What role has social media played in shaping your brand identity? Share one specific strategy that has worked well for you.

Question

Social media has become a powerful force in shaping brand identity in today's interconnected world. This article explores the multifaceted ways companies can leverage social platforms to build trust, showcase expertise, and create meaningful connections with their audience. Drawing on insights from industry experts, we'll examine practical strategies for authentic engagement, storytelling, and community building that can transform a brand's social media presence.

Dave Perlman · Answer

Social media has been instrumental in establishing our brand as a trusted authority in the video marketing space. One strategy that has consistently delivered results is creating short, informative videos that showcase expertise while providing genuine value to our audience. When working with a New York real estate firm, we developed brief videos introducing their agents and offering helpful market insights, which significantly boosted their client trust and engagement metrics. This approach works because it simultaneously demonstrates professional capabilities while answering questions potential clients already have. The content feels helpful rather than promotional, creating a foundation of trust before any business relationship begins. We've found that when people receive free, valuable information through these videos, they're much more likely to convert to paying clients when they need our services.

Soumya Kalluri · Answer

At Dwij, social media helped us shift from being just a product-based brand to a purpose-driven voice. One strategy that worked well was starting a "Behind the Stitch" series on Instagram, where we shared real stories of our artisans, fabric journeys, and even product failures. We posted raw, unfiltered images—not polished photo shoots. Within 13 weeks, engagement went up by 77%, and direct messages from customers doubled. People started tagging friends, asking questions, and some even offered their old jeans for upcycling. That's when we knew connection was stronger than content.
The most saved post wasn't about a product—it was a short video of a tailor fixing a scrap piece into a usable pouch. The takeaway was clear: when people see the process, not just the result, they understand the value. That series shaped how we built trust and identity online—not through ads or trends, but through consistent honesty. It reminded me that authenticity doesn't require big budgets—it just needs a story worth telling and the courage to tell it as it is.

Syed Irfan Ajmal · Answer

Not only did social media play a role in defining my brand identity, it gave my brand authenticity that would stand out in a crowded space. I was less concerned about participating in viral trends or copying my competition and focused on developing a tone that conveyed a person was speaking. My tone was consistent in every post, every comment I replied to, and every story. My tone was always inquisitive, warm, and a little cheeky. As my followers had more interaction with me over time, they started to trust the voice and recognize its familiar and authentic presence beyond just knowing it was me.
One surprising tactic that worked well was a comment-first approach to engagement. Prior to posting anything new, I would make a point to create engagement with other leaders in my space—thoughtful, specific comments that furthered a discussion and engagement for their content. This wasn't an emoji drop or generic praise. I would show up with thoughtful engagement to initiate a conversation back in their feed. Sure, I could have worked for clicks back to my page, but it was more about building relationships, earning trust for sharing my posts, and becoming a trusted source going forward.

Gina Dunn · Answer

Actually, it's the opposite for me. Social media hasn't shaped my brand identity. What has shaped it is the discipline of showing up authentically, with a point of view that resonates with real people.
The platforms themselves are merely containers. If you don't already know your voice, your values, and your target audience, social media only amplifies the confusion.
The one strategy that has worked best for me? Treating social media as an echo chamber for clarity. Every post, podcast clip, or insight I share is drawn from the same point-of-view library I use with clients. This way, my content isn't chasing algorithms; it's reinforcing a consistent identity.
When your voice is clear, social media amplifies it. When it isn't, social media distorts it.

Emily Ruven · Answer

Nowadays, it's almost a necessity to start creating content to build your personal brand, and there are numerous ways to do it. Most people focus primarily on social media platforms. I've discovered that social media is a powerful marketing tool for my business as a brand and web designer. Currently, I'm concentrating on Instagram and Threads.
Instagram helps me significantly to share my portfolio and carousels about various topics related to branding and website design, assisting other business owners. Sharing stories has also helped me connect more with my followers, not just on a business level, but on a personal level too, which is crucial because your ideal clients get to know you better and trust you more.
Although I like Instagram, it has been challenging to reach new people. That's why, when I discovered Threads, it honestly changed everything for me, my business, and building my brand. Threads is an excellent place to connect with new people, as well as engage with your followers and make new friends. I feel very comfortable sharing on Threads, mixing branding tips with personal stories, and it has helped me connect with many people around the world.
Now, I'm focusing more on networking, and I've connected with most of the people I met on Threads. I've even had networking calls and done a few collaborations with them. My goal is to keep building these partnerships so we can help each other in our businesses instead of working alone.
Recently, I started hosting my own networking meetup for women in business, and it's been enjoyable getting to know more amazing women. Hopefully, it will lead to more referral partners, collaborators, and opportunities to help each other in whatever way we can. And I owe it all to Threads and the connections I've made there.
The key is to be authentic, human, and share your story, your knowledge, experiences, and even casual personal matters, so other people feel like it's a relaxed place to connect, talk, and relate.

Andrew Franks · Answer

Social media has played a huge part in helping define our brand because it enables us to engage with people in real time, on a platform where conversations around trust, transparency, and fairness are already taking place. In financial claims, reputation is key, and old-style marketing doesn't cut through. Social platforms give us the ability to showcase not just what we do, but why we do it: positioning our brand as approachable, knowledgeable, and aligned with consumer interests rather than appearing as just another corporate service.
One strategy that has worked particularly well is focusing on educational storytelling. Rather than status updates or ads, we post timely, small stories to demystify and clarify consumer rights and industry trends through real-life plausible situations. If there's a regulatory change, we'll translate the legalese into a quick, engaging post about how the change could impact the everyday driver or borrower. This is trust-building, and it also cements our brand as an advocate who breaks down complex subjects for those who may feel alienated by the legal or financial jargon.
We've also found that using short-form video amplifies this strategy. Creating a simple, 60-second clip showing our complex claim process in layman's terms through clear steps helps to humanize our brand and differentiate in a market that can often be seen as scary. The consistency of this approach has created a level of recognition. When people think of our brand, they don't just think finance claims firm; they think explain, educate, and empower team.
Embracing social media as a channel to share clarity and narratives has enabled the development of an organizational identity beyond the service provider. It says we're here, we've got a voice, and we look like our values of advocacy, reliability, and accessibility: values that our communities can believe in.

Illustrious Espiritu · Answer

For a long time, our social media was just a glorified brochure. We would post pictures of our products and sales announcements, but it did nothing to build a brand or to connect with our audience on a personal level. We were talking at our customers, not with them, and our brand was invisible in a sea of other suppliers doing the same thing.
The role social media has played in shaping our brand identity is simple: it has given us a platform to show, not just tell. Our core brand identity is based on the idea that we are a partner to our customers, not just a vendor, and social media is how we prove that.
The specific strategy that has worked well for us is to use our social media channels as a platform for our customers' stories. We created a new process where our operations team is trained to identify and track customer success stories. When a customer uses our product to solve a difficult problem, we treat it as an opportunity. From a marketing standpoint, we then reach out to the customer and create short, authentic videos and posts about their project. The focus isn't on our product; it's on their skill, their expertise, and their success.
This has been incredibly effective. Our brand identity is now defined by the quality of our customers and the work they do, which is a much more authentic way to build a brand. Our social media is no longer a broadcast channel; it's a community of experts, and we're just the host. My advice is that you have to stop thinking of social media as a place to promote your brand and start thinking of it as a place to celebrate your customers. Your brand is not what you say it is; it's what your customers say it is.

Bradley Keenan · Answer

Social media has become the main channel for humanizing our brand through authentic voices rather than corporate messaging. Our most successful strategy has been our employee-driven content approach, where we provide team members with ready-to-share content while encouraging them to add their personal insights. Our research, analyzing over half a million LinkedIn posts, showed that even minor personal edits to company content can triple engagement rates. This approach has consistently outperformed traditional corporate social media in both reach and customer trust metrics.

Rachita Chettri · Answer

It was through social media that we experimented with sharing messages with more people. I started to share the actual statistics of our outreach, rather than publishing refined updates. One post featured the example of one journalist relationship that resulted in 15 placements worth tens of thousands of dollars. That type of story drew in over three times the attention compared to our case studies because people related to what was real.
I also continued by admitting my failures. When we lost a major client due to communication hitches, I gave a report of exactly what happened. That one post attracted three new clients to the enterprise who appreciated the fact that we were ready to own our mistakes. The majority of agencies attempt to appear ideal, but we opted to be transparent. These victories and defeats helped show that Linkible continuously learns and gets better, and honesty turned out to be one of the biggest boosts to our development.

Manoj Kumar · Answer

For HypeTribe, social media has been where our energy comes alive. We've always stood for collaboration and creativity, but when we started sharing the fun side of how we work - events, parties, spontaneous brainstorms - it made the brand feel less like a venture studio and more like a movement. It showed people that building startups with us isn't just about work but about belonging to something vibrant and exciting!
A big win for us has been showcasing our community events and parties online. Not just as highlight reels, but as real moments of collaboration, laughter, and connection. Those posts got incredible engagement because they captured the spirit of HypeTribe, where founders and creators come together to build, celebrate, and push each other further. It turned our brand identity into something people want to experience, not just follow.

Jacob Elban · Answer

Probably one of the most effective techniques we have is holding exclusive, invitation-only, virtual paint parties. These group sessions do not consist of paint-a-thing then quit, but rather togetherness and creative times. We have developed these encounters to allow our customers to learn more about our brand by meeting one of our artists and by creating their own piece of an exhibition in the process. We have been able to become a community and develop a sense of exclusivity through these special events, which require time to occur and it seems that each of us feels like a member of something special itself.
What has been significant is the impact. When our customers share on social media what they have finished, it becomes their testimony to the creativity and joy we had an opportunity to create. These natural self-shares are now our most powerful brand evangelists (when it comes to organic growth and word of mouth marketing). It is not only the sale of the product but the experience that can be gained on a huge level and affects our audience. This approach has allowed us to build a social group of passionate makers who feel terrific about being part of our family.

Melanie Borden · Answer

Social media has shaped my brand identity through one strategy above all: storytelling.
I follow a framework of 70% audience, 30% me. Most of my content directly addresses the challenges and goals of my clients, executives, and founders, incorporating stories and moments that make it relatable and human.
That balance shows up across four content types:
1. Personal - Sometimes it's a lesson, other times it's a glimpse of my dogs or family. It's personal, but not overly private.2. Promotional - Services and results, always tied back to client impact.3. Educational - Frameworks, strategies, and checklists leaders can apply right away.4. User-generated - Spotlighting clients, communities, and shared wins.
This mix builds credibility and connection at the same time. Over time, it has positioned me as a trusted partner to founders, C-suite executives, and boards, because they see not just what I do, but also who I am and who else trusts me through consistent, story-driven content.

Angela Ash · Answer

Social media has been instrumental in establishing our brand as a trusted voice in the digital communications space. Our most effective strategy has been leveraging LinkedIn for professional networking and collaboration with industry peers. By consistently engaging with like-minded professionals and sharing valuable insights, we've built meaningful relationships that have enhanced our brand credibility and expanded our reach within the PR community. This approach has positioned us as an active contributor to industry conversations rather than just another service provider.

Taylor Humphries · Answer

Social media has been central to shaping our brand identity because it's where culture emerges first. At Ranked, we've used it not just to promote campaigns, but to showcase who we are: a platform built with creators, not just for them.
One strategy that has worked especially well is amplifying our creators' voices directly on social media. For example, when we highlighted Gen Z creators of color discussing brands like Sephora and YSL, engagement spiked because it felt authentic. The result: social media became both our proof of impact and our brand voice.

Tanya LeClair · Answer

One strategy that has worked well is treating Instagram as an extension of my website by showcasing the deeper process behind my work as a brand designer. Posts that highlight the process, client results, and the thinking behind design choices tend to get the most attention. People want to see that there's strategy behind the visuals, and that's exactly what I like to show.

Tom Malesic · Answer

Social media has been instrumental in shaping our brand identity by establishing our local market presence and strengthening community connections.
The strategy that has delivered exceptional results for us is remarkably straightforward: consistent weekly updates across both our Facebook page and Google Business Profile. By regularly sharing news and information through these channels, we've significantly enhanced our visibility within our target market.
This simple but disciplined approach has translated into tangible business outcomes. We've tracked notable increases in customer inquiries since implementing this strategy. The consistency of our social media presence has proven far more valuable than sporadic, flashier campaigns.

Justin Brown · Answer

I've grown our audience and paid programs largely through organic social media, and I advise small creator teams on turning short-form content into durable brand assets. I'm hands-on — writing hooks, editing clips, setting up UTMs — so my perspective is practical, not theoretical.
Social media's role in our brand: it's been our rehearsal room. Publishing ideas in public forced us to speak plainly, show our work, and earn trust at a human scale.
The tone people encounter on our feeds — useful, no-fluff, a little irreverent — became the backbone of The Vessel everywhere else: landing pages, emails, even product copy. We believe that "If a message survives the comment section, it's worth putting on the homepage."
One strategy that works consistently: a series-first approach with one promise and one destination.
We pick a clear outcome (e.g., "less burnout in 10 days"), design a recognizable visual motif, and run 8-10 posts across a week with the same single Call To Action (CTA) to a dedicated hub page.
Saves and replies tell us what to expand — the winner becomes the page headline and the basis for an email mini-course.
We used this for Ruda Iande's "Laughing in the Face of Chaos" launch — short clips + carousels, one page, one promise, one click — and saw saves up ~60% over baseline, stronger watch time, and social media driving the majority of launch-week traffic, resulting in several hundred high-intent sign-ups.

Thomas Hornby · Answer

Social media has been fundamental in establishing our brand as a trusted industry voice rather than just another storage company. I've found particular success with WhatsApp industry groups where I regularly share supplier recommendations and storage insights with other professionals in the Self Storage Association. This approach helps me build genuine relationships with industry peers while positioning our company as a helpful resource rather than just focusing on sales. The strategy works because it's authentic - I'm willing to share valuable information freely and even recommend competitors when they're a better fit for someone's needs. This collaborative approach on social platforms has done more for our reputation than traditional advertising ever could.

Mateusz Mucha · Answer

This might be an unusual answer, but social media didn't really work out for us, even though we hired some of the best people across various channels.
Our business model relies on massive traffic, and people on social media don't spontaneously click on a site full of calculators, no matter how viral a reel goes. The lesson? Social media is great for building brands, but it's not the answer for every company. Sometimes, it's smarter to invest those resources elsewhere.

Richard Merrick · Answer

Social media has played a significant role in our brand identity by enabling us to show our customers not only our cars but also the luxurious experience behind the wheel. Among the strategies that proved particularly effective was posting real-time stories about clients and behind-the-scenes images on LinkedIn and Instagram. We have shunned the temptation of merely sharing polished marketing materials that had been made to sound and appear more professional, focusing instead on the vocation of being a chauffeur, tiny service details, and personal touches that make trips memorable.
That strategy brought in genuineness, reinforced our luxury-yet-relatable brand, and attracted high-end business individuals who valued the human touch of our service.
My advice to others: Stop posting what you sell; demonstrate what you are. The brand that you develop emotionally will be what your brand is all about, more so than polished advertisements.

Sergio Oliveira · Answer

Social media affected our brand identity, but instead of shaping it, our brand was fractured in a very positive way. Rather than seeking a unified brand voice in the process, we built a collection of micro-personalities, each for a specific audience segment and platform and each distinctly different. It was less of a single character and more like a cast in an episodic series that is all engaged in the same ethos, but each portrayed different types of tones and formats.
One specific strategy that worked unbelievably well: we had the team take over our Instagram Stories on an anonymous, daily basis (1 rule: zero marketing). Anyone could share random screenshots, office playlists, out-of-context Slack messages, even things that made them doubt and question the brand. The outcome? Engagement tripled. More importantly, the audience started to refer to "us" not as a logo but as a personality with real quirks, moods, and humor.
This tactic blurred the lines between employee and brand, consumer and voyeur. It created loyalty based less on aspirational behaviors and more on seemingly transparent spontaneity. In a world driven by algorithms, we found our most consistent branding asset to be the unpredictable.

Adam Yong · Answer

For our brand identity, social media's main value is the volume of direct user feedback it provides that informs how we build and develop our platform. It has become our primary channel for listening to customers, who tell us what interests them, what is unclear, and what they want to see changed. I routinely post updates on the new features we release, and within hours, I receive comments from our customers detailing how they are using them in their different industries and team sizes. It is the feedback I get from these interactions that provides me insight as to which ideas are gaining traction and which need work, and it molds our identity as a company that can iterate quickly on customer feedback.
Last year, for example, a number of brand managers commented on one of my posts regarding our AI visibility dashboard, saying that the rate at which we refresh the data annually (weekly) limited how they could plan their campaigns. They explained that when looking at things like their brand mentions in our tools, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, there can be swings of up to a 25 percent shift over a matter of days, and seven days was too long to wait for an update. I collected and compiled all of their messages, took them to our engineers to discuss, and we delivered an update with daily refreshes two weeks later. Within the first month after it was released, our daily logins surged from 110 to over 300, and the usage of this dashboard almost tripled. Just from one round of social feedback, we took an actual feature of our product and reimagined it with a new lease on life, and reinforced our brand story as a company that listens to and creates based on what its customers want.

Adrian James · Answer

Social media has been the cornerstone of our brand identity, allowing us to connect directly with our audience while showcasing our company values. One strategy that's been particularly effective is hiring freelance graphic designers to create batches of pre-made custom graphics. These graphics are intentionally designed to align with our brand guidelines while remaining versatile enough to be used across different campaigns throughout the year. This approach saves us significant time while ensuring our social feeds maintain a consistent, professional look that resonates with our audience. The key is finding designers who understand your brand voice and can create trend-aware content that doesn't feel dated quickly. Having this library of ready-to-use visuals has allowed us to maintain a strong social media presence without the daily stress of content creation from scratch.

How Social Media Shapes Brand Identity

Table of Contents

How Social Media Shapes Brand Identity

Showcase Expertise Through Short Informative Videos

Authenticity Builds Trust and Connection

Engage Authentically with Industry Leaders

Amplify Your Consistent Point of View

Leverage Social Platforms for Genuine Connections

Educate and Empower Through Storytelling

Celebrate Customers to Build Brand Identity

Boost Engagement with Employee-Driven Content

Transform Transparency into Business Growth

Create a Vibrant Community Through Events

Foster Creativity with Exclusive Virtual Experiences

Balance Personal and Professional Content Effectively

Build Credibility Through Professional Networking

Amplify Authentic Creator Voices

Showcase Strategic Design Process

Consistent Updates Enhance Local Market Presence

Series-First Approach Drives Focused Engagement

Share Valuable Insights in Industry Groups

Recognize When Social Media Isn’t Effective

Demonstrate Luxury Experience Through Real Stories

Embrace Diverse Brand Personalities

Iterate Quickly on Direct User Feedback

Maintain Consistent Visuals with Custom Graphics

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