Rebranding can be a very exciting time for businesses of all sizes. While some are fortunate to experience success under a single name and personality from day one, there are many that find it necessary to rebrand for reasons such as new ownership, acquisitions, a changing market, or they just need to be updated.
Rebranding can mean a lot of different things for businesses. It can mean something like a minor change to a logo or slogan, all the way up to a complete revamp.
As we’ve all witnessed over the past decade, social media is having drastic effects on the way companies are marketing themselves. Currently, there are around 2 billion active social media users worldwide. This number is growing rapidly and brands everywhere need to keep up to maintain a competitive edge. In fact, 87% of small businesses agree that social media helps their business efforts in the long run.
Let’s explore five steps to consider as you use social media to revolutionize your brand.
Evaluate Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
A unique selling proposition is what separates your brand from competitors. One of the initial steps in rebranding should focus on evaluating this concept. This includes identifying your core values and how your business improves the lives of your customers.
Social media is an entity built on perception. To execute a successful rebrand, you will need to know exactly how your business and USP is perceived in the eyes of your social market. All too often, brands have their own idea of what their USP is and discover that the masses on social media have a vastly different perception. Taking a poll or conducting a survey is a great way to get an idea of how your business stands from the customer’s perspective. This could be anything like exceptional customer service, community outreach, quality products, or transparency.
Once you and your target audience are on the same page, you can begin to build your new branding strategy for your followers.
Integrate Your E-Commerce Website
If you haven’t already, merging your e-commerce website to your social media profiles needs to have a firm role in your rebranding process. These days, the idea of having to click through multiple pages just to make a purchase, or browse a retail website or app is enough to turn most users off.
Social media users have a tendency to tune out the more complicated buying processes. If boosting conversion rates and web traffic is a central goal of your rebranding efforts, consider a platform like Shopify to integrate your online store directly with social media. Shopify-aided websites can easily link all your social media accounts to your company website and even enable users to browse your online catalog and make purchases without leaving Facebook.
Listen to Your Target Audience
All business moves need to be done with the proper amount of due diligence, especially on social media. Keeping tabs on what your audience is saying about you on all major social media platforms needs to be a top priority.
There is an undeniably huge amount of noise on social media. Let’s take a look at the numbers:
- Each minute, there are 293,000 statuses and 136,000 photos posted on Facebook.
- Every day 70 million posts are published on Instagram.
- 500 million Tweets go out every day.
Just the thought of sifting through all that data is enough to make any business owner’s head spin. Luckily, there are social media monitoring tools like Brandwatch available to pinpoint what users are saying about your competitors, yourself, and about your industry in general.
A rebrand needs to be in-tune with the attitudes, questions, and concerns of the target audience.
Maintain Consistency
Perhaps the most important part of a social media rebrand is that you stay consistent. Everything you changed such as your logo, naming, customer service, or brand personality, needs to be reflected across each of the social media platforms you utilize.
Maintaining consistency across social media should work to keep all your ideas and principles in line with the USP. Inconsistency could lead to confusion and result in lost followers. The whole idea of using social media for business is to reach a wider audience on a more personal level. You can only do this effectively if your delivery is consistent.
Over to You
Rebranding is always a difficult decision and should not be taken lightly. No matter how much research and preparation you do, it will always be a leap of faith to a certain degree.
Social media is a constantly evolving landscape and using it to rebrand can be a game changer that alters your business forever. Follow these steps with the proper due diligence and you will see the benefits in no time.
