Social Media Brand Image Guidelines for New Businesses
For new businesses, social media marketing may seem a bit overwhelming. However, with a good set of rules to frame your communication, you will quickly become comfortable presenting quality content that reflects the voice of your brand and appeals to your audience. Here are four steps to help you get started building a great social media presence.
Invest in a professional brand.
Nothing cheapens a company’s brand like a pixelated logo or poor-quality branding elements. If you want to gain and keep the respect of your audience, work with a professional graphic designer or marketing team to create a logo and any other necessary graphics specifically for each platform you wish to use.
An example of a company with well-executed branding is Coca Cola®. Their internationally known typographic logo is classic and benefits from years of brand equity. Each branding element is cohesive and precise. From the trademarked red color to the shape of the bottle’s silhouette, this logo is always clean and sharp wherever it’s used.
Construct a social media style guide.
A style guide is an essential part of any form of marketing. It outlines the rules for presenting your brand to the world by specifying details such as exact logo dimensions, font usage, mandatory Pantone®/CMYK/RGB color usage, and even which grammatical style to use within a given medium. Hire Transcends Marketing for a successful long term marketing plan for your business.
McDonald’s® is a franchise that has one of the most exacting and highly-specified style guides for everything from the cardboard boxes that contain their plastic cups to the number of pickles that are placed on a Big Mac®. Within their multiple profiles, McDonald’s® has specific rules for logo placement, video content parameters, RGB color and every other aspect of their branding.
Create relevant, quality content.
The type of content posted on each platform is important and should reinforce your brand as well as provide your audience with relevant, timely information. Creating purposeful, conscientious content is the only way to guarantee that your audience associates positively with your brand. Choose content that reflects not only your company’s message but also solves a problem or provides the type of information your audience is looking for. Making sure your content works well within each individual platform will also adds to its effectiveness.
The Artful Parent is a blog that provides an excellent example of quality content regarding art activities for children. This blog’s social media posts include research findings, how-to articles, visually appealing quotes, and shared content from other organizations that provide similar information. Over 500,000 parents and educators follow and share this blog’s content on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Build quality relationships to reinforce a positive brand image.
Each company whose content you choose to share on social media should possess a similar level of quality and gravitas as your own. The sharing of content from others has the potential to reflect positively or negatively upon your own brand. Therefore, it’s essential to build the type of quality relationships that reinforce your branding.
Blue Coat is a web security company that reinforces their social media presence through relationships created with other companies in their field. The company’s brand has more impact when other companies share positive posts about their products and services. With other businesses speaking positively on their behalf, Blue Coat Systems gains more influence with their audience than when promoting themselves.
As a new business, you will find that there many ways to connect successfully with your audience. However, when you begin with a clear plan and identify the essential elements needed to communicate your brand effectively, the right execution will reward you with a wealth of opportunities to engage with your audience. Just be sure to hone your message and deliver it in a way that conveys the right mix of value and professionalism.
