How to Build Your Social Media Brand

 How to Build Your Social Media Brand From underestimating the impact of social media to ignoring ads on these channels, expert Joseph Macolino presents 10 common social media mistakes your company should avoid at all costs!

 

I’m Joseph Macolino, the founder of Macolino Enterprises and we’re focused on social branding. Towards the end of college, I realized that I had no direction with my major, But I loved reading about business developement and the different strategies fascinated me.

Building My Brand

What I ended up doing was launching a copywriting business. I had a slow start; the first couple months I had no clients. But I eventually got one, which kept leading to more. Through that process, I realized it was a struggle getting new clients. So I asked myself: what do I know? How does it apply? What have other people done that can make this business successful?

It really clicked for me that I needed to be branding myself the same way my clients are. When I take a copywriting client, I always have a client brief where I go over their voice, target location, and target audience. I’ve been doing that for all the people I worked for but never for myself. That’s when I started Macolino Enterprises.

Debunking Social Media Stigma

A big trend I notice in social media is that a lot of businesses still attach a stigma to it, but people are there. Facebook has close to 2 billion users, Twitter has upward of half a million, and all these networks have hundreds of thousands of people. Most of our population is on social media.

Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks

The first issue I see is that people aren’t willing to accept this is the new way to reach people. This comes down to the mindset that you go, you start a company, you get a sign, maybe a local ad, and people will just come to you. But people aren’t watching television anymore; people are switching from radio to podcasts. Businesses focus on outdated modes of communication, which most of the time isn’t effective because your audience isn’t there. Online and digital media is the future. These are the spaces where people are going to socialize and be exposed to your brand.

Personal Vs. Professional Social Media

The second issue is the people who put high school or college interns in charge, but they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re on those platforms to socialize. Those are two different worlds: the professional world and personal world. If you approach the professional side of social media in the same way, you’re not going to get the results needed.

Implementing a Clear and Consistent Strategy

A lot of business owners don’t have a clear, consistent strategy. A lot of businesses aren’t creating business plans anymore. They don’t have a plan, a mission statement or a reference, but those aspects are essential. You need to know who your audience is in order to decide what communication methods to use. Furthermore, businesses often don’t implement their strategy. A strategy is useless if you don’t apply it. It’s a costly mistake.

Getting on the Right Platform: The One Your Audience Uses

Businesses often spread themselves too thin. With social media, people need to focus on getting on the proper platform. Most of the time, you don’t want to start everywhere at once, especially if your company has a small budget. You need to focus on the channels that are going to get you results right way, the ones that your audience is actually using.

Different Strategies for Different Platforms

The next thing that people need to learn is that each platform is different. People make the mistake of approaching every social network with the same strategy. You need to remember that your audiences will all be looking for something different. You have to be aware of that. The reality is that people don’t go to certain social networks for businesses. The way to stand out is to avoid being an ad. Be a person. Make your brand something your customer can completely relate to.

Something to Share

People invest their time and build out their social platforms, but they don’t have anything to actually share. Social media has become a distribution network. It’s where you can get all your information out there easily and cost-effectively. It won’t do you any good if you don’t have content to share. Whether it’s writing your own articles or recording videos, you need to use those platforms to get out there.

Leads Are Your Bread and Butter

People don’t capture leads on social networks. Leads are your bread and butter. Social networks offer a lot of potential for leads. You need to interact with people, reply, and utilize the message feature.

Spending Money to Make Money: Why Paid Social Media Can Help Your Strategy

One of the worst things you can do is not consider using a paid option on social media. Especially on Facebook and YouTube, don’t be afraid to spend a little money on your content because it really can help you reach people. For example, people don’t understand how robust Facebook ads are: you can target certain demographics and reach people who you’ll never reach organically.

Leveraging Your Accounts

Finally, when people do build out multiple accounts, they fail to leverage their accounts. The idea is to build a brand for yourself. The last thing you want to do is build these accounts independently; you want to link them together. For example, you can post a video on Youtube, take a clip and post it on Instagram. You do the same on Twitter and Facebook and it all connects together so you leverage all your different platforms. When you do that, it amplifies your brand. Instead of having independent voices, you have one consistent voice that people can follow.

About Joseph Macolino

Founder of Macolino Enterprises, Joseph has a great passion for business building and the processes involved in growing a business online. After spending a few years as a freelance copywriter dabbling in every aspect of marketing he could find, Joseph discovered that certain strategies were much more effective than others and decided it was time to start a business of his own. In 2013, he officially launched Macolino Enterprises as a digital marketing and social branding firm. Honing his own brand image and working with clients from around the world, he now strives to provide consistent and focused brand strategies to help businesses grow in an otherwise competitive marketplace. Currently, Joseph focuses most of his attention on the restaurant industry specifically, where he recognizes a strong need for this type of work.

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