4 Tips for Building Your Brand on Social Media

Between shooting selfie videos for LinkedIn, crafting Instagram stories, and replying to Tweets, it’s easy to get overwhelmed building a social media presence. Consistency: Regularity Over Volume When I talk about posting consistency, most people’s minds immediately jump to publishing volume. Hootsuite consistently publishes 20+ posts per day. What makes you or your brand unique? Every person or brand has a unique perspective and place in the world. Take your experience of life and connect that with your knowledge of photographic history. Use the camera to take what you know that others don’t, what you can access that others can’t, and the people or things you connect with, to construct your own world. In the same way recording a Vidyard GoVideo makes you more vulnerable than a cold email, social media provides opportunities to share your or your brand’s vulnerable side. Part of what makes Johnson’s social presence interesting is his access. Consider your account’s unique quality, consistency, access, and vulnerabilities.

Source: Vidyard

Between shooting selfie videos for LinkedIn, crafting Instagram stories, and replying to Tweets, it’s easy to get overwhelmed building a social media presence. Whether it’s for my own personal accounts or brands I’ve managed, I rely on four principles to guide my social media decision making:

Quality
Consistency
Access
Vulnerability

These four concepts are meant to be simple. You can use them as a guiding light when you need to take a step back from your publishing strategy. They’re also applicable whether you’re posting to Twitter, LinkedIn or Snapchat. And for the most part, like a good personalized video, they’re meant to humanize your presence.

In this post, we’ll look at examples and lessons from a wide variety of accounts including, National Geographic, Tom Hanks, Hootsuite and The Rock. So whether you’re an aspiring thought leader, celebrity, or B2B brand, there’s something here for you. Let’s dig in.

Quality: Cater to Your Audience

You need to know your audience and cater to their needs and appetite. Quality isn’t objective. Don’t have an audience yet? Figure out who you want to target and create for that audience. It’s a bit of an ‘if you build it they will come’ scenario.

In a world of mass scheduled content, a social feed that is low in quality is usually lacking thoughtfulness. And like real-world relationships, it’s much easier to connect when you’re being thoughtful.

Consistency: Regularity Over Volume

When I talk about posting consistency, most people’s minds immediately jump to publishing volume. What’s the magic number of Tweets? How often is too often?

It all depends on how much content you can create or curate.

Let’s consider two very different examples: social media management platform, Hootsuite, and America’s sweetheart, Tom Hanks.

Hootsuite consistently publishes 20+ posts per day. That’s a lot of posts! But, that volume is matched by the amount of content they produce. Drawing from a large list of blog contributors that include in-house writers, freelancers and partners, Hootsuite can afford to post that often and doesn’t depend on endlessly reposting the same content.

Comparatively, Tom Hanks posts infrequently with one photo gracing his Instagram every couple of weeks. He doesn’t need to be posting often and if anything scarcity makes his posts that much more special.