Dec 05, 2014 By Ben Shwartz

in Featured, Marketing, Social

The ROI for Social Branding: Return on Inspiration

You know it’s important to invest in social branding, but how do you measure your return on investment? When it comes to social media, the results aren’t always direct or clear-cut, which is why it’s time to start measuring return on inspiration. In other words, start thinking of innovative ways you can hack the social system.

According to Entrepreneur, companies are spending an average of $100,000 to $300,000 to build their social media identities. While it’s a worthwhile investment, what is more important than budget is the creativity you bring to the table with your social branding strategies. How we interact with social media continues to evolve, and marketers constantly have to stay one step ahead of the crowd in order to stand out.

Brainstorming creatively

Companies such as Twinkie and Coca-Cola have shown the public just how powerful inventive social media campaigns can be for cementing brand identity and driving user engagement. Use these and other marketing successes to understand what works and what doesn’t. Additionally, study your competitors to see what they are doing to creatively socially brand themselves, and use all of this knowledge to create a unique solution that is both innovative and proven to work.

Take back control of your social branding community

Rather than investing in campaigns that drive users away from their site in order to share on Facebook and Twitter, what about using social media to build an in-site community? Spot.IM offers a solution to the problem: keep users socially engaged on your site, rather than losing valuable traffic as users socially share through other networks. This is one way you can gain return on inspiration, rather than investment. By keeping users on your site, you are able to create a one-stop shop where they engage with your brand, build a community around your brand, and seek out your brand as a lifestyle site.

Curate mindfully

It’s important to curate content that speaks to your brand user’s lifestyle. One amazing example of a company who does this extremely well is the clothing store Free People. Many people come for the blog, and stay for the clothes. By matching the content to the lifestyle of the customers who buy their brand, they are able to bring target audiences to them. You can apply this principle for your blog and social media channels to increase the chance that those who absorb your content will share it with other similar audiences and lead to conversions. By paying attention to what inspires your users, you can gain returns on what they naturally want by feeding it to them.

How do you know what is good to share for your business? Curate mindfully, paying attention to the entire lifestyle of your audience. Use the support of a program like Curata to do the heavy lifting for you, so you are left with supremely targeted content distribution channels.

Keep an eye on your brand

It’s important that you can take analytics and turn them into valuable responses. There are multiple solutions for seeing who is talking about your brand on social media — and what they are saying. There is no better way to understand the influence and impact you are having, and how your audience is responding, than by hearing it firsthand. Get inspired by responses so you can apply real-time feedback to your social marketing.

When you’re investing time, effort, and money into social branding, it’s important you know how to take analytics from other competitors and enormously successful brands to leverage this for yourself so you build a social branding powerhouse. What other ways do you social brand in new ways? What do you think is most important when staying ahead of the curve?