Brand awareness and visibility are crucial if you want your brand or business to stand out in the highly competitive market. 

Why is it important?

As more and more people know about your brand and what you sell, the more sales or conversions you are likely to get. and one of the best ways to expand your business or brand is by leveraging social media. 

Today we will see how we can enhance the brand awareness & visibility of your business by harnessing the power of social media marketing

What exactly is Brand visibility

It can be defined as the single, most impactful message that a consumer can receive from a business. If done smartly it encourages and motivates the customer to avail the products & services.

Social media marketing has been always considered to be the best & impactful way for businesses to Enhance brand visibility by marketing & promoting products and services to the audience.

In fact, in 2019 the number of social media users reached whooping 3.5 billion worldwide and the number is increasing.

So imagine promoting your business to a huge audience like this and what it can benefit you with.

Coronavirus pandemic and its effects

We all are aware of what businesses are going through this moment. Coronavirus pandemic has affected a lot many businesses, specifically the tourism & hospitality industry in India.

According to hospitalitynet.org report, International Tourism Arrivals Could Fall By 20-30% In 2020. That’s a huge drop!

During this crucial phase, businesses related to tourism (especially hotels) are looking to cut down and lay off their marketing service which is not a wise decision.

Why social media is great for brand awareness
As we know any business (regardless of its size) at any situation can reach out to their target market with Social media and additionally with social media marketing they can connect with their prospects and convert more of them into customers/clients. 

Let’s see what social media marketing can do to enhance business visibility during such crucial situations like coronavirus lockdown.

15 ways to increase brand awareness using the social media platform

1. Create a unique brand personality
   How you interact with your followers is important if you want to make a mark of your brand in the market. People on social media like to interact with a person and not a chatbot. If you approach with a tone that reflects your brand, people will like it and you will gain more followers
2. Use visual content to increase brand awareness
   A social media user especially millennials like visual content. Something visually appealing like graphics or short videos is more likely to get viral among the audience. 
3. Earn Word of Mouth referrals
   Offers are something anybody and everyone loves. Offer some discount to someone when they refer your product or service to others. This is a good way to increase your brand awareness and get more followers on social media.
4. Growing followers 
   If you want to promote your brand successfully on social media channels, you need to have followers. Not just random followers but relevant followers. These are the kind that has an interest in what you sell. A business can have 12k followers but no engagement on the content that they post on their profile. On the other hand, a brand with only 500 followers is receiving comments and shares which will boost their chances of getting conversions and sales. Building the right audience is important if you want to see a profitable boost in your brand awareness
5. Infographics
   This is another strategy to increase your brand following. Infographics are nothing but a visual representation of information. Your followers are going to share your branded infographics if they provide meaningful information in the infographics that you design and post.
6. Guest blogging
   Writing guests blog can be beneficial to get more followers and create brand awareness among people about your brand. This can be done by writing and posting an article on blogs that talk about the same topics you write about. In exchange for publishing one of their blogs on your website. This can surely double the awareness when the blogs get shared on social media.
7. Use the power of Hashtags
   Making use of relevant hashtags on your social media content that you post can help your brand reach to a different audience and expand your brand identity and awareness to a whole new level. Use the required number of hashtags and do not clutter them on your post. A clean post with few numbers of hashtags is a decent way to get a good number of social media followers.
8. Show Up Consistently
   Being consistent is the key. Whatever you post for your brand on your desired social media channels, be consistent about it. Fix a time and day of your post. The audience will be waiting for the piece of information that you are going to share with them and can generate interest among them to share with their friends.
9. Interact with your audience
   Social interacting with your followers and fans on your social media handle is a great way to keep connected with your audience. Social media is the best place to initiate engagement and dialogue. If a followers place a comment on your post, make sure you reply to that comment positively. Reading your comment you can get a non-follower to follow your brand too. Also replying quickly will ensure your followers stay engaged with your brand.
10. Leverage Trends
    Trending or new stories are always spreading across social media channels. This is a smart way to engage your audience and even get new followers to like your social media profiles. You can create your brand content and link it to such trending topics which go viral on Facebook and Instagram. If it clicks with your audience, even your content will spread like a wildfire across the social media channel creating massive brand awareness and engagement.
11. Choose the right social media platform
    Before enhancing brand visibility, a business or brand needs to know where their target audience hangout. Most businesses decide to market and promote services on all social media platforms. This approach might not work sometimes.It’s wise to choose the social media platform that works best for your business and then push your brand on to it. Here are five of the most popular social media platforms to start with.

Facebook.
Facebook has always been and remains to be the biggest social media platform for businesses, big or small, to engage with their fans. The audience on Facebook continues to grow with 2.23 billion monthly users being active in 2018.  A very great platform for building a brand among masses.

Twitter. 

Twitter is a platform where you can share byte-size content. Unlike Facebook, Twitter allows a limited number of text to be used in the post. Twitter is all about tweeting your experience and is a great place for customers to share their experience with your brand.

Instagram. 

Instagram is all about visuals. Sharing images, videos, gifs that reflect your brand is a creative way to build brand awareness among Instagrammers. On Instagram, it’s easy to promote your brand, service, generate leads and connect with your followers.

Pinterest.
Pinterest is a platform to share visuals and find ideas on anything and everything. Its a highly efficient platform to increase your brand visibility & awareness by creating user engaging visuals and drive engagement towards your brand.

LinkedIn.
LinkdIn is more of a professional platform to build connections and especially useful for B2B brands. Here you will find the CEO’s, managers, executives and others. The content that goes on LinkedIn usually revolves around work-related culture, career related advice and so on.

12. Share great interactive content that can go viral
As popularly said by most of the Digital marketing experts, Content is the King. Yes, posting images & videos complemented with related captions can help your brand connect to your customer instantly. If done properly, this will generate more interest in your products and boost your visibility.

13. Paid Ads
Paid campaigns can be helpful to boost the products and services that are related to certain segments of the audience. For example, if you are owning a fashion designing studio and have recently worked on apparel for women, with paid ads you can only target the particular segment. This way you can keep your audience engaged with your brand by showing content relevant to them.

14. Collaborate with influencers
There’s a new trend which is growing these days mostly on Instagram. Social influencers are helping brands and business to reach out to the audience by promoting the products on their social profile. This is a new way for businesses and brands to reach to more audience and boost their brand visibility.

15. Audience insights

Audience insights can be of great help for brands and businesses to know their audience from a pool of billions of social media users worldwide.

Insights on age, gender and interests, a brand can then focus on only the particular segment of audience and boost their visibility without wasting commercial on non-interested customers.

What Does Your Brand Awareness Strategy Look Like on Social Media Channels?

Your brand awareness strategy shouldn’t be like everyone. Especially when it comes to maintaining your social media profile on different social media channels.

If you follow what every other brand is doing in your sector, how will you stand out?

5 steps to increase brand awareness through social media campaigns

There are a variety of ways you can increase your brand awareness through social media campaigns.

• Brand recognition
  Work on your brand recognition before strategizing on brand awareness. Share good images and visuals with proper branding which will include your name, logo, etc. A good creative can help you achieve higher brand awareness.
• Social channel based content
  Different social media channels have different audiences. What works on instagram won’t work on facebook or twitter and vice versa. For example, there is a limitation on content that can go on twitter. Whereas on facebook, one can write content in paras. Working wisely on social media channel based content is important if you want to see a boost in brand awareness

• Social Media engagement
  Connecting with customers, influencers consistently is how you can create brand awareness about yourself. There has to be 2-way communication if you want to really get known in the competitive market. Only then people will recommend you to more people which will boost your awareness automatically.
• Social consistency

Being consistent on social media platforms through posting which includes your brand logo and name creates a strong brand recognition and thus creates awareness. 

• Ads and paid campaigns

Social media ads can be of great help to boost your brand awareness. By strategizing paid ads, campaigns and with help from smart tools like Facebook Insights, a brand can successfully target a niche audience that will possibly generate good ROI.

Enhancing your brand awareness & visibility is not an easy task if you are going to look after your brick & mortar business and customers. To manage it efficiently you need to hire a Digital Marketing company who can deliver and can get you profits using social media channels in terms of audience and revenue.