17 Effective Ways to Leverage Social Media for Brand Promotion
To help you effectively leverage social media for brand promotion, we’ve gathered seventeen insightful tips from founders, CEOs, and other industry leaders. From the importance of promoting the brand with engaging storytelling to the need to engage your target audience genuinely, these experts share their top strategies for maximizing your brand’s social media presence.
- Promote the Brand with Engaging Storytelling
- Partner with Complementary Brands
- Develop a Defined Social Media Strategy
- Use Animated Infographics for Promotion
- Utilize Podcasts for Brand Outreach
- Speak with the Audience in Their Language
- Monitor Trends with Social-Listening Tools
- Balance Informative and Promotional Content
- Build a Cohesive Brand Identity on Social Media
- Spark Conversations with Authentic Connections
- Combine Influencers and Customers for Promotion
- Leverage Personal Branding for Promotion
- Share Genuine Content for Brand Recognition
- Boost the Brand with Engaging TikTok Videos
- Focus on Community Outreach in Promotion
- Target Your Audience on a Preferred Platform
- Engage the Target Audience Genuinely
Promote the Brand with Engaging Storytelling
The most effective way to leverage social media for brand promotion is through engaging storytelling and authentic content.
Focus on creating stories that resonate with your audience, showcasing your brand’s values, mission, and the people behind it. Authenticity in these stories builds trust and connection. Use a mix of formats like videos, images, and live streams to keep the content dynamic and engaging.
Encourage user interaction through comments, shares, and user-generated content, and respond actively to foster a community around your brand. This approach helps in creating a loyal customer base and amplifies your brand’s presence on social media platforms.
Michael Hammelburger
Founder, Sales Therapy
Partner with Complementary Brands
Collaborating with the right partners can be crazy effective for getting your brand out there on social media. I saw this firsthand when one of our clients teamed up with an awesome hiking magazine to promote some new outdoor gear they were launching.
We came up with this fun Instagram giveaway where people could tag who they’d want to win the gear and head out on an adventure with. It was a total win-win—the magazine got exposure with the client’s followers, while the client tapped into their engaged community of hiking enthusiasts.
Partnering with brands that complement what you offer can really help you organically reach fresh, relevant audiences. When it’s done right, it doesn’t feel overly promotional. People just see it as two brands they dig coming together to create something cool.
The key is finding partners your audiences genuinely overlap with. Do that, and collaborations can be a hugely effective way to get your brand out there and connect with potential new customers.
Bertrand Li
Founder, RevieWise
Develop a Defined Social Media Strategy
To effectively leverage social media for brand promotion, it is important to have a well-defined and thought-out social media strategy. This includes identifying your target audience, choosing the right social media platforms to reach them, and setting clear goals and objectives.
A good strategy will also outline the type of content you want to share and how often you will post. This will help you stay consistent and engaged with your audience, ultimately leading to better brand promotion.
Zach Shelley
Founder and CEO, A-List Properties
Use Animated Infographics for Promotion
I’ve found that animated infographics are remarkably effective for brand promotion on social media.
Recently, we developed a series of engaging, animated graphics illustrating key life-saving techniques. These captured our audience’s attention and simplified complex concepts into digestible, shareable content. This approach resonated particularly well on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where visual content reigns supreme.
By demonstrating crucial skills in an accessible format, we not only increased our online visibility but also reinforced our commitment to educating the public on essential emergency skills.
Hafsa Unnar
Manager, Basic Life Support Training
Utilize Podcasts for Brand Outreach
The most powerful way to leverage social media for brand promotion is through the strategic utilization of social audio, specifically, podcasts. Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular across nearly all demographics and offer a great way to reach out and connect with potential customers or clients.
When creating content for your podcast, focus on topics that your target audience will find interesting, as this is key to gaining traction with them. It’s also important to create quality content that provides value rather than simply trying to sell services. You can provide helpful insights, tips, personal stories, or anything else related to your industry that can help inform listeners.
Justin Cole
President and SEO Strategist, Tested Media
Speak with the Audience in Their Language
It’s easy to over-analyze the social media marketing game, but in reality, things are pretty straightforward. You’re there because you believe your crowd is as well. To make your time and money count, just talk their talk. It’s as simple as that.
Try to put yourself in your target audience’s shoes, brains, and hearts. When is the sweet spot for them to log in? Are they on the go, or can they spare a minute for a 200-word caption? Pinpoint their pain points. What bugs them that your product or service can fix? What type of free value can you offer them that they will appreciate? Which accounts are they likely following that could lead them straight to you?
Then, stay consistent, keep innovating, keep monitoring, and keep adjusting based on the results.
Jessica Barzler
Owner, Barzler Social
Monitor Trends with Social-Listening Tools
Utilize social-listening tools to monitor conversations and trends related to your brand, industry, or relevant keywords. This allows you to identify opportunities for engagement, gather insights, and adapt your brand’s messaging accordingly.
By actively listening to discussions on social media, you can address customer concerns, identify emerging trends, and engage with potential customers in a more targeted and meaningful way. For example, suppose you are a smartphone brand. By using social-listening tools, you discover a recurring complaint about battery life in your competitor’s phones.
You can then create content that focuses on your smartphones’ long-lasting batteries, addressing this pain point. Engaging with users discussing battery problems can also create goodwill and attract customers to your brand.
Ben Lau
Founder, Featured SEO Company
Balance Informative and Promotional Content
Social media provides for innovative marketing, and I am thankful to have this practical and cost-effective method at my disposal as a business owner.
One way I leverage my social media to reach more customers and articulate how much of an expert I am in my field is by balancing content that is informative with eye-catching promotional posts.
In this tech-savvy market, web surfers make split-second decisions on whether a website is worth digging into or should be disregarded because of ineffective content that wastes screen time. At the same time, I must present my best image forward and give readers something to stop and consider.
I regularly update all my media platforms with timely articles and recommendations, as well as several links that lead to my personal story and the reason I should be a reader’s go-to source for information.
I recommend using this same formula to present a company as relevant, well-informed, and relatable all in one social media platform visit.
Saya Nagori
Founder, Wander DC
Build a Cohesive Brand Identity on Social Media
The most effective way to leverage social media for brand promotion is to create a cohesive and authentic brand identity, tailor your content to your target audience, prioritize engagement, and use data-driven insights to refine your strategy. This means understanding your audience, utilizing a consistent brand voice and visuals, sharing relevant and valuable content, and actively engaging with your followers.
Social media advertising can also be highly effective when combined with these organic efforts. Ultimately, building genuine relationships and trust with your audience is key to successful brand promotion on social media.
Nikita Sharma
Chief Marketing Officer, Hicentrik Digital Marketing
Spark Conversations with Authentic Connections
The most effective way to leverage social media for brand promotion is to be more human—ditch the corporate script and engage like you’re at a backyard barbecue. People crave authentic connections, not billboard-style broadcasts. It’s about sparking conversations, not just splashing your logo everywhere.
We figured this out after noticing that our posts with real stories, team selfies, and behind-the-scenes peeks were like magnets. So, we made our social media a two-way street, a place where customers can share their stories and see their impact. It’s not just about selling a product; it’s about building a community around your brand that grows organically, fueled by genuine interactions and shared values.
Think of it as planting a garden; water it with attention, fertilize it with sincerity, and watch your brand bloom in the social media sun.
Alex Stasiak
CEO and Founder, Startup House
Combine Influencers and Customers for Promotion
One of the mantras in our marketing department is, “Influencers are for reach. Customers are for authenticity.” It’s something that we try to hold to with every social media campaign we run.
We know that influencers, even good influencers, will be good at raising awareness of our brand, but that anyone who gets curious about our brand from influencer content is going to want to see genuine customer reviews before they’re willing to pay for our services.
We’ve put a lot of work into incentivizing and encouraging customer reviews, and we’ve started partnering with some unique content-creators to get our name out there.
Nick Valentino
VP of Market Operations, Bellhop
Leverage Personal Branding for Promotion
As a business owner, observing the success of other company leaders in leveraging social media for brand promotion, the most effective strategy seems to be in personal branding.
Witnessing how leaders humanize their companies through authentic and engaging personal narratives on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, it becomes evident that people connect with people. By showcasing the human side of the business, sharing insights, and building a genuine online presence, company leaders can create a strong and relatable brand identity. This approach not only fosters a sense of transparency and trust but also amplifies the company’s values and mission, making it more appealing to a broader audience.
Ultimately, the personal brand of company leaders becomes a powerful catalyst for promoting the overall brand, establishing a deeper connection with customers, and driving business success through social media channels.
Christopher Lay
Co-Founder, LEONID
Share Genuine Content for Brand Recognition
Documenting and sharing the things we do at our company for our customers has resulted in an incredible increase in our overall brand recognition. Because we share our unfiltered thoughts and the challenges we face in our line of work, we have found that many of our new customers already trust our team and feel a connection with us before we even work with them.
We do not post anything over-the-top and create our content with our smartphone cameras because that allows us to very easily form a habit of documenting in our day-to-day. We tried using a professional camera, but it was bulky and difficult to operate, and only one team member could hold it at any one time.
We realized that our customers do not care if the content we produce looks slightly sharper or has a higher frame rate because the substance is what matters.
The amazing results we have seen from our efforts documenting and posting genuine content has made it the most effective social media strategy we have ever used.
Zames Chew
Co-Founder, Repairs.sg
Boost the Brand with Engaging TikTok Videos
This question is particularly exciting for me. We initiated our brand’s journey by sharing engaging TikTok videos showcasing our product.
By maintaining a consistent daily posting schedule and focusing on a fun and educational approach, we achieved remarkable success. We accumulated millions of enthusiastic followers, enabling us to not only educate the public about our product but also drive sales through the links on our TikTok account.
This success seamlessly transitioned to Instagram, and we’ve now established a presence on several social media platforms dedicated exclusively to our product. Our ultimate goal is to make our product accessible to people all around the world.
Nick Eischens
COO, Popl
Focus on Community Outreach in Promotion
This is truly industry-specific. My company works in the death care industry. Most people aren’t eager to think about death and dying, so funeral homes need to tread carefully and be creative. I’ve found that a social media strategy that focuses on community outreach and engagement can be very effective in this industry.
For example, funeral homes can build their brand by highlighting the work they’re doing in the community through their volunteering and charitable giving. This type of content performs well for them and builds goodwill towards the funeral home. Content like this is great because it promotes the brand without dwelling on death and the sadness associated with it.
Temmo Kinoshita
Co-Founder, Lindenwood Marketing
Target Your Audience on a Preferred Platform
Don’t just make a brand page and post on there every few days.
Figure out which platform your audience uses most, and target them there. For example, the demographics of users on LinkedIn can vary greatly when compared to Instagram or YouTube. Focus on developing a presence on a platform where your users already spend their time. Run experiments and ads to hone your campaigns, and don’t be afraid to think outside the box and try new things.
And, if you aren’t well-versed in social media, hire someone who is to do it for you. Otherwise, you risk coming off as cringey and out-of-touch.
Brittany Foster
Freelance Writer, Editor, and SEO Expert, bfostercreative
Engage the Target Audience Genuinely
In my experience, the most effective way to leverage social media for brand promotion is to make sure that you are engaging with your target audience in a genuine way.
Too many companies try to use social media as a one-way street, or they take a “spray and pray” approach by posting content without considering who the audience might be. This approach is rarely successful—and it’s never going to build trust between your company and your customers.
Instead, think about what kinds of things your customers would want to see from you on social media. Are there shared interests? Do they care about certain topics? What kinds of things would make them want to follow you? Then, create content that meets those needs and share it with them.
Gauri Manglik
CEO and Co-Founder, Instrumentl
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