What does your brand have in common with an ancient Greek soldier?
Back around 480 B.C., a messenger ran approximately 22 miles to Athens Greece from a place called Marathon. This is the origin of the long arduous foot race that we are so familiar with. It also reflects the journey we go on when building a brand. Luckily, brand building with social media has given us leverage that entrepreneurs in the past could only dream of.
There is some bad news to cover first.
Your brand isn’t Coca-Cola, Pampers or Kleenex.
But, there’s good news too.
With the role of social media in brand building, you don’t have to be a mega-corporation to get mass amounts of attention.
Social media gives us direct access to share our message with the entire world. Which is great because so many people are attached to their phones and computers constantly, we can easily get our messages in front of our ideal audiences and build our brand; just as well as anyone else.
And, to help get you jump-started I have 3 things for you to consider about the role of social media and brand building.
1. Your First Deal
This has nothing to do with making a sale, negotiating a percentage or getting your favorite Instagram influencer to give you a shoutout. No, the first deal that you need to make is with yourself. You need to decide what you want to build, how much income you want, and how are you going to make the world a better place.
It might seem as though this has nothing to do with the role of social media in brand building but stay with here, I promise it will all come together.
What do you really want to build?
Do you just want to build a quick cash flow business so you can go out and buy a Lamborghini and a house on the water; so that you can impress a bunch of people who will only care about you while there’s a party? Or, do you want to build a business that lasts and allows you to help tens, hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people?
Whichever you choose is completely up to you, but for me, I want to build something that lasts; something that I can pass down to my children.
How much do you need?
You also need to decide how much income you want. This might seem odd if you’ve never thought about it before but, deciding how much income you want gives you a standard by which to measure your progress. I suggest choosing a high number. Why? Well, it’s not to be greedy. In fact, it’s just the opposite, the more you make the more you can give away to causes and people you believe in.
Let’s take the example of you making $100,000 per year. To many people that might sound like a lot and for others, it’s a tiny number. But, this is just simple math so you can get the idea.
Let’s take $100,000 per year divided by 12 months, this equals $8,333.34 per month. That sounds a little more attainable than $100,000 with no explanation, right?
Let’s take it a step further, $100,000 per year divided by 52 weeks equals $1,923.08 per week.
That sounds pretty good, yes?
But, let’s go one step further still. $100,000 per year divided by 365 days comes out to being only $273.97 per day. If you sell something that costs $50 you only need to sell about 6 items a day to make your $100,000 in a year. This is a great way to breakdown big numbers that might otherwise be scary into bite-size morsels.
This last one is arguably the most important.
You want to decide how your information, products, and services will make the world a better place. Because when people purchase from you they are giving you their hard-earned money, so the more value you are putting in the more comfortable people will be with handing you that money.
2. The one who owns distribution controls all
You can and should put out massive amounts of helpful content on the branding machines known as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and any other channel where your ideal audiences gather. But, you need to consider the fact that these platforms then control your destiny.
Yes, social media is the preferred distribution method for the majority of your entry-level content. The problem is that you don’t control your distribution, you borrow distribution from these social media giants. Who, by the way, can change their rules and terms of service anytime they want.
So, what do you do?
You need to establish a relationship that’s good enough with your ideal audiences that they feel comfortable providing you with their contact information. By gathering their contact information and getting their consent to communicate with them, outside of social media, you now own your own distribution channels. If all this does is relieve any anxiety that you might have with the changing rules of these social media platforms then wouldn’t it be worth it?
3. Using Social Media
There is a general guideline in marketing and sales that says people need to see you and your message a minimum of 5 to 7 times before they will consider buying anything from you. This is what makes it so important for you to engage with your ideal audiences on social media through both organic content and paid advertising.
A very successful technique that I use for myself and clients is to create videos and when people watch the videos, I create customized audiences based on how long people watched the video. This helps me decide which content to show people next. If a person only watches 25% of my video that’s still a win.
Why?
Because I know the person in the 25% audience needs to be massaged and warmed up more than a person who watched 75% of the same video. This helps you design customized content.
Now, with this thought in mind, you begin to see the importance and the massive role social media plays in brand building.
Success Leaves Clues
Another great asset that we have with social media is the ability to see what our competitors are doing. Not only our competitors but any successful business; because sometimes the best ideas for an industry come from a different one, so be open and ready for that possibility.
When you identify a successful business, you can go to the Facebook ads library and look at all the ads that they’re running. You can even follow the links to their websites and landing pages to see what their layouts look like.
This can save you a huge amount of time when it comes to designing your ads and websites because you can model what other successful people are doing.
This is very helpful especially if you’re new and just trying to launch your brand. In time, as you gain more and more success, other people will model what you have done. So, in a way you’re still helping people by becoming successful because you will be leaving success clues for the next generation.
The Journey Awaits
We may not be running 22 miles between cities to announce the victory of a battle, but we do need to get our minds ready for the long journey of building our brand. Instead of running that 22 miles I would much rather make videos and click buttons to tell the world about our victories.
What about you?
