Branding and the importance of branding have been a hot topic for some time now. Branding helps your company to stand out from the rest so that the customers can easily identify you. Having a good branding policy will allow your company to survive the increasing intensity of competition. In this new era of social media the opportunities to develop your brand image are immense. Branding generally costs according to the size of your company. MNC’S naturally have to invest a lot in their branding because they operate on a global scale. The situation for SMB’s is different when compared to other pan India organizations. But there are some smart and cost-effective ways by which SMB’s can make their presence known.

Choosing the Right Networks: Social media has exploded since the introduction of Facebook in 2012. Many social media platforms can now be used to publicize your company. You can use nearly all of the social media platforms for the purpose of branding without losing a penny. The one thing that you need to consider is choosing the best platforms possible, so that you can reach millions of potential customers. Some of the best social media platforms that you can use are Face book, Twitter, Linked In, Pinterest, Instagram etc.

Understanding What to Achieve: Being active on social media has so many advantages like finding potential customers and catering for your existing customer’s needs. This will also help you to get feed backs which can be used to increase the quality of your product/service. After understanding what you need, create separate strategies to achieve those needs . The techniques that you will use to increase the sales will be different from the techniques that you will adapt to increase the quality of your customer service. So it is important to know what you are trying to achieve.

Identifying your Target Audience: By identifying your potential customers you can start planning on how to retain them and at the same time you can try to create new ones. Analyzing the data of viewership will let you know  the taste of the audience and by doing that you can create your content which suits them the most.

Using Social Media as a Tool for Engagement and Communication: The practice of social selling is increasing on a daily basis. But to optimize your sales reduce the promotional content to 20% and give the lion’s share of your content to meet the needs of your audience.

Being a Constant Presence: Promoting your brand through social media is not just a one-time thing. You must be patient in order to cultivate your reliable presence. Using the right automation tools will help you to reduce the time that you actually have to spend on social media. Post content regularly on all the platforms, atleast 5 per week. As the twitter feed changes quickly the higher the posts the better. The one thing that you shouldn’t do is to overdo things.

Active Engagement with your Audience: To get the best results you can’t just post your content and walk away. The goal is to create a connection with your audience and engage with them to develop your brand image. Two of the best ways to do that is to share user generated content and give appreciation to your customers.

Even though SMB’s have certain limitations when it comes to branding, you can still use these methods in order to create a space of your own in the market. After-all creating a niche for your product is what all the entrepreneurs dream about. We hope that this article will help you to develop your brand image.