How to build brand awareness on social media

It’s time to get your brand into the hearts and minds of more people. By focusing on brand awareness, you can follow in the footsteps of the biggest brands on the planet. There are some brands that cannot be mistaken anywhere on the planet and we’ve outlined 10 steps to help you venture in the same direction. No matter your starting point or your business size today, you can implement these techniques for greater brand awareness in no time.

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness refers to how recognisable a brand is, how many people are aware of a brand and whether people know what a brand is known for. Think about the brands you’d recognise instantly. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike and Apple might spring to mind. You know the brand names and logos, and you know the products and/or services these brands provide. That is the essence of brand awareness. It’s about being aware of a brand, recognising it and knowing what products or services it offers.

While the examples above represent some of the most recognisable brands in the world, meaning there is already a huge amount of brand awareness for these companies, you can start your brand awareness journey from scratch. It’s all about nudging the needle in the right direction to get more people seeing, knowing and understanding your brand.

While thinking about growing brand awareness, it may be useful to ask yourself these questions:

• How many people are aware that my brand exists?
• Do people recognise the branding of my company?
• Are people aware of the main products or services my company has to offer?
• Do people trust my brand?

With the answers to the above questions in mind, you can get a clear picture of where you’re at right now. No matter your starting point, use the following 10 tips to increase the brand awareness surrounding your brand and follow in the footsteps of the greats…

1. Use all the main social media platforms

Big brands such as Coca-Cola continually infiltrate the collective subconscious by getting in front of as many people in as many places as possible. This includes targeting people through television ads, billboards and posters, physical locations and social media. Can you think of a single social media platform Coca-Cola isn’t on? In fact, Coca-Cola has multiple accounts on many social media platforms to connect with customers from different parts of the world.

The most popular social media networks worldwide (as of January 2024) include Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. By getting your brand on these major social media platforms, you can maximise your brand’s chances of getting seen and recognised.

Short on time, budget or manpower? Crossposting makes it easy to get your content on as many platforms as possible, without sacrificing content quality. For example, you can post photo posts to pretty much any social media platform, while TikTok videos double up perfectly as Facebook and Instagram reels.

2. Create recognisable branding

Branding is all about how you present your business. It includes your logo, colour scheme, tone of voice, emoji use, style of content and tag line. It is the packaging and presentation around your products and it is a key part of what makes a brand recognisable, which is a vital component of brand awareness.

Look at the logos below. Do you know what brands they represent?

Being unique is the key. How can you stand out against other brands? What makes your brand different and recognisable? Find a complete guide for branding your business here.

When it comes to social media, you can go beyond colour schemes and logos and think about how you can add a unique flavour to the content to the platform. Think about Wendy’s. This brand is known for its witty, humorous responses and the public light-hearted trolling of McDonald’s on social media. This helps the brand stand out and be remembered.

3. Focus on increasing reach

An important metric to track when boosting brand awareness is reach. By increasing your content’s reach, your brand gets in front of more people. You could aim to get into more people’s feeds and more places on each social media platform.

The first step to increase reach is to post regularly and consistently. The more content you post, more chances you create to get discovered by new people. In the process, you also increase credibility and recognisability with people who already follow your brand. Find a full guide to increase reach here.

Another way to increase reach is to aim to trigger the algorithm by encouraging engagement. To do this, create content that evokes a response. You could try asking a question, sharing a controversial viewpoint, asking your audience to tag a friend or posting relatable content. Find a full guide to increase engagement here.

4. Use all available connectivity functions

Talking of increasing reach, there are several connectivity functions available on social media platforms that help get your content in more places. These include hashtags, mentions, tags, locations, polls and stickers. By utilising as many connectivity functions as possible in your content strategy, you can get your content in front of more people more often, helping to grow brand awareness in the process.

5. Leverage collaborations

Whatever the size of your business, there are collaborations and influencers waiting to partner up with you. You can find influencers to suit any budget with local and micro-influencers being a great option if you’re just starting out. Collaborations with other brands and businesses can also be a hugely beneficial way to get your brand in front of new audiences while increasing your credibility.

6. Lean into word-of-mouth marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing is the ability to get your audience talking about your brand to their friends and family. It’s one of the most trusted forms of marketing and helps boost brand awareness in a way that can have a true impact on your business.

There are many ways you can get started with word-of-mouth marketing. We particularly like encouraging user-generated content as it not only gets your brand in more places, but it gives you content to share on your own platform as well. 

Any word-of-mouth marketing starts with creating products and/or services worth recommending. People will not shout about your brand if they don’t buy into it. However, by growing trust around your brand, perhaps in the form of reviews, you can open the door for more people to get involved.

Another way to get people to share your brand is to create shareable content. This could include funny, relatable, impressive or unusual content. Giving people a reason to share and save your content will help more people see it and make more people aware of your brand.

7. Host giveaways and promotions

Creating promotions and giveaways on social media is a quick-fire way to get into more feeds because promotions and giveaways provide significant opportunities for content to be interacted with. Many giveaways include rules such as: share this post to your profile, like this post, tag a friend in the comments and follow this profile. This increases engagement fast, boosting reach in the process and getting your brand seen by more people.

8. Embrace advertising

Organic reach is a perfectly viable way to build brand awareness on social media. However, you can create advertising campaigns specifically to boost brand awareness with a unique target audience that's relevant to your brand. This can get you in front of the right people for your brand, helping to build recognisability and trust fast. 

The ad below popped up in my Facebook feed multiple times over the past few weeks, helping to grow my awareness and trust of the brand. The carousel showcases a clear display of products, which immediately helps the audience understand what the brand is associated with. Even as a cold lead, seeing the ad multiple times helps to warm up potential customers and guide them towards purchasing. Remember the rule of 7: the marketing principle that customers need to see a brand at least 7 times before they commit to a purchase decision. By repeatedly targeting the same audience, awareness and trust builds more quickly.

9. Hop on trends

Viral trends have the potential to supercharge your reach, engagement, https://www.tiktok.com/@sacla_uk and brand awareness on social media. Whether you start or join a trend, you can be found by and pushed to more people purely for getting involved. When you see a trend popping off, hop on board to get your brand in front of new eyeballs.

10. Measure your progress

Brand awareness bleeds across multiple KPIs. When your reach, engagement, profile visits etc. go up, so does your brand awareness. Keeping track of your progress by tracking relevant metrics can help you understand how fast your brand awareness is growing and make sure your efforts are continuing to take you in the right direction. 

With Minter.io you can track multiple KPIs across multiple social media platforms and profiles. Try it today to see how it can help build your brand awareness.