Week one: Let's get you started.

Hello! Welcome to my guide to social media success. Keep reading if you want to get your online content to a professional standard in just four weeks! This post should be considered in the first few days of your journey. You have to start somewhere!

To succeed at social media marketing, you don't just need to have a good online profile. You need a better online profile than your competitors. That's why the first step to my guide is about inspiration... from both your idols and your competitors.

In order to start developing the foundations for your brand, the very first thing that you have to do is look at the social media and websites of companies similar to you.

For the purpose of this exercise, I'm going to imagine that I have a small, environmentally friendly shop focused around locally sourced products and low-waste packaging, but you can apply my methodology to any brand.

Step one: Investigate your immediate competition.

Since I am studying at the University of Surrey, I'm going to imagine that my business will be established there. As I am a local business, I need to see what other health brands are in my region and look at their status. The health brands in Guildford are fairly large, so I would start with local organic businesses like Surrey Hills Coffee, at similar levels of development to myself.

Examples of Surrey Hills multi-platform media:

As you can see in the slides above, Surrey Hills uses lots of warm colors, a friendly informal tone and has a close relationship with its customers (visible through their feedback!). They also make a point of supporting other local brands, mentioning their local produce and highlighting their vegan range.

As they would be your direct competition, it would be important to make sure that your branding is at the very minimum at an equal level to theirs. You would likely have to match elements like customer engagement and vegan products, but you may want to change other elements of branding in order to compete. For example, using a different color scheme, sharing informative posts about your products and posting the prices of some cheaper stock.

The only warning I have here is: Stay friendly! If you appear to be making a direct attack on another local brand, you may lose customer favor and following.

Step two: Investigate your larger competition.

Right, so you've looked at your main competition. But that's not it! The next step is to look at bigger local brands. In Guildford's case, this would be Grapetree, Holland & Barret and Food for Thought. I'm going to focus on Grapetree, as they are the smallest out of the three.

As you can see, they are doing what Surrey Hills are not - they have lighter, minimal branding and are uploading informative posts, pricing and discounts. However, they have largely lost the personal, friendly and informal tone that Surrey Hills offers.

You would likely want to consider finding a balance between these two different branding types.

Step three: Research your idols!

These are the brands that you want to be. The ones with a big following, flawless branding and perfect morals. You're not competing with these guys - not yet, anyway! They have paved the way for companies like yourself. Learn from them!

In this case, I'm looking at the Vegan Kind and the Vegan Kind Supermarket. Both branches of this company have shown incredible growth in recent years - its online store sells out weekly!

Slides showing The Vegan Kind's online media:

The Vegan Kind have a largely informal customer relationship despite their large size, they upload friendly images of cats and their team and include discounts on their socials and website. Their LinkedIn is their most formal site, where they share industry related news, but even there they include company photos. They also have a subscription based business model where each month customers can pay to have a box of random vegan treats delivered to their door.

So, what to take from this?

In the case of my imaginary company, I would combine the best elements of all of these companies to create a site that stands out from the rest. I would perhaps have a mix of the more formal branding from Grapetree with the less formal from Surrey Hills and I would maintain a good customer relationship. I would post discounts, and perhaps campaign a locally based version of The Vegan Kind's subscription box model, where locals could pay to have my company's leftover produce to prevent waste. I may also want to include things in my branding that none of these companies have, like running an adjacent blog!

Now, think about what you would do. Would you do the same as me? Would you do something different? Your creative input here will shape the future of your company. When you come to do your research, think hard! And never be afraid of your own creativity.

I hope you've enjoyed my first blog post! Stay tuned with my Instagram to stay updated and find out more!