Have you seen the unofficial blue-check verified brand accounts popping up on Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover?
Wherever your brand goes, your audience’s reactions and (hopefully) media, sponsorship, or influencer support will follow. So, making sure your team is equipped to create on-brand-owned content is key for sharing your brand’s biggest viral moments instantly.
But, you can’t convey the depth of your brand identity in a “simple social media post”…or can you!?
Best Practices for Successful Brand Building on Social Media and Beyond
Do you know what attracts your fans to your brand? According to statistics reported by WebFX, using a signature color and/or a consistent color palette in your brand logo, content, and promotional materials can increase brand recognition by 80%.
Color psychology in brand marketing is a studied science that theorizes humans are naturally attracted to strong and soothing color combinations. No wonder brands compete ferociously to stand out, right? So, choose defining brand elements like color palettes, fonts, and logos wisely!
To help PhotoShelter for Brands customers create more ownable content faster and easier, we announced an integration partnership with Slate earlier this year. The integration now allows users to browse, search, and select content from their PhotoShelter Library directly from the Slate app or Web Creation Studio to share on social media in real time.
Learn more about the PhotoShelter and Slate Integration here.
“Brand consistency across social and digital increases revenue up to 33%—it’s no different from how it’s been in the past on today’s digital and social channels— the brands that have consistency and own their branding in a unique way across every single touchpoint are the ones that are going to perform best in terms of making money and getting that brand recall,” said Eric Stark, Slate’s President and Co-Founder, during The PhotoShelter Summit.
Learn his three tried-and-true best practices for creating more ownable brand moments below.
- Key #1 Owning means branding. Brand your content!
To stand out in today’s crowded social media and content landscape means to first, be on-brand.
“It’s more crucial than ever to make sure your key brand moments are working for you as hard as possible to move your brand forward. Whether that’s something that’s huge and pre-planned or just a video you happen to capture on your phone that could be viral BTS content. You need to be prepared to own those moments and make them go as far as possible on social media,” said Eric.
After working as social media manager and video producer for the NFL and San Francisco 49ers for nearly a decade, Eric and his co-founder Michael, founded Slate to help empower nontraditional creatives to create on-brand content and to help marketing teams stay on top of their 24/7 content calendars.
There’s just one problem: When it comes to social media platforms, brands have been enticed to act against their better judgment.
How? The custom content creation on native social platforms makes it ultra-convenient to share real-time moments and join in on the conversation, but doing this diminishes brand integrity and makes owning powerful moments harder—if not impossible, for brands.
But Slate provides a better way. Eric said, “Whether it’s our tool or another, you need to find a way to efficiently incorporate your brand into your social content…You don’t need to turn your organic raw content into an advertisement—you need to fit your branding into your organic content in a way that’s natural for the platform and then it’s a win-win.”
Below are two examples of non-branded and branded content from two Slate customers: Showtime and The Los Angeles Rams. They share custom on-brand content in real-time using the Slate platform.
“The more you define your brand on social, the more you have the opportunity to monetize that content directly—especially if you’re a rights-holder, a media company, or a university. One of our [Slate] customers just sold a multi-million dollar sponsorship deal that’s native only to social media. Sponsors are valuing this content more than ever and now it’s cheaper and easier than ever to produce.”
Eric Stark
You don’t have to be a pro to score big on social, you just have to be diligent about branding your content. The LA Rams are seeing incredible success on social by simply watermarking their content.
Eric shared, “Their [The LA Rams] content got ripped—for lack of a better term, by NFL and ESPN and SportsCenter and posted to those accounts. Yes, they tagged the Rams in the copy, but the Rams had watermarked the content already so they still get the brand recognition as those clips make their way across the internet…This content is going to go well beyond the Rams’ Instagram and now the Rams are getting that value every single time it’s played. Think about how much a sponsor would pay to have their logo on ESPN’s content—that’s what The Rams are getting here for free by making sure their best content is branded with a simple watermark on top of their photos and videos.”
- Key #2 Prepare to be reactive.
“So much of social media is real-time and reactive, especially in the sports media and entertainment world. You need to prepare for those moments that feel like they happen spontaneously, because the truth is you know the spontaneous moments that will be the definition of your brand. There’s always going to be that 5-10% that you can’t anticipate, but there are so many moments that you know are going to be impactful for your brand if they happen, so prepare for them.”
On game days, social media managers who work for brands like The Baltimore Ravens and The New York Giants grab photos and videos that their media teams instantly upload to PhotoShelter through wireless FTPs, they add pre-prepared branded templates and graphic element overlays on Slate, and publish their original, on-brand content highlighting iconic real-time moments.
Eric explained how The Giants are preparing for big game time moments months, weeks, and days in advance.
Here’s a pre-planned social graphic template that The New York Giants created:
“How rare is it that a ‘Pick 6’ happens in the NFL, right? The Giants will probably have one or two a year if they’re lucky, but they’re prepared for when that moment happens because when it does happen, it’s probably going to be your most viewed video of the season-definitely of the week. Social media is all about reacting, but you can be proactive to be ready to react for any big brand moment. Again, making it the easiest thing ever for your team when a moment happens, they know exactly what the creative is that they’re going to grab, they’re going to apply it to the video or photo, and there’s no stress when that moment happens to try to make a big deal out of it because that’s already been planned,” Eric said.
- Key #3 Empower your team with today’s tools.
Eric got directly to the point with this last major key: “The truth is, social media is more complicated than ever—there’s always a new platform, there’s always a new priority, the social teams interface with all departments and the truth is social media mangers are always overwhelmed. It’s a 24/7 job and they’re juggling alot of things at once…If you want social to be a priority (which it should be,) get them the tools and resources that they need to succeed. The old way of creating content in the social media space just doesn’t work for teams that need to be nimble—the old way of creating an ad or a highly produced piece of content back and forth with the creative team into a creative backlog. Let your creative team empower the social team with the tools to do it themselves, so your creative teams can work on the bigger projects, the bigger campaigns, the content that their skills are best used for—not the one-off social post.”
Now, watch the full session below to hear the BONUS Key #4 that Eric dropped at the end!
Follow Slate’s blog for innovative platform updates, or reach out to a PhotoShelter team member today to discuss integrating with the Slate platform.
