Brand Awareness
May 18, 2023
Dove, Nike, and Red Bull are excellent at social media messaging, but it isn't just because they have great creative talent.
In this post, we'll break down the step-by-step strategies brands use to craft social media messages, increase publishing volume, improve internal workflows, and optimize content performance.
Let's dive into it.
A social media message is how a brand presents its identity on social media platforms. An excellent social media messaging strategy clearly projects a brand's core values, mission, and personality, which helps it stand out from the competition.
For example, here are Glossier's core values:
You can see that these values always shine through in their social media content.
Here's a great example of a post that showcases how they're devoted to the customer and inclusion by showcasing their diverse customer base using the products:
You'll see that these themes are consistently present in all of their other social media channels.
​​Here are five actionable steps to ensure your brand has a unified social media message across all platforms.
Social media messages should project your core values and mission statement.
Start by brainstorming different types of content that can show off each core value and mission statement.
For example, if "inclusive" is a core value, you might showcase diverse customers or create a post celebrating employee diversity.
Aligning team members with the vision of the social media messaging strategy is essential for success.
If team members are misaligned on the strategy, your audience will receive mixed messages, which weakens the overall brand image.
Alignment is fairly easy if only one or two people are involved in the social media strategy. However, it's trickier for large marketing teams where any single social media post might involve multiple teammates (a designer, copywriter, project manager, etc.).
To keep everyone aligned, create clear social media branding guidelines. Guidelines should include the following:
Tone of Voice: Is the brand funny or serious? Make this concrete by including examples of words or phrases you've used in the past that represent the brand voice well. Also include images, emojis, and other creatives that communicate your brand's tone of voice.
Values: Clearly define where the brand stands on certain topics and how edgy you want to be. Is the brand known for being contrarian? What's acceptable and what is not? Even if your core values vaguely address acceptable content, spell it out clearly in the guidelines.
Protocol if You Don't Know What to Do: There will always be gray areas where people don't know what they can say about a certain topic. Clearly outline instructions if employees are in doubt.
Brand Creatives: Have a folder of all the brand's creative guidelines (like logos, fonts, colors, image styling, etc.).
Once you've created brand guidelines, it's easier to onboard new hires and ensure that everyone is on the same page as you scale.
Now that you have clear social messaging guidelines, give your team the freedom to take ownership of their responsibilities.
After a few months, scroll through your social media channels and audit your new messaging strategy.
Here are a few points to guide you:
Compare the social media posts on each channel. Do they all have the same basic look and feel?
Now compare your social media posts across multiple channels. Does each social media channel project the same brand image? You might have some nuanced differences (i.e., a more professional tone on LinkedIn than on Instagram), but all the content should give the same look and feel.
How well do the core values shine through in each post?
Does it arouse any emotion when you look at the different campaigns?
After you roll out the initial version of your branding guidelines, audit your social channels frequently to ensure they are clear. Once you know they're effective, you can reduce audit frequency to once per quarter.
The best way to measure your social media messaging campaigns' success is to survey your followers and ask them what they think and feel when they see your logo.
If the answers are mostly unanimous, your social media strategy is headed in the right direction. However, if none of the answers have common themes, revisit your guidelines and edit them to clarify the messaging.
There are also plenty of sentiment analysis tools that you can use to gauge follower sentiment across all social media networks.
Your social media strategy is designed to fuel the overall branding strategy.
Measure other branding metrics like:
Brand Search Volume: You can use a tool like Ahrefs to look at your brand name's search volume over time.
Organic Brand Mentions: Ideally, you want to see that other industry publications organically mention your brand as a credible source. You can use a tool like Brand24 to track brand mentions online.
Brand Sentiment: There are plenty of tools you can use to track brand sentiment and zero in on common customer complaints.
Social Media Engagement Trends: Track that total brand engagement is steadily increasing. It's also important to track who is engaging with your brand. Are they your ideal customers?
Backlinks: Organic links are also a great sign that your brand strategy is working. You can track backlink growth with a tool like Semrush.
After auditing these metrics, collaborate with the rest of the marketing team to share insights and brainstorm how you can support the broader branding strategy.
While the strategy above will help you create a general social media messaging strategy, each platform has a slightly different audience and requires a nuanced tone of voice. Here are a few specific tips to maximize brand awareness on specific social media accounts.
Twitter is a great platform to get in front of B2B leaders, and the best way to grow your Twitter audience quickly is to create thoughtful threads.
To create a thought-provoking thread, you could ask a team member to interview an executive on a particular topic and then hire a writer to create a Twitter thread based on the interview.
Alternatively, you can use an employee advocacy tool like GaggleAMP to assign thought leadership content prompts to your executives and ask them to post the content to their personal social media accounts.
Here's an excellent example of a CEO sharing social media content that drives valuable brand awareness:
To increase your Twitter content’s engagement even more, you can use GaggleAMP to assign engagement activities to other employees so that they engage with the executive’s content. This will help the executive’s Tweet gain initial traction and ultimately reach more people organically.
Instagram is excellent for D2C and B2C brands, though some B2B brands have also used it with great success.
The best way to win on Instagram is to create visually appealing content.
You can also take advantage of Instagram's native engagement features, like the question box, to help your content gain more traction and organic reach.
Etsy is an excellent brand to follow for Instagram messaging inspiration as they consistently share content from their creators.
For example, this is a great post that shows how you can use their creators' products to complete DIY projects:
Here’s another excellent example of a post that uses plenty of Instagram’s native engagement features and stickers to earn more organic reach:
Instagram is also great for announcing new product drops and creating excitement around news announcements.
LinkedIn is primarily designed for B2B audiences, so informative/thought leadership content tends to perform well.
However, be sure to also incorporate personal stories and experiences into your LinkedIn content.
Most LinkedIn content is rather dry, so use this to your advantage and stand out by blending storytelling with frameworks and step-by-step advice.
Here's a great example of how you can blend a story with a framework:
Facebook is a great platform for D2C and B2C brands, and there are plenty of different ways to create a successful social media messaging strategy.
Unlike Instagram, which gravitates primarily towards highly visual content, or Twitter, which gravitates primarily towards text-based content, Facebook's audience likes a blend of text and visual content.
Nutella is an excellent example of a brand that performs well on Facebook. They post a mix of memes, recipes, announcements, and other fun content.
Facebook also tends to have an older age range than most other social media platforms, so keep that in mind as you select the best social platform for marketing.
One pro tip is to leverage Facebook Messenger to engage directly with your audience. Messenger chatbots still have very high engagement rates, and you can generate high-quality qualitative customer data and even sell products to them directly.
Facebook chatbots are also a great way to offer direct customer support and gauge your brand's general customer experience.
To set up a Messenger marketing campaign on your Facebook page, you can follow these steps provided by Meta.
Consistently crafting excellent social media messaging campaigns is more than hiring creative marketers – it's also about implementing systems and processes that align the team.
While plenty of social media management tools exist, GaggleAMP is designed to increase engagement among larger teams.
Instead of sending mass messages and hoping your team engages with branded content, you can send specific and personalized engagement requests to your teammates.
This makes it easy to keep your entire team engaged and aligned on social media.
To see for yourself how GaggleAMP can help, schedule a demo today!
Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness
