Social media marketing is a fantastic opportunity to build brand awareness and brand loyalty and it’s more relevant today than ever before. However, building your brand with social media is not as simple as just making some posts and watching the masses come soaring in to adore you. There is a process to success and there are also some things that should be avoided.

So let’s take a look at what you need to do to build your brand successfully:

Use Custom Social Media Design

A custom social media design will do more to build your brand awareness, help you stand out in a sea of profiles and show that you care enough about your accounts to spend that little extra time and effort on it. Nearly all social media networks offer some type of customization and those who previously did not are now making the change, due to popular demand.

When you use custom social media design, it’s also important that you maintain a common theme across all networks and it also helps if this design matched or complements your website design.

Practical tip: Consider hiring a professional graphic designer experienced in social media design to customize all your themes to match.

Interact and Engage Your Community

Once you have created accounts, you need to build a community. It’s not as simple as just expecting people to come by and chat. You need to give them a reason to participate. This is where it becomes very important to interact and engage your community. Your social media accounts are not your sounding board to blast info to the masses. Rather, they should be a community of like-minded people who come together to share ideas, opinions and interesting chat.

Take the time to ensure the content you’re posting is relevant and useful to your community. Invite them to join in or to submit their own content and ideas. Keep them involved in the process and they will keep coming back.

Practical tip: Recognize community members who frequent your social media and be sure to tag them, thank them and reward them (when possible). They will appreciate that you appreciate them.

Make Your Fans Center Stage

Social media helps you to nurture and strengthen the relationships you currently have with your fan base. If you want your customers to be loyal, you need to show them mutual respect and concern. So ask them questions, invite them to share and take part in your community and show them you appreciate when they do. Asking your followers questions shows you care about them and you’re inviting them to share their lives with you. No matter what product or service you offer, when they choose you, they are inviting you into their lives. So making your fans center stage shows that you equally care about them.

Practical tip: One way to recognize your fans is to do a ‘fan of the week’ contest and offer a small prize, a discount for your services or some other kind of recognition and thank you.

Be Consistent and Transparent

Trust is key to creating brand loyalty. If customers do not trust you, they won’t return and they certainly won’t tell friends and family about you. One top method of building trust is with consistency and transparency. You need to be open and honest with your social media communities. If you make a mistake, own up to it. Never give them a reason to believe you are being anything other than completely honest.

Practical tip: Don’t delete posts unless they directly violate your rules or the site’s rules (such as hate speech or vulgarities). Deleting posts makes the readers think you are censoring them or hiding certain information, especially that which might be negative.

Wrapping it Up

Every company dreams of that loyal fan- the one who is dedicated, passionate and praises the company far and wide. When you want to build a satisfied fan base like this, you need an excellent product or service, combined with extraordinary customer service and with some savvy social media marketing, you can push it all to the next level.