Most businesses have integrated social media into their general day-to-day activity, along with being a main marketing channel they utilise. With the pandemic hitting us all in 2020 it has become almost necessary to have a social media strategy to maintain communication with prospects, and customers who can champion your business.
As of July 2020, over 3.6 billion people were using social media worldwide, with 75.3% of businesses using Instagram.
With so many people online using social media for personal, and business use it’s important for every brand to really shine and be clear about what your business does and what it stands for.
So, if you haven’t updated your social pages in a while, you might want to check you’re displaying the right logo, listing the correct services and contact information, along with reflecting the correct values.
When it comes to updating and rebranding your social media accounts there are eight important aspects to consider:
Plan the Rebrand
It’s important to put a strategy together for the rebrand so that you can plan the right messages for the various different stages of the launch. This strategy should include PR, marketing, and social media teams as each of them will be doing activity that helps the rebrand.
“89% of B2B marketers say brand awareness is the most important goal, followed by sales and lead generation.“
Lucid Press
Research Your Competitors
Before you begin your rebrand look at your competitors, as they can provide useful insights. See whether they have an active following and consider how they how they engage with their audience and the brand messages that they use in their profiles.
Take inspiration from the logos you see too. The design of a logo is the ‘face’ of your company, therefore it needs to reflect what you do and be easily digested so that it is rememberable. The current trend in 2021 is for logos to be simple and flat in design as they can be quickly digested.Â
Having this foundation of research can help you to shape your brand and work out any existing issues you may need to improve on.
Explain the Importance of the Rebrand
Change is often a hard thing for a lot of people so it’s a good idea to explain your reasoning for the rebrand/refresh. Include your audience as much as possible either by doing polls, asking opinions on colours, or logo design. Let them feel like they are part of the journey and show that their opinion matters.
One brand that did a rebrand and got it right was Mastercard. Their aim was to ‘emphasize simplicity, connectivity and seamlessness’ in their brand identity, which is done by using limited elements.
An example of a bad rebrand is Tropicana juice carton. They redesigned their packaging to a simpler style, but the feedback was that it looked cheap and unrecognisable to consumers who regularly purchased it. The lesson learned from this mistake was that too many big changes on the packaging and no customer feedback led to reduced sales. Tropicana quickly reverted back to the old design.
Allowing your audience to follow your journey and each change can be a way to include them in the process and allowing them an opportunity to ask questions or offer suggestions.
Allowing your audience to follow your journey and each change can be a way to include them in the process and allowing them an opportunity to ask questions or offer suggestions.
94% of customers are likely to show loyalty to a brand that offers complete transparency.
Label Insight
Check Your Handles Are Consistent
Each platform you use needs to be checked to see if it’s possible to use the same handle across all accounts so that your identity is consistent. If you do find that the handles you want to use have been taken you can use ‘HQ’ at the end which is probably the most common solution for businesses or ‘Inc’ at the end if you are a corporation. For personal accounts, you can shorten your name, put ‘real’ before your name or use a location in the name, for example.
Update Your Logo
It might be that your business logo was designed when the company was first established a long time ago, and now looks very outdated and doesn’t quite look suitable on any of your social media channels. For example, one company that has kept up with the logo trends is Starbucks, over the past 4 decades they updated their logo, to keep up to date with the latest trend at the time.
Starbucks started with a busy design in 1971 but with each passing decade the design became simpler, and in 2011 made the huge change of removing the text and focusing on the siren graphic.
The current trend for logo design in 2021 is to be as simple as possible but still keep the brand’s identity.  Â
It’s important your logo is social media friendly. Long brand names won’t be very visible, so consider having an icon or a separate abbreviated version of your logo for social media – something that will still be easily recognisable, and that people will associate immediately with your brand. Once you are happy with your new logo it’s important to also update all social banners on your accounts and going forward all posts should have the updated version of the logo.
You always want your rebrand to remain consistent from the day it’s launched, so make sure designers and your social media team use the new updated logo in all their work going forward.
75% of people recognise a brand by its logo
Daily Blogging
Create Your Rebrand Messages
This message is a way to express what you want people to know about your updated brand. For example, ‘Change is exciting. Everything we do hasn’t changed but our look has…’. This is great for PR and for engagement. It ensures your prospects, customers, and fans are fully aware of what’s going on and excited for what the future brings.
Build Up Hype
Everyone loves being the first to see new products or brands, so a good idea would be to introduce a select group of people to your new brand. It’s a great way to judge the reaction of your audience but on a small group scale, so that if there are any major problems things can get sorted before the big reveal.
The best way to select a group of people for your sneak preview is to do a post on a social media channel and ask who would like to actively participate. You are looking for people who will engage with the information you share with them, otherwise, you won’t gain any useful feedback.
One way to work with your select group, for example on Facebook is to set up a private group and then add certain individuals to it. That way communication is kept in one place and participants can get into discussions freely, which could be very valuable to your company.
Launch Day
Before the launch it’s good to build hype about the rebrand through posts like a ‘sneak peek/ here’s what’s coming’ posts, this prepares people for the change.
On the day of the launch, post on all your social media channels about your rebrand, making sure the right messages and artwork go out. An example of a post to use could be ‘check out our new look what do you think’, as a way to engage the audience straight away and try and gain feedback.
The next step is to send out a reminder a few days later or even a week later depending on your strategy, to say about the new changes and ask your audience whether they have had a look.
89% of B2B marketers say brand awareness is the most important goal, followed by sales and lead generation.
Lucid Press
Get Employees Excited
Not only is rebranding exciting for the company but employees should be equally excited. Try to get your employees involved in sharing company changes on their own personal accounts, as they will have their own followers that help increase the exposure of this exciting brand change.
It’s a good idea to put together a communication plan for employees and to provide sample content and guidelines if you don’t already have a social media policy in place. You want the right consistent messages going out to your audience.
Takeaway
So overall when it comes to a rebrand it does have its risks but if you do the research on your competitors, include the right people in the discussions, and get a strategy in place it can lead to a smoother successful rebrand launch.
Checklist for a rebrand on social media:
- Create a strategy
- Research your competitors by auditing their profiles
- Check your handles are consistent on all platforms
- Update your logo
- Create the PR message you want to promote
- Build up the hype
- Plan the launch day
- Ask your team to like and share the launch posts
- Encourage all employees to share the rebrand
- Create a content plan for continued engagement.
If you have any questions about our social media approach or would like to know more about any of our other services, please get in touch with our team of experts.
Source: AgroMarketing.digital
