When it comes to doing business and doing it better than your competition, the key to success is defining who you are as a business and sticking to it. Everyone loves a good story. Thanks to the internet, your customers now have a much wider selection of choices than ever before. Because of that, your competition as a small business owner is not limited to just the other shops in your neighborhood, town or even your state.
Your competition is on a worldwide scale.
Whether you’re a business coach or a brick and mortar kid’s clothing store, you’re in a pool with quite a few fish. That means that it’s more important now more than ever to make yourself different. That doesn’t mean just bombarding your social media with flashy pictures or viral videos, that means sticking to what makes your brand uniquely you.
Using social media to grow your business
Aimee Tariq wrote a piece on social media best practices for Entrepreneur and said:
Everyone — including your customers — loves a good story. Lauren Gordon, storytelling and content marketing specialist, explained to me in an interview that she uses social media to strategically differentiate herself from competition. “Don’t ever forget that every single human being makes decisions based on emotion and justifies with logic,” Gordon said.
“This means, if you want your brand to stand the test of time, you need to be telling your brand’s story across social media to differentiate yourself from competitors, build deep connections and trust with customers and earn your customers’ loyalty.”
Whether yours is a personal brand or a company brand, you can use any social media platform to tell your brand’s story, and quickly differentiate yourself from the competition. No matter how many social media transformations we see in the next decade, we humans are going to be drawn to the same fundamental things. This means customers being drawn to stories they can relate to and brands they can deeply connect with.
Keeping in line with your own branding strategies doesn’t begin and end with social media either. It’s a good idea to keep your brand even across the board between social media platforms, your website and your store if that applies to you. (And, of course, your mobile app if you have one. Wait, you don’t have one? AppMama can help explain why your business needs a mobile app.) You can always change things up a little, but maintaining a similar aesthetic will help folks connect with your brand identity.
Don’t get down on yourself if your biggest competition has hundreds of thousands of followers either. You can’t always trust the numbers; a large following doesn’t necessarily equate to a high conversion rate. There are a growing number of bot companies that exist for companies to buy followers. You’re better off with 100 quality followers than 100,000 that window shop all day. Don’t let quantity overpower your desire to be different!
The customers you get by being yourself will always be the best kind. Never stop being your true authentic self and those that will be loyal will be loyal to who you are.
Again, should you need help with your branding for your mobile app or to get your business on the mobile app map, contact Unleashed Mobile Apps and get started.
