The Importance of Social Media Brand Awareness

When thinking about your favorite brands, what comes to mind? Most likely their products and services but also the personality they have curated. These factors tie into creating social media brand awareness which can be thought of as consumers’ ability to recognize specific brands on social media. Several factors go into creating and increasing brand awareness, and it is crucial to differentiate your brand from others.

What is Social Media Brand Awareness and Why is it Important?

At its core, brand awareness is the idea that consumers are familiar with the products and services your brand offers. Social media brand awareness refers to raising brand awareness through social media platforms which has become an increasingly popular strategy. For example, through the use of social media, you can reach different target audiences through different social media platforms. Social media brand awareness is vital and allows brands to develop relationships with potential customers and strengthen relationships with existing customers.

How to Develop and Increase Social Media Brand Awareness?

There are several ways to develop social media brand awareness, and it comes back to building a distinct and identifiable brand. Various factors play into having a recognizable brand which ranges from your brand personality to aesthetics and values. Starting with personality, it is important to look at what you are posting and how you are interacting with customers on social media pages. Are you formal or more casual when talking with customers? Customers enjoy unique and original content where they feel they are interacting with a person. Additionally, how you respond to and take care of customers if they are not satisfied with your product can impact your brand’s reputation.

Secondly, your brand’s aesthetic will help you be more identifiable. Having a consistent color scheme and style across various platforms will allow consumers to know and understand your brand better. If your website has a minimalist website, how are you portraying that identity on your Instagram and TikTok? Content between platforms will vary, but showing consistency is beneficial.

Additionally, showcasing your brand values can humanize your brand. Displaying brand values allows customers to build a sense of trust and loyalty with the brand and differentiate it from others. For example, if your brand is passionate about being an environmentally friendly brand how are you showing your customers that they can trust you? Maybe you make a TikTok showing the sustainable process of how you make your product. By knowing your brand, you can tailor your social media marketing strategy and content creation to be the most authentic it can be to your brand. Having an understanding of your brand and displaying that on social media platforms is an important first step in creating brand awareness.

Similar to displaying your brand values, another way to distinguish your brand from others is having a narrative. A narrative allows you to personalize and humanize your brand to your audiences. There are various narratives you can tell like the origin of the brand itself and the person behind it. Having a narrative is something that you can tie into your marketing strategy, and customers can see a more human side of your brand, increasing brand loyalty and distinguishing your brand from others. 

A third way to increase brand awareness is through contests and giveaways. Brands can run social media contests where they have users either tag a couple of friends in the comments or repost the contest post to their story. This is extremely beneficial in developing brand awareness as customers may expose their friends or followers to the brand. While it does require brands to give away something for free, the exposure they can generate from their audiences is greatly beneficial. 

You can also look outside just your brand when looking to gain awareness. Brands can partner with each other and perform co-branding or co-marketing. Collaborating with other brands allows your brand to be introduced to other audiences you may not be reaching. If you do not want to collaborate with another brand, working with social media creators or influencers is another great way to create brand awareness on social media as they can promote your product to their followers.

How to Track Social Media Brand Awareness? 

It is important to be aware of how your current tactics are working to increase your social media brand awareness, and luckily there are several ways to collect valuable information. 

Sentiment Analysis is one tool on Sproutsocial where you track customers’ comments and feedback. Customer sentiment analysis allows you to see how customers and people are feeling about your brand, whether it be positive or negative. With this data, you can track sentiment trends where brands can be proactive if there is consistently negative sentiment.

Sproutsocial also offers tools that allow you to monitor your Share of Voice (SOV). Share of Voice looks at how much your brand is being talked about in its respective market and where you stand among other brands. From the data, you can monitor how frequently and where your brand is mentioned.

One more valuable tool that Sproutsocial offers for tracking social media brand awareness is monitoring social media engagement. By looking at what and how users are interacting with brands, you can see which platforms they are having the most engagement on and see which methods are working for them.

One last valuable tool is Google Trends. Google Trends allows you to track how much your brand is being looked up across specific amounts of time and locations. Not only can you monitor your own brand’s data, but also perform research on competitors as well.

Social media brand awareness is crucial in being recognized and building loyalty with customers. Bright Age can help your brand generate social brand awareness whether it’s through branding itself, running a contest or giveaway, or altering your strategy to raise more awareness. Social media brand awareness is extremely valuable to brands and being effective in strategies allows your brand to reach as many customers as you can.