When it comes to social media and brand awareness there are several things you need to understand.

You should always be on the lookout for better ways to get your brand on the radar of potential customers. And using social media for this purpose is a perfect way to engage with current customers and attract new ones.

According to this study, 71% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand to others if they’ve had a positive experience with it on social media.

Most marketers also agree on the importance of social media for increasing brand awareness. In fact, according to the Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 92% of marketers working with small businesses agree that social media is crucial to their marketing efforts.

Key aspects of measuring the level of social media and brand awareness

Devising a social media brand awareness plan seems complex, but the steps are pretty straightforward. Always use the following performance indicators to gauge whether your content is boosting the awareness of your brand.

Impressions and reach

The “impressions” metric tells you how many times your post has been displayed. The “reach” metric tells you how many people have seen it.

If a person sees your post once when a friend shares it, and then a second time on their own feed, that counts as 2 impressions. However, because it’s the same person, it only counts once in the “reach” metric. That’s why the reach number is always lower than the impressions number.

Distinguishing between “reach” and “impressions” is crucial for evaluating the level of awareness that your brand gets. Closely monitoring both metrics will reveal how awareness of your brand spreads throughout the network. It will also point you towards the content that is most effective in provoking engagement with your brand.

Location

Measuring the number of followers that originate from different cities, states or countries empowers you to track your expansion over time. It’s a valuable metric that can guide your future content and pinpoint your future target groups.

Mentions

A good way to measure the level of brand awareness on social media is through looking at the mentions. These mentions are an indicator of how often users are mentioning your brand on social media. You can also see if people are talking about (mentioning) your competition and in what way.

Number of followers

Certain posts attract more attention than others. Track spikes (or decreases) in followers after you publish each post. Notice the kind of feedback you receive from users.

Sometimes, you’ll see an increase in your follower network after you publish a post. It’s an indicator that you should publish similar posts in the future since they impact your growth.

But sometimes, you won’t notice any change in the number of followers. This may not mean that people dislike your content. Try to learn about the kind of engagement that each post provokes.

Sentiment

A nice way of tracking whether users shower your brand with praise (or hate) is to search your company’s name followed by words such as “best”, “love” or “hate”.

Following these variables is a good way to start tracking your company’s brand awareness

This is just a general overview to get you started. You want to go more in-depth into learning about each of these metrics and how to track and analyze them. With that said, let’s move on and look at some tactics to implement in your social media strategy.

The best tactics to implement right away

Offer exceptional customer service and products

Treating your customers with the utmost respect and appreciation seems obvious, but many companies fail to take this into account. Nothing boosts your brand awareness more than exceptional customer care.

The most successful companies strive to go to new heights to please their customers. And it works, the customers keep coming back. Customers need to feel secure and taken care of when they interact with you or use your services.

It’s always wise to exceed customer expectations. Happy customers who have a good experience with your brand will go and share that sentiment with their co-workers.

Pick the right social media platform

Many marketers often jump into any social media platform they can get their hands on. But, not every social media platform is a good fit for your business.

Figure out exactly who you’re trying to reach, and then take action. Facebook is often the number one option if you’re trying to increase your reach since it has a user base of over 2 billion people.

So start with Facebook and then, depending on what you’re trying to achieve, expand your presence on Twitter or LinkedIn. Follow the types of engagement users have on each social network, and see what kinds of posts affect your follower growth.

Use paid advertising

Organic reach through social media is currently in a downfall. Imagine walking through a highway surrounded by billboards. Yours would have to be spectacular to attract attention. The situation on social media is quite similar right now.

In such circumstances, it’s wise to leverage the paid advertising options most social media platforms have to offer. Using their built-in targeting options is a great way of giving your content a kickstart in reaching your target demographic.

By giving a paid boost to your content, you’re making it possible for more social media users to share and talk about your content. You’re basically paying for one influencer to discover your content. But then if your content is good enough, that one influencer would share your content with others.

Social media allows you to advertise to your current customers. But, with sponsored advertising, you can reach a much larger audience. With the right strategy, you can turn them into your brand ambassadors in the long run.

Consider getting help from the professionals

Ideally, you want to have a complete mastery of social media. This would be a great benefit to you as a business owner or manager. However, obtaining such mastery may take years. If you’re in a hurry to get good results sooner, consider getting help to speed things along.

At DemandZEN, we can handle all your social media accounts. Our professionals will follow the level of engagement with users on specific posts and tweak future posts according to the feedback.

Need a social media campaign? No problem, we’ll handle that for you, from start to finish. Our professionals will work with your staff to determine the budget and then immediately go to work.

But why bother if you can’t compete with established businesses?

Relationships. Established businesses may have huge budgets, but they aren’t prone to building lasting relationships with their customers.

Small and medium-sized businesses, on the other hand, are community driven. Thus, building connections with customers come more easily. This leads to forming partnerships and connections with individuals, as well as other brands.

Use that to your advantage, and connect with customers online. Respond to their comments and questions, and start a dialogue with them. Large businesses don’t often do this, but people notice when you do. As a smaller business, you won’t be receiving thousands of inquiries, so do your best to go through them all.

You can even organize giveaways or contests where you could ask users to publish posts about your product or service. Ask for sincere reviews and comments, and take time to answer to criticism and concerns.

Potential and current customers will appreciate the way you’re treating them and will show it with their actions. All this will boost your social media and brand awareness.