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Branding is the marketing practice of actively shaping your brand. That’s the basic definition, but there is so much more that goes into it.

Branding is what your business needs to break through the clutter and grab your ideal customer’s attention. It’s what transforms first-time buyers into lifetime customers and turns an indifferent audience into brand evangelists. It’s what you need to stand out, make an impact and take your business to the next level.

Your brand is the set of perceptions people have about your company. But branding is the set of actions you take to cultivate that brand.

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Why is branding so important?

Branding is important because it:

Helps you stand out from the competition. It doesn’t matter what kind of company you have, what industry you’re in, or what type of customer you’re after—if you’re in business, you’ve got some serious competition. Branding helps you establish the ways in which you’re different, special, and unique. And it shows your customers why they should work with you instead of your competitors.

Builds brand recognition. If you want to build a successful brand, you need to be recognizable. The right branding (including designing an impactful logo, website, and other brand assets) helps you carve out a distinct style, and it increases your brand recognition in the market.

Creates a consistent brand experience for your customers. In order for your business to succeed, you need to provide a consistent experience for your customers however they interact with your brand—whether that’s through your website, at an in-person event or by following your social media accounts. Branding allows you to control how people perceive and experience your brand—and you can ensure that perception and experience stays consistent across all your brand touchstones.

Sparks a connection with your audience and turns that audience into loyal customers. The most successful businesses are the ones that foster an emotional connection with their audience. That emotional connection is what transforms a prospect into a customer and a customer into a brand enthusiast. And how do you create and build that connection? Branding. Different branding strategies (like packing an emotional punch with your brand voice or leveraging color psychology when designing your logo) can help you connect with your audience on a deeper level and create a sense of loyalty to your brand.

Elements of branding?

These are the elements of branding that you’ll need to create in order to cultivate how your business is perceived by customers:

Mission statement and brand values. Your mission statement and brand values are the foundation for your branding. Think of your mission as the brains of the operation—a short and succinct statement that defines the present state and purpose of your organization. Meanwhile, your company’s vision is its heart, providing an inspirational and motivational snapshot of what you seek to achieve in the long term.

Brand guidelines. With the mission and vision statement set as the pillars of your organization, your brand strategy comes to encompass everything in between. This will take the form of brand guidelines (also known as your “brand bible”). These guidelines are comprised into a tangible document that will reflect and support your business goals, differentiate you from competitors, resonate with customers, provide a template for decision-making and precipitate ideas for future marketing campaigns. It will also include all the stylistic elements of your branding, including your color palette, fonts, and an outline of your brand voice.

Logo. Your logo is the face of your company and designing your logo is arguably the single most important branding you’ll do for your business. During the design process, think about who you are as a brand and how you want to be perceived by your customers. Use that to drive your design strategy.

Website. Designing your website is also a key branding step. Your website is your brand’s digital real estate and when your customers visit, it should be visually engaging, easy to use, and most important of all a reflection of who you are as a brand. Similar to your logo, refer to your brand guide to choose your web design elements (like layout and fonts).

Here is how you start your Product Branding

1.Figure out your place in the market

Before you start making any decisions about your brand, you need to understand the current market: who your potential customers and current competitors are.

To get a more clear picture of branding you can connect with SocioLoca

There are many ways to do this:

Google your product or service category and analyze direct and indirect competitors that come up.

Check subreddits that relate to your customers and eavesdrop on their conversations and product recommendations.

Talk to people who are part of your target market and ask them what brands they buy from in your space.

Look at the relevant social media accounts or pages your target audience follows and are receptive to.

Go shopping online or offline and get a feel for how your customers would browse and buy products.

2.Define your brand’s focus and personality

Your brand can’t be everything to everyone, especially at the start.

It’s important to find your focus and let that inform all the other parts of your brand as you build it.

3.Pick your brand’s colors and fonts

Once you've got a name down, you'll need to think about how you'll visually represent your brand, namely your colors and typography. This will come in handy when you start to build your website.

4.Choose a Name and Design your logo

What's in a name? Depending on the kind of business you want to start, you can make the case that your name matters very little or it matters a lot.

As we've said before, a brand is so more than a name. The personality, actions, and reputation of your brand are really what give the name meaning in the market.

A company logo is probably one of the first things that come to mind when you think about building a brand. And for good reason. It's the face of your company after all, and could potentially be everywhere that your brand exists.

SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on your website’s presence in search results on search engines like Google. When you understand how SEO works, you can use different tactics to increase your visibility (or how high you rank) in search results.

For a better understanding on SEO, you can connect with experts at SocioLoca

You can categorize SEO tactics into two buckets:

On-page SEO: All on-page SEO strategies happen on your website.

Off-page SEO: All off-page SEO strategies happen off your website.

Both on-page and off-page SEO aims to make your site more friendly, as well as trustworthy, to users and search engines. When search engine crawlers see how friendly your website is to them and users, it increases the chances that your site will rank well for different searches.

Why do search engines care about SEO?

Why on earth does a search engine care if you use them or another search engine? After all, you’re not paying them? That’s right, you aren’t paying them…but someone else is! So the answer to this question is that they care because they make their money from advertising.

The page you are delivered to after you enter a search query is called the search engine results page (aka SERP). The SERP presents you with what are called “organic results” as well as “pay-per-click ads” (or PPC). The organic results are those that are influenced by SEO, while the PPC ads are paid for.

You cannot pay Google or any search engine to occupy any position in the organic results.

However, the ads on the page are how they make their money. So, the better the results they deliver you, the more likely you and others are to use that search engine again. The more people using the search engine, the more ads they can show and the more money they can make.

A technical explanation of how SEO works

So now you know why search engines work so hard to provide you with great results and why you should care, we can talk about how SEO works in a little more detail.

Search engines have spiders — not the creepy kind, but the automated robot kind.

These spiders collect all kinds of information about your website and the pages that make up your site. This allows them to easily determine when to serve a searcher a page on your site. They collect things like page speed, title tags, social signals, internal linking, backlinks, and so on.

Start with your basic objectives for using social media

Before you can really begin to leverage social media, you need to ask yourself some key questions about why you’re doing it. What are you hoping to accomplish? Are you hoping to increase sales, or improve customer service? Or alternatively, are you just looking to create a little more visibility for your brand?

You can also hire an expert like SocioLoca to look after your marketing needs

Start small, and be selective

There are numerous social platforms. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest – the list goes on. If you’re ambitious, you’re probably anxious to get your business up and running on most of them. But the reality is this – you can’t (and shouldn’t) try to create your social presence on each of these platforms overnight. You have to start small (think crawl, walk, run).

Be selective at first. Choose one or two sites to start out – the ones that make the most sense for your business. Then, once you have enough time and money to commit, begin to scale your efforts and social footprint.

Hone in on a target audience

As you’re developing your social strategy, choosing sites and content strategy, etc, you’ll probably be guided by one key question: Who’s your audience?

This will influence everything. Take your site choices, for example. If you’re trying to cater to Millenials, you might want to emphasize YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat more than other networks. If you’re targeting moms, Pinterest works great. Facebook is broader, appealing to everyone.

Which social site is the best match for you? It depends on what your business is trying to accomplish. Research your intended audience before you make any final decisions about where you will focus your social efforts.

- Come up with a memorable handle

What’s in a name? Ideally, it’s one that’s catchy and memorable. When it comes to your social presence, you’ll want to create a handle that people will recognize across all of your social brands.

It might be just your company’s name, or it might be something a little more elaborate, just to emphasize a certain aspect of your brand. For example, the BBC uses the username @BBCBreaking for its wildly popular Twitter account, reminding people of their abundance of breaking news. Samsung uses @SamsungMobile, which encourages consumers to buy their mobile devices.

Have a schedule, but show flexibility too

Once you’ve figured out how many times to post on your social sites, the next question is when.

Timing your social posts is part science and part art. On one hand, there are certain optimal time slots – people love to browse social media sites during their lunch breaks and in the evenings after work. But if you adhere to a rigid schedule just to hit those sweet spots, you’ll start to seem too automatic, like a robot. You’ll want to mix it up for variety’s sake.

Be authentic and personable

Mingling with people on Twitter isn’t that different from doing so at a party or social gathering. In both cases, you make friends by being yourself and being authentic and nice.

Keep this in mind as you’re posting online. People don’t want to cozy up to a brand whose social presence sounds rigid and corporate – or worse yet, unpleasant. Show a human side, interact with people kindly and develop a personality. People will appreciate that, and the following will come.

Develop a content pipeline

A cute or funny post can grab a viewer’s attention for a minute or two, but what really keeps them coming back is engaging content. You want your social presence to link to sites and articles that people will find interesting, or that will add value to their lives. If you can do that, you can secure consumers’ loyalty.

So develop a pipeline for your content. What types of content will you post? When and where will you post them? Map out a plan and stick to it for a while, but don’t be afraid to adapt if you think it’s not working.

Mix up your social media marketing content offerings

You’ve got to have a plan for sharing content, definitely. But what type of content? Ideally, you’d have a combination of different elements. Try to balance your own original content with valued, content curated from other sites. Search for those “nuggets” of content that your audience will value, but might not otherwise find.

LinkedIn is the largest business-oriented networking website geared specifically towards professionals. It has over 500 million members, in over 200 countries. A professionally written LinkedIn profile allows you to create an online professional brand that can help open doors to opportunities and networks that you may not have been aware of without the help of social media.

LinkedIn gives you the ability to showcase your profile, expertise, recommendations and connections, not only is your profile the first professional impression of you when recruiters and employers use LinkedIn to search for candidates but it also demonstrates credibility in your industry and highlights your achievements. Many people still underestimate the importance of LinkedIn in their job search and are sometimes reluctant to embrace social media. This article showcases 7 reasons why using LinkedIn can add value to your job search.

You can also hire experts like Socioloca to manage your LinkedIn account.

1. Gain exposure to Hiring Managers and Recruiters

93% of recruiters use LinkedIn to research and recruit candidates. LinkedIn allows you to have an online personal brand that makes you visible to key decision-makers and recruiters. This means when your name is put into a search engine such as Google, you have an online personal brand and you are appearing in search results. It’s for this reason you need to make sure you treat your LinkedIn profile in a similar way to your CV and you ensure what is on the profile is selling you in the best way possible.

2. Demonstrate your knowledge, credibility and leadership expertise

Having a LinkedIn profile helps build trust with employers and recruiters as they can see your recommendations and connections and evidence of where you have added value.

3. Use LinkedIn as a research tool

Having a LinkedIn account also means that you can use the site to research companies, interviewers, recruiters, and hiring managers — this is helpful before submitting applications and researching who’s interviewing you and conducting interview research.

4. LinkedIn has a great job board

New opportunities exist throughout the LinkedIn site that may not exist on traditional job boards. You can directly apply for roles using LinkedIn apply, save job searches, as well as flag to recruiters that you are open to hearing about opportunities.

5. You can gain social proof for your skills and talents

Let others recommend and endorse you for your skills and past work. When others recommend or endorse you, anyone who sees your profile can see these and it shows you have other experts backing up your claims to have certain skills. This is very powerful in making connections. You can build your credibility through the endorsements and testimonials that LinkedIn allows your contacts to leave on your profile.

6. Follow Companies

LinkedIn is a brilliant tool for researching organizations and people that work at them. You can use this to target people within your network that works for organizations that you really want to work for.

7. Join LinkedIn Groups

Groups are a brilliant way to meet people with similar professional interests and expand your network from other graduates to professionals already working in your industry. Groups allow you to take part in discussions. This is a great way to exhibit your knowledge on topics related to your industry, ask questions and start conversations with key people in key organizations.