Branding has always been at the heart of business success; it’s how businesses differentiate themselves from others in the market, connect emotionally with their audience, and also build trust.
Business branding in the past depended on methods like print media, TV, radio channels, and posters. Now, branding is still what it is, but the rules have changed.
Businesses now leverage social media as a means of amplifying and growing their business brands. With billions of users active on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X, brands have direct access to their audience and the opportunity to connect with them in real time.
Unlike the traditional branding strategies that just broadcast a message, modern business branding strategies use social media to create a platform for effective community building.
Users can interact in real time with brands they want to buy from, hence increasing a brand’s (Know, like, and trust) KLT rate.
This article explores the roles of social media in modern business branding strategies, while highlighting why it’s essential, how brands can leverage it effectively, and the best practices that help businesses stand out in the market. It also includes case studies from brands with successful social media presence.
Why Social Media Is Crucial For Branding
Table of Contents
When mentioning social media marketing strategy and how it affects business branding in today’s world, we talk about the shift in consumer behavior.
Consumers now don’t just make a purchasing decision based on an advertisement alone. They would do research, read product reviews shared by other users, and rely heavily on social proof before deciding to patronize a brand. This digital branding era means that a brand’s reputation can be made or marred online. A single review, a trending hashtag, or even a viral post can easily break what a brand has built for many years. This means that if you’re a brand that’s just starting out or already established, you must no longer treat social media marketing or brand awareness on social media as just a one-way message. It must be dynamic and meet your audience where they spend most of their time— social media.
Here are the reasons why digital branding is crucial in modern business branding strategies;
- You are able to maintain a direct connection with your specific target audience.
- It builds trust and credibility.
- Building your brand online facilitates brand personality through storytelling.
- Brand awareness on social media is cost-effective compared to traditional branding methods.
The Key Roles Of Social Media In Modern Business Branding
Social Media marketing is not just about chasing likes or making impressions; it’s about chasing pure connections that build trust and help promote brand personality. It shapes how people see and connect with your brand. Building a brand online plays a key role in having a strong business presence, and it includes;
- Brand Awareness and Visibility: The first step to building your business brand is getting seen. Social Media branding will get your business in front of people you wouldn’t have reached through traditional branding methods. Building your business online increases your brand visibility and awareness.
- Driving Customer Engagement: Traditional branding methods employed a one-way message kind of branding. They speak to people through TV adverts, posters, etc, but digital branding employs a two-way communication with the audience. They speak with them through comments, polls, and direct messaging. With this, you’re able to understand your customers, hence building trust and loyalty with your audience.
- Brand Reputation: In today’s world, a brand’s reputation can easily change overnight, both in the negative and in the positive. With social media, brands can respond quickly to issues as they affect them, especially in a negative light. They can address customer grievances and sometimes can turn negative situations to work for their good in the blink of an eye. How a brand communicates during a crisis leaves a lasting impression.
- Community Building: Building a brand on social media makes it easier for you to build communities through hashtags, groups, and shared experiences. Strong brands today don’t just sell products; they create a sense of belonging, making it easier to turn casual buyers into loyal customers.
- Driving Conversion and Business Growth: Beyond building brand awareness on social media, digital branding directly impacts the bottom line. Features like influencer partnerships and targeted ads help your audience become interested in sales. With a good social media marketing strategy, digital branding translates into measurable business growth.
In summary, social media is like the voice and spotlight of modern business branding. It’s where visibility, trust, and sales meet.
Case Studies and Lessons
Case 1: Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is indeed a model brand because there’s hardly any effective branding or marketing strategy that you wouldn’t find them leveraging.
Here’s what Coca-Cola does well;
Consistent Brand Identity: Coca-Cola has an easily recognizable brand identity, its iconic logo, and the happiness theme. No matter the platform, Coca-Cola feels the same.
User Generated Content: When Coca-Cola launched the campaign, “Share a Coke”, which encouraged customers to share personalized bottles online, that campaign turned ordinary customers into brand ambassadors.
Cultural Relevance: Coca-Cola employs content for different markets. In Nigeria, they have sponsored local events, music, and sports while still keeping their global relevance.
What Other Brands Can Learn
| Strategy | Lessons for Small Brands |
| Consistency In Branding | You should pick 2 colours that you’ll want your brand to be known for, also pick a tone of voice, and ensure you maintain the same colour and voice in your social profiles. |
| UGC | A challenge as simple as telling your customers to post a picture of them using or holding your product and tag you is enough. You can also feature their content on your profile to promote trust and your brand personality. |
| Emotional storytelling | Don’t just push sales to your customers, share your stories with them. Show them behind-the-scenes moments; this helps build a connection. |
| Cultural Relevance | Use local slang sometimes and celebrate holidays or other events your community cares about. |
Case 2: Jumia Nigeria
Jumia is Nigeria’s leading e-commerce platform and is widely respected because of its engaging and strong social media presence.
Here’s what Jumia does well in its online branding strategy;
Trend Jacking: Jumia takes advantage of trending topics and creates content around them in a way that feels natural, e.g, Big Brother Naija. This keeps the brand feeling fresh and top of mind.
Customer Centric Humour and Personality: Jumia does not always maintain that corporate stiffness; they sometimes infuse humor, especially when dealing with customer complaints. This helps make the brand relatable and personal.
What Other Brands Can Learn
| Social Media Strategy | Lessons For Small Brands |
| Be Trend aware | Pay attention to what’s trending on social media and see how you can create content around it that’ll show your brand in a positive light. This helps to boost your engagement and also impact your brand personality |
| Show Personality | Show that behind all the corporate and professional services, your brand is personal and run by human beings with emotions. Show cheekiness and humor where necessary. This builds a connection with your audience. |
| Handle Negative Feedback Gracefully | Be polite while responding to customer complaints, and infuse humor if possible. |
Case 3: Wema Bank
Wema Bank’s branding is just top-notch. It is one of Nigeria’s oldest and leading banks. They have successfully positioned themselves as a fully digital bank through the creative use of social media. They recently launched Alat with Wema, a fully digital platform that appeals to tech-savvy individuals and is also youth-friendly.
On Social media, Wema Bank blends education, entertainment, and community building to strengthen its relationship with customers.
When it launched its campaign “80 years of spreading love”, it rewarded customers with personalized gifts, which showed that it valued loyalty across different customer groups.
When Wema Bank ran the “945 game show” that was tied to its USSD service, people who used it had a chance to win in a live-streamed Facebook event, allowing them to interact with their customers personally.
Wema Bank’s Alat platform does not just thrive on fast transactions; it provides users with daily nuggets, including educational, entertaining, health, and wellness content. It randomly reminds a user about nutrition, smart investment tips, etc hence, creating a connection and remaining top of mind of their customers.
What Other Brands Can Learn
| Strategies | What Other Brands Can Learn |
| Going Digital | Make it easy for your customers to find you and transact with you online by going digital first. |
| Story Telling | Tell your story in a way that humanizes your brand. |
| Educative content | Educate your audience on issues that revolve around your brand. Sometimes, venture into slightly different educational topics that your audience can relate to. For example, Alat by Wema reminds you to cover yourself well because it’s the rainy season does not mean they sell cardigans, it only goes to show they care about your health too. |
| Community Building | Build communities and create spaces for niche groups of your audience. For example, Wema Bank created SARA by Wema, a women-focused initiative that uses social media to engage female entrepreneurs and professionals through webinars, networking, etc. For example, as a food brand, for example, you can build an Instagram hashtag campaign(e.g #cookwith…). Your customers can share pictures of food they made with your ingredients or recipes. This way, your customers are not just buyers of your brand but active participants and brand ambassadors. |
Beyond the Mistakes: What Most Blogs Don’t Tell You
If you’ve read articles on the role of social media branding strategies, you’ve probably seen the usual ‘mistakes to avoid’ sections repeated over and over—posting inconsistently, over-promoting, ignoring analytics, or failing to engage with followers. While these are true, they often stop at surface-level advice without delving deeper into practicality. Let’s be more practical about the social media Strategies you should not ignore for your brand.
- Inconsistent Posting: Consistency is not just about frequency; it’s also about tone and identity. You can create a content calendar and stick to a defined voice and style, so your audience will instantly recognize your brand anytime.
- Failing to Engage: It’s not just about engaging with your audience, but how you engage matters too. Your engagement should showcase your Brand’s personality, use humour, storytelling, or creativity to stand out.
- Over promotion: It’s always the “don’t post too much promotional content”, but what should you do differently? Apply the 80-20 rule to your branding. 80% of educational and community content, and 20% promotion. You could share content about the challenges your target audience faces or their pain points.
Conclusion
The key to success lies in finding the balance between creativity, authenticity, and consistency. Social media has completely reshaped how businesses build and grow their brands. The role of social media in branding cannot be overemphasized. Social media business branding helps brands stay afloat and be able to stand out in crowded marketing places.
If you want your brand to remain competitive in today’s fast-paced digital world, now is the time to take action. Start by checking your social media strategies so far.
Businesses that will thrive tomorrow are businesses that don’t just treat social media as an afterthought but as a driver of brand growth, customer loyalty, and business brand awareness. Are you a business that would thrive tomorrow?
