Brands Don’t Build Brands; People Build Brands

In our ever-changing social climate, the keys to successfully building a brand online are also in constantly in flux. Acquisition and engagement are often considered social media currency; but beyond a generation of new followers and new likes, it’s crucial to build actual relationships instead of merely curating promotional ones. While the path to that goal is perpetually re-routed, Forbes has compiled some key tips on easily and effectively building your brand’s competitive social footprint. Here are some of our highlights:

Utilize new LinkedIn features. Facebook has primarily blazed the trail in providing effective advertising tools to businesses, but other social platforms have started to catch up. LinkedIn recently introduced sponsored updates, a device aimed to drive targeted traffic to a business page to read their stories and secured press.

As the article states, “LinkedIn is, in general, one of the best sites for reaching business owners. One reason that sponsored updates are so powerful is that they read more like content than typical ads. In fact, the trick to getting the most out of them is to provide readers with quality content.” This can be especially helpful for businesses looking to network, hire, or recruit new franchisees.

Start promoting tweets. Promoted tweets are also on the rise in popularity for brands that want to stray away from the less promotional and more content-focused ad (and really, who doesn’t?). Similar to Facebook’s boosted posts, targeting your audience is essential to get in front of the right people with promoted tweets, and incorporating geo-targeted locations, keywords, and similar follows (other people like you that your targeted audience follows) are all handy dandy tools to getting in front of the right eyeballs for your brand.

The only challenge is cramming a fun ad story into 140 characters but really, who wants to read more than that anyways?

Focus on quality, not quantity. Lastly, Forbes’ discussion on the quality of content verses quantity is a popular topic these days around the social media round tables. Forbes’ take—which I agree with and regularly utilize— recommends crafting a quality-focused approach toward building content that links back to both real time relevancy and an established network of influencers.

In order to be the authority on any industry, from fast casual restaurants to commercial cleaning, show that you know as much about the social landscape as you do about your brand by utilizing these simple, low-cost tips.

Read the full Forbes story here.