3 Tips for Aligning your B2B Brand on Social Media

Besides content marketing, employee advocacy, and social listening, what other purposes does social media serve for B2B marketers?

Branding.

Social media gives you an opportunity to reach your target audience and establish your brand presence. With so many B2B companies trying to stand out in the market, it’s becoming extremely challenging to shine among the noise. Branding allows you to differentiate yourself from the crowd and ensure that your presence is recognizable, memorable, and aesthetically pleasing to your audience – be it your prospects or customers.

Of course, you may have your own unique brand guidelines, but how can you translate them onto your social media profiles? Besides changing your cover photo to some pretty picture, what more can you do to make a significant impact?

The recipe to successful branding on social media is no secret. It’s just a matter of understanding the 3 basic principles: simplicity, consistency, and some free online tools!

Here are 3 important tips for keeping your B2B brand simple, strong, and consistent across your social media profiles:

1. Stick to your Brand Colors

This might seem trivial but colors are the most valuable part of your social media branding. They essentially define your brand online and determine how your audience perceives and interacts with your content. This awesome infographic by Marketo summarizes the importance of brand colors and what they say about your company – check it out!

What we can see from this infographic is that 95% of brands only use one or two colors. Therefore, when it comes to design, less is more. If your company already has a color scheme, the best advice is to stick with it and integrate it across your profile pictures, cover photos, image posts, and anything that screams out COLOR!

Here are some examples of B2B brands that are doing this effectively and can give you some inspiration! Notice that even the theme color they use on Twitter aligns with their brand!

Oracle

Marketo

Percolate

Oktopost

If you’re not sure about your brand colors, then Pinterest can be a great start. Just type ‘color scheme’ and you will discover an ocean of beautiful tones, color palettes, themes, and stories to help build your brand!

2. Maintain Consistency

Consistency is really the secret sauce of branding. Your goal is to ensure that people can recognize your company in the blink of an eye (no matter which device or app they’re using). Whether it’s the written content itself or the visuals that complement it, you need to keep the following elements consistent across all your social media channels:

• Profile pictures
• Company logo
• Cover photos
• Image posts
• Content topics
• Company descriptions
• Image filters
• Fonts

All of these small details add to the coherence of your message and keep it fresh for your audience without being overwhelming. If you have a team managing and editing your social media content and graphics, a great tool that we use is Canva. With Canva, you can easily upload and share your company’s fonts, colors, logos, and templates so no matter who handles your design, it will always look on-brand.

Image credit

3. Leverage Cover Photos

Don’t underestimate your cover photos. That strip of white at the top of your social profile is the first thing people encounter when they visit your page. It’s almost like a free advertising space that gives your company a lot of freedom to get creative and keep your brand alive.

Here are a few simple ways to make the most of your cover photo:

• Promote your latest campaigns and events: This is really a no-brainer. If you have an event, conference, or a campaign you’re working on, here’s your chance to showcase it and reach more people.
• Generate leads for upcoming webinars: Are you hosting any webinars in the near future? Why not take advantage of this space to promote it. Tell your audience what they can expect in a few words, including a time and link to the landing page.
• Emphasize your slogan: What does your company do? What makes it unique? Can you summarize this in 3 – 5 words? Write in BIG letters a compelling copy that will add value to your audience and make them choose you over competitors.
• Display your newest product: When releasing a new feature or product the first thing that comes to mind is to update existing customers via email. But your social covers can serve the same purpose and allow you to spread the word about your innovation.
• Boast your company culture: Do you take pride in your company culture? Use your cover photo to showcase the authentic side of your company. For example, sharing images of vibrant company outings, events, or the fun work environment.
• Get festive: Cover photos don’t always have to have a marketing goal. Sometimes you can use them to humanize your brand and identify with your audience by expressing your best wishes during a holiday or special occasion.

Social media can be a powerful channel for highlighting your brand’s value. With a few basic tools, a touch of consistency, and a taste of creativity, you can easily transform your social media pages and make them ready for action!