You want your company to do more than exist, you want it to stand out. Doing it at the right time and in the right place is what will set you apart. Digital branding is the tool that will ensure you target the right market and optimize their attention in the short amount of time that you have it.
Brand identity should vary depending on the platform—the same logo and overall appearance doesn’t always simultaneously mesh with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, for example. The same goes for the tangible medium your brand appears on. People are using smartphones, multiple browsers, tablets, desktop computers, and laptops. The appearance of font size, color, and the photo standards do not remain the same across the board. Facebook, for instance, is used primarily on mobile devices in comparison with past years, and a brand’s content needs to adapt to mobile use rather than desktop.
Social media is constantly evolving and increasingly becoming more powerful as a marketing tool, specifically, social media-based influencer marketing. With the addition of “Stories” in Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, influencers have the ability to send a short and to the point message to their followers. Read more about the power of social media stories. The popularity of video content and accessibility continues to grow on and off of social media and provides an opportunity to connect to other content.
That’s simply the aesthetic component. Branding is much more than a logo in today’s digital age. Your brand should encompass your company’s culture, values, and behaviors as experienced by customers and the public, whether it be digitally or in person.
It can and should be customized to best fit the essence of each specific platform. Twitter allows for much shorter posts than Facebook, and the use of hashtags is more effective and necessary than on Facebook. On Facebook, there is much more room for text and therefore, an opportunity to encourage feedback and discussion. The inclusion of a photo or video is more important on Facebook than it is on Twitter. Twitter is more useful for the need for quick responses, whereas Facebook posts may receive feedback at a slower pace, and for a longer period of time.
Branding enables and encourages increased customer engagement, but engagement goes beyond reachability in digital branding. Paying attention to what existing and prospective customers have to say about your company online is a way to further understand your customer base, and responding to their questions provides a personalized experience that leaves a lasting impression.
Be active with your brand, always be thinking about ways to evolve it and have conversations with your customer base. Homebase Digital provides customized strategies using a combination of services essential to becoming your brand architect.
by Victoria Page
