Nowadays, most brands have a social presence online, and across several platforms — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, among many others. The key to maintaining & managing your social presence is to have a social strategy. This means managing and consolidating your brand’s reputation so that you have a clear presence that is cohesive and dynamic rather than disorganized or repetitive.
Here are five quick tips for doing just that:
1. Develop Your Look & Feel. A big part of your strategy is to develop what your brand will look like online. Doing this early on will help make the rest of the process flow smoothly and efficiently. This may take different forms depending on the platform, but your audience should be able to perceive your sense of branding.
2. Be Consistent. Your branding should carry through in every representation of your business. This includes your brand’s design, logo, fonts, company description, and style of writing. This also applies to your URL–vanity URLs (e.g. Twitter.com/SmallDogCreative) that match your main domain name (www.SmallDogCreative.com).
3. Keep Track of Yourself. Do periodic Google searches to keep track of where you rank and how your general reputation comes across. Be sure to update your website & profiles frequently and to link between your various pages and profiles. This will help visibility as well as improve the way Google perceives your website.
4. Take Advantage of Tools. Using tools like Hootsuite.com, Seesmic.com, and Tweetdeck.com to seamlessly update your profiles across different platforms is a great way to update consistently and automatically.
5. Stay Human. You don’t want to come across monotone and inaccessible. Social media is a great way to connect with your audience and give your brand a personal feel. Don’t be afraid. Let people see and hear that you are human, just like them.
