You have, what you think, is an excellent product or service. You have faith in it. You put a lot of work into its development and probably a good bit of funding too. However, your customers may not be aware of this. What you think and what your customers are actually aware of are completely different notions, and it is vital that business owners strive to close the distance between the two.

How you bridge the gap between yourself and your customers requires emotional intelligence and some modern marketing savvy that’s not difficult to acquire.

One major facet of bridging the gap between you and your customers is Branding. Branding allows you to accomplish three important things:

• It is the process of making your product or service visible to your target market
• Maintaining the top position as the go-to entity for your product or service
• Increase in conversion from leads to sales

Social Media Marketing and Branding: Pulling It All Together

Social Media Marketing is a simple and efficient forum for branding and it is growing exponentially in popularity. In fact, Mariel Loveland of scribbal.com reports that 76% of businesses are currently using Social Media Marketing to meet their business goals. Here are a few ways you can embark upon branding what you have to offer to potential customers through Social Media Marketing:

1. Write a Compelling Message

Any text that you use to market your product/service must be provocative. Not necessarily provocative as in sexy, but provocative in the truest sense of the word – it must provoke or incite a response or action. For example, your text should make the consumer want to share the information within their network and/or purchase what you’re offering.

2. Use the Tools

Utilize what’s out there – Facebook and Twitter are free social network platforms that comprise a user base in the millions. While your goal isn’t to spam the hundreds of millions of users that log in everyday, you do want to tap into your niche market by promoting your virtual presence.

3. Shareable Content

Make it easy for your consumers to share your content. While you could try to reach the vast number of people you want to on your own, you’d get very tired and very frustrated… very quickly. Twitter allows users to re-tweet or re-broadcast messages that users find interesting, funny or important and Facebook has the ever popular “like” button. Gently encourage your audience to use them!

4. Interact with the Audience

Talk to your consumers, answer their questions and show how your product or service can meet their needs. LinkedIn has a bank of groups that have discussion threads that you can participate in. Write succinct responses and always tie in the relevance of your product or service.

5. Use Multiple Channels

Multiply your efforts. If you promote on one, promote on all. You can either put up individual statuses or updates on each of your platform or link them so that when you post on one it’s broadcasted to all of them.

About the Author: Sara Fletcher is interested in emotional intelligence and understanding her DISC assessment. She loves to explore psychology, business, and sports in relation to emotional intelligence training.