Can people recognise your brand across all social media platforms? Brand consistency across all your marketing channels will spread your brand identity online, ensuring that it pops up in all the right places so your audience will take notice, associate, and engage with it on the different social media platforms.

In a previous article, we discussed the necessity of having a resonating brand identity. This was predominantly focused on the direct incorporation of brand identity elements for your website. However, branding for social media is another type of beast. However, with the correct methods, it can be tamed.

Back to the basics

The following can define the bedrock of basic social branding.

A consistent logo

You don’t need to use an identical logo on your website; you may need to adapt it due to size and spatial requirements. However, it needs to have certain degrees of consistency so that potential consumers can make the association immediately.

Please take a look at Fio’s website logo vs its Facebook logo vs LinkedIn logo.

 

Concise company bio

Your bio or ‘about us’ website landing page is likely packed with emotion, mission, vision and purpose spanning multiple paragraphs. Unfortunately, the best type of bio content on social media is short, snappy but still conveys the core brand message. It’s not always a simple task to condense your entire company’s purpose into less than 100 words, so it’s recommended that you speak to a business consultancy that can implement professional copywriting services.

 

Appropriate handle

It may sound trivial, but your business’s social media handles are a significant part of your online marketing strategy. It’s best to try and get matching handles for platforms, or at least as close ones that are as close as possible to one another.

A consistent handle makes your company easier to find online, memorable and professional. For example, Fio’s Facebook handle is @fiogroup and @fio on LinkedIn – very simple and easy to remember.

We offer various business solutions, and if we’d used @fiofinance on Facebook and @fioagency on LinkedIn, you’d likely think these are two different companies.  

 

Colour palette

These colours you have chosen to represent the tone of your brand. It’s essential to examine how they’ve been used on your website. The size, shape, spatial parameters need to be considered when deciding what, how and where to add them on your social media pages.

For example, the dimensions for a Facebook cover image are 820 pixels wide by 312 pixels tall. The current layout on your website may not be appropriate for your Facebook account. It’s worth speaking to a professional graphic designer who has the skills to select the ideal layout.

 

Brand personas

We wrote an article about brand personas a while back. It provides you with a comprehensive breakdown of its benefits.  A brand persona is a marketing tool that allows you to put information-generated ‘faces’ and ‘voices’ of your brand. It personifies your business which plays a significant role in connection and personalisation with your audience. 

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“Think of [developing a brand persona] as building a car: You’ve researched, found and fitted the perfect traffic driving engine; now, it’s time to add the body kit: the customised ‘face’ of the persona. Paint its personality. All you need to do is structure the gathered data into a narrative. E.g., let’s say you’re a fragrance company, and your research reveals the following data points will collectively add up to your customer with the highest chance of converting. Your brand persona could be:

“Michelle”

Gender: Female

Age: 35 – 40

Occupation level: Senior businesswoman

Car: Luxury, e.g., Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Jaguar

Marital status: Married

Hobbies: Travelling

Purchasing behaviour: Discerning, calculated

Attitudes to brands: High-end, but not brand specific

Price sensitivity: Low

Armed with this information, you have a far more detailed profile. The visual design, as well as the marketing language created for proceeding campaigns, will be better positioned to target this specific audience.”

This is one of many brand personas that you can build from empirical data to understand your audience demographics better and specifically cater to them. Brand personas are going to vary between social media platforms. For instance, you may find an older, wealthier demographic form the bulk of your Facebook traffic, while a much younger audience is engaging with you on TikTok. These are two very different platforms, so everything from the colours you choose to the type, tone and length of your content needs to be on-point.

Consistency across your social media platforms is vital to attract and retain consumers. It embeds a thread that will connect them directly – and indirectly – with your brand. When you find the right resonating balance, you’ll start to see an increase in engagement and other key metrics.

It’s a good idea to have a social media expert to perform an audit to gauge your current brand consistency. Based on the results, they can recommend changes and implement them for you.