offers design and development services customized for your business.