What is Social Brand Awareness?
If you work in digital marketing and more specifically social media the phrase ‘brand awareness’ is nothing new and is certainly thrown around a lot. It’s very easy for us to say “Getting your business using social media and building your brand awareness would be great for you” but what’s the method in the madness that happens behind closed doors on social media?
When a lot of people hear the term ‘brand awareness’ they think about exposing their company branding to the people who need their services. More often than not however, people neglect to think about the impact that brand awareness has on people who don’t need your services at this moment in time but might need them in the future. When talking about social brand awareness, one difficulty in particular when trying to explain the benefits of social media is that it can sound fluffy if you’re new to the digital marketing channel, so I’ve tried to find some statistics and information so you don’t just have to take my word for it.
Who can I target with Social Media?
On Twitter alone there are 645 million active users, of which, according to QuickSprout 6% of users use Twitter for business purposes – that equates to 38.7 million users worldwide. So the opportunity to engage with people within your target market is huge! And if you’re not operating within a B2B market then you can consider your potential audience to be even bigger…20% in fact.
So imagine if you could catch the attention of even a small portion of that audience. How do you do that without awareness? It was only a day or two ago that I overheard someone in the office speaking on the phone to a potential client:
“Oh you found out about us on Twitter? That’s great!”
How does Social Media work?
Whilst there are many forms of social media; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus to name a few, each platform has its own style and functionality but the purpose remains the same. Let’s take LinkedIn for example, the business to business social media channel – this is a great platform to showcase your business in a suit and polished shoes. However the aim of LinkedIn boils down to increasing the… (Whilst trying to avoid marketing jargon) chance that someone will see your brand and in turn your company and ultimately connect.
So what kind of impact does Social Media really have on people – if it’s not necessarily driving sales as a first click action by a follower then what’s the point?
Social brand awareness should not be treated as a separate function of your company but more like something that fuels the growth of your digital marketing. As shown above, awareness generated through social media ultimately increases website traffic, all of which can be completely tracked through the use of multiple programs including Google Analytics.
Such programs like Sprout, Hootsuite and Buffer all offer tools which allow you to analyse your social media marketing: identifying over a period where your growth was, what content got you the most exposure and what drove the highest level of engagement – so things really aren’t as intangible as they seem.
It’s all about using social media in the right way; developing a strategy which can be tracked to grow your awareness which in term will help grow your digital marketing. This blog only scratches the surface, but if you feel like I have busted the social media myth for you, then perhaps you’d be interested in exploring what social media can do for your business. Give us a call on 01992 582 824, email us at [email protected] or you can pop into the office and speak to a lovely member of the Cariad team.
