Social media is the most powerful thing that has emerged in recent times. It has given voice to anyone and everyone. It just depends on how you use it and what kind of energy you are spending on it.
Building brand equity used to be a difficult job in Pre-social media times. Now, however, people are so eager for validation that it has become much more comfortable for brands to target their specific market and craft content specifically intended for its niche.
Five ways how Social Media impacts Brand Building
- User-Generated Content
- Trend Setters
- Hashtags
- Validation
- Stardom syndrome
User-Generated Content
With the advent of social media, everyone has a voice and wants to say something or put their life on social media. Creating content that gets engagement on social media and lets everyone know what you are up to.
For instance, if I go to Rice Bowl, enjoy my meal take a couple of fresh shots, I safely come back home and write a review on the restaurant and publish it on any of my social media.
Tagging not only the restaurant but a multitude of people and hashtags related to writing restaurant reviews. Because that gets you noticed by the social media’s algorithm, and you are ranked higher on the feed page.
Every event we ever go to, we can create content in the form of Tiktok or pictures or snap chat. It is now in the hands of the brand managers to offer such unique opportunities to the consumers to create engaging content such as a photo booth at a festival that is a prevalent idea these days.
Brand managers are focusing on creating Instagram-able events and spaces—a term that didn’t even exist about ten years ago.
Trend Setters
How many times have we heard on the TV that “Abhinandan” was trending number one or “WelcomeIK” was trending when Prime Minister Imran Khan was on his way back from United Nations.
Because social media has the power to make, anything trend as one of the most popular hashtags around the world. Which makes you and your country and your product stand out. What brand managers take away from this is to find those new hashtags, and the perfect moment when it clicks.
Hashtags
Brand managers are well aware of the trendsetters of the nation, which is why they must hit the iron when it is hot. Keeping their target market in mind creates a new set of hashtags that excite the consumers and urge them to use these hashtags on their content and post to social media.
Hashtags not only promote trends but have a following of their own to which works in your favor as the hashtags boost work to show up more often.
Validation
We crave validation. The GEN-Z craves validation from friends and their social community, which is the way we post on our social media and check up on the number of likes or shares our posts have.
Instagram and some bloggers have recently taken a stance on how such mentality is affecting our mental health, and we are unable to focus on other more essential things in life.
What brands can use in this case is connecting with their audience more engaging with their influencers who use the brand’s hashtag. There are now campaigns where people who capture the picture of the brand’s billboards wins a free entry ticket to their event.
This naturally generates UGC as the consumers capture photos and upload them on their social media platforms using the brand’s hashtags.
Stardom Syndrome
Everyone wants to be an influencer these days because we have a window to write whatever we can and throw it out into the world. Just because we have a phone with a camera, we can make videos and get up to 5 million followers and become TikTok stars.
This is where the brands comes in as they, the influencers, create tailor-made content or sponsored content for the brands that they work with and get paid for the number of views or number of conversions.
Final Word
Social media has offered opportunities to many influencers, and brands are more than ready to pounce on the opportunity to make money and tap into the right niche market at the right time.
As the number of influencers grows, so does the number of platforms. And more brands are getting their feet into the game.
Mehreen Shahid officially known as mehreentalks is a freelancer and a blogger, with an experience of 6 years of working in marketing and branding.
ravi goyani says
Good Content…