Hiya Margo

Social Media Marketing (SMM) has been a core passion of mine since the field began growing during the late-2000s. Despite only being a child, I was naturally drawn to the internet and its capabilities, especially when it came to content creation and data analytics. Since then, I have only strengthened my craft, earning my bachelors in Marketing from the University of West Florida along with an associates degree in graphic design and a certificate in specifically digital marketing.

Throughout my career I have worked with several businesses including (but not limited to) a streetwear fashion brand, a cemetery, a specialty gift box company, a local author, and a fishing boat manufacturer. I’ve even worked with the Florida Departments of Health and Education on a handful of projects.

All of that to say, I know what I’m talking about.

This ten part series of blogs will go over the main steps you need to take to build a social media marketing plan for your small business. I will cover everything you need to get started, from designing your social media posts to analyzing the fruit of your labor. However, before you can get to the fun stuff, you have to start at the beginning: building a brand.

The goal of this guide is to give you a basic framework to start with and allow you to grow from there. That’s why I’ve split the brand-making process into three C’s: communication, consistency, and creativity. Together, following these three C’s will help you make the starting point for your business.

Communication

The first step to building a brand is understanding what it is you want to communicate to your customer base. At the end of the day, Marketing is trying to convince people to do something that they wouldn’t otherwise do. What is the task you want to convince people to do?

If you’re a brick-and-mortar retailer, you likely want to convince people to come to your location and purchase items. However, if you offer an online service, you’re going to want people to visit a website or contact you via email. The task you want people to complete is going to be unique to your business, and you may even have multiple. Once you have the answer to that question, we can start discussing how you want to communicate that message to your customers.

The easiest way to do this is by imagining your brand as a person. Depending on what you do, this person may be an alter ego of yourself, or it may be someone entirely new. Whoever this character is going to be, they should be able to be best friends with your customer. So, how do we build your customer’s new best friend? It starts by asking yourself three questions.

First, what kind of personality does your character have? In marketing, there are twelve kinds of brand archetypes sorted into four categories. I have a blog all about the subject, which goes over each type in detail. 

The second question you need to ask yourself is this: what does your character look like? Keep in mind that this persona is NOT your mascot: they are essentially an invisible mannequin you’re placing in the front window of your business. 

The biggest question here is their style, namely what colors they are drawn to. For example, a person that would go to the beach a lot is likely going to be drawn to beachy colors – sunshine yellow, ocean blue, sunset orange. Alternatively, someone that likes to stay indoors and play video games may be drawn to dark color schemes with rainbow LEDs. You can use this idea to determine what colors you want to feature prominently in your brand color scheme. If you need help determining what colors may look best together, I highly recommend this color scheme generator.

The final question to ask about your character is how they speak. There are two aspects to this question: the visual and the grammatical. The visual aspect of speech is shown in the fonts you use. For example, a brand that is going for a more vintage look may choose a font reminiscent of a typewriter. Another brand may choose a sans serif, sleek looking font in order to communicate to customers that their brand is modern. Look at what other businesses are doing in your space and you’ll likely find a common theme when it comes to the fonts that they use.

The second aspect to speech is the gramatics. The grammatical part of speech is how you actually state your ideas. For example, someone from the Southeastern United States is likely to talk with a lot of contractions, such as y’all or ain’t. This contrasts with other areas of the country, which will use different forms of slang. By speaking the way your customers speak, you are much more likely to turn a conversation into a potential sale.

Consistency

Think about recognizable brands: Coca-Cola, Apple, Progressive Insurance, McDonalds. What is one thing that all of these brands have in common? Consistency. No matter where they place their product, people recognize them from a glance because of their smart use of color, font, and logo design and placement. 

In order to be recognizable, you need to be consistent. Using the same colors, fonts, logos, and business name across all platforms where that information is shared is integral to building a brand that people not only recognize, but relate to.

Make sure you are happy with your color, font, and logo choice because those are going to stay with you for a very long time, potentially the entire life of your business. This is not a decision to be rushed and done away with; in fact, it may be the most important decision you make when you start your business.

Creativity

You have your idea, you have how you want to say it, now you have to get people to pay attention to what is being said. How do you do this? By getting creative.

In the modern world, creativity is often frowned upon. With increased focus being put on science, technology, engineering, and math, we as a society have majorly deprioritized soft skills like creativity due to their association with “lesser” forms of education, namely the humanities. However, creativity has its place in every space, including in your brand.

This isn’t something that can be taught, but it is something that can be studied. Because creativity is highly individual to the situation, I’m going to discuss one well-known example and how they implemented creative communication strategies not just into their marketing, but into their brand as a whole: Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola’s brand archetype falls under the “learning and freedom-based” category, specifically in the role of the Innocent. Their brand is focused on being wholesome, optimistic, and borderline utopian. If Coca-Cola were a person, they would wear a red shirt with white pants and talk to you like a close friend who’s there to listen to your problems and give you the pep talk you need to get through the day.

Now, let’s take a look at one of their most famous marketing campaigns: the share with me campaign. This marketing strategy involved branding their different products with some version of, “share a coke with X”, changing out the X for different common names and nicknames across the United States. This campaign was incredibly popular for two reasons: Firstly, it encouraged people to form a community around their product, which is pretty much always a smart strategy to use once you have a dedicated fanbase. The second reason why it was so effective? It made sense with their brand. 

Look back at the description of Coca-Cola I wrote out. That is a person that would know your name and would get you a sweet treat because it had your name on it. That is a person who would share that soda with you with a smile and maybe a little giggle. That is Coca-Cola. 

It doesn’t matter that they’re a multi-conglomerate supergiant and you’re a small business just getting started out. The only thing that matters is the strategy and how you want to implement it for your brand. The best part about branding is that the creation process only really costs you time: the money doesn’t factor in until waaay later in this process (stay tuned for part 9).

Now, the steps above may seem incredibly simple, but you may still be lost on where to go from here. That’s where I come in (potentially). If you are interested in a consultation discussing your brand and how to improve it, feel free to contact me through social media! I can’t promise that I will have the bandwidth to help you out, but I can promise that I will get back to you as quickly as I can.