Ever wonder how you and your brand can stand out and build a community of fans and customers using social media? Well, this article will give you 10 solid ways to do just that an get the attention of key influencers in your industry

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10 Ways to Build Brand Recognition and Get
Attention of Influencers Using Social Media
By Jolynn Oblak
As a business owner venturing into the online world,
it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with all the various
social media strategies and tools you have to master.
It’s easy to get “Shiny-Object Syndrome” and get so
overwhelmed with all the tools that you have at your
disposal. It’s important to not get distracted and get
the foundation of your online marketing set so you
can start to build and grow your brand presence.

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Yet, as overwhelming as it can be, you know in order
for your business to grow, you need to leverage social
media for its branding power.
The question is How?
Well, my darling, I pulled together my best tips into a
mini “how-to” guide with examples and additional
resources to get you started. This is a useful and
shareable resource. In fact, print this baby out and
put it in a safe place so you can refer back to it.
10 tips for building your brand and
following using Social Media
#1 – Specialize in the right social network for
your business
While I think it’s important that you learn how to
utilize all the social networks to amplify your message
and listen to your target market, focusing on one or 2
major social networks and learning how to leverage it
for your online marketing is best. That way you are

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not overwhelmed learning the ins and outs of all the
social networks and you limit that feeling of
overwhelm that comes with starting a new venture
online. The key is finding the right social network for
your business. Here are some important questions to
ask about your target market:
 Where does my target market hang out online?
 Where do they share their fears and interests?
 Where do they look for information and inspiration?
Another way to evaluate this is to consider the type of
business you run. If you sell your products to other
businesses primarily, (B2B) or you sell mostly to
customers or end-users (B2C) you would be smart to
focus on the social network that serves those groups
best. For insight on this, the 2014 Social Media
Examiners Industry Report, shows a breakdown
between business to business (B2B) and business to
customer (B2C) social platforms that are
most important to marketers.
As you can see, Facebook marketing out ranks all
other forms of social media marketing for business to
customer (b2C), So investing some money

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on Facebook marketing may be ideal if you want to
reach end-users of your product/service.
#2 – Create Branded Cover Photo Images on
Social Media That Reflects & Focuses on Your
Specialty
Regardless of what network you specialize in working
with, creating a social media cover image that
showcases your specialty will be one of your most
powerful and effective branding strategies.
You can now include up to twenty per cent text and
include your branding colors and graphic elements –
as well as get your face out there. Here is an
example from my Facebook business page which I
created with Canva here:
Notice how I take advantage of my Facebook
Page to:
1. Add a personal branding statement that lets people
know exactly what I do
2. Create cohesion my using my brand colors
3. Identify my credentials and accomplishments

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4. Prome my website link
5. Leverage the new call-to-action (CTA) button to
promote my sign up incentive/lead magnet
6. Promote my latest product or service with the custom
tab option
7. Re-enforce CTA in notes area
To learn more about how to optimize your personal
and business pages on Facebook, watch this free
video where I show you some simple ways to
cutomize your profile for SEO and connect your
Facebook personal profile to your business page so
you push potential prospects or business partners to
your page.
As you can see, you have ample opportunity to bring
your brand to life if you include these branding
elements. All the social networks give you
customization and branding elements that you can
use to your advantage for your business. Mashable
has a good article about how companies are using
their Twitter profiles for branding that I suggest you
read. So, choose the one platform that you think will
yield the best results starting out.
#3 – Offer Free Webinars or Video Training
Series
Offering free webinars and video training has become
popular because they are not expensive to produce.
All you need is a video camera and presentation
software and email marketing program to start. By
using social media to target the right audience and
promote your training series you are reaching a

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demographic that may have never heard of you
before but are in great need of your product or
service. Webinars give you the opportunity to:
 Share value freely with your target market
 Establish your authority and gain the know, like and
trust factor
 Grow your email list
 Promote your product or coaching services
It’s important to get the right tools for the job. There
are several options out there for hosting your
webinar. Here are 2 that are popular and may meet
your needs:
 GoToWebinar software is what many companies use.
The price makes it out of reach for some smaller
businesses, but it is a great option if you can afford it.
It integrates with Leadpages as well.
 Easy Webinar software is great because you can do
automated webinars or live events and it is more
affordable than GTW.
You can use Leadpages as well to host the training as
a Live YouTube event. Leadpages has webinar
registration templates and video templates plus
a great free training course on how to profit from
webinars. Even if you don’t use Leadpages, you can
learn a lot from the course.
To promote your webinar on social media, you need
to create a promoted post that clearly outlines
thee key benefits people who sign up can expect to
receive from your training. Be clear and specific. Here
is a great example from Kimra Luna who is promoting
a free training webinar:

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#4 – Use Share Buttons To Promote and Ask For
Shares on Social Media
The internet is a wide open place with a bazillion
people and products. You have to promote YOU INC
using social sharing buttons on your website/
blog. Promoting your blog content will propel your

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brand and authority into the next level if your content
is top notch (more on this in the #6 below). You can
add share buttons to your website, blog, opt in pages,
in your eBook and registration pages. There are many
social sharing plugins for wordpress that you can
investigate as well. You can also use an opt in form
plugin program called Magic Action Box which has
templates that have the social sharing buttons as part
of the design. Here is what that looks like:
Remember to also ask people to share your content.
You can do this at the end of your blog post of when
you post your content to social media. Something as
simple as “If you enjoyed this and think it can benefit
someone you know, please share it/ tag them”.
Simple right?
#5 – Use Hashtag’s as Part of Your Branding
and Marketing Strategy
Hashtag’s are now part of the social media
experience, and you need to understand how to use
them appropriately. Here is a great definition of
hashtag’s from SproutSocial:

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hash·tag: A word or phrase preceded by a hash mark
(#), used within a message to identify a keyword or
topic of interest and facilitate a search for it.
So whenever a user adds a hashtag to their post, it is
immediately indexed by the social network and
searchable by other users. Once someone clicks on
that hashtag, they’ll be brought to a page that
aggregates all of the posts with the same hashtagged
keyword in real-time. Once a keyword picks up
enough momentum it becomes known as “trending.”
Trending isn’t simply a matter of becoming the most
popular hashtag on the networks. Each users’
trending topics is different based on their location and
social connections.
Social networks are now actively working to make
hashtags work even better on their
systems. (I.E.: Behave and interact better with
Twitter hashtags). You can create your own eye-
catching, unique hashtag or using a relevant,
existing one that is already trending can help
multiply your shares and capture targeted
audience members you haven’t even met yet.
If you are looking for marketing inspiration
around hashtag’s read
the Social Media Examiner article 6 tips for a
killer hashtag campaign.
#6 – Provide Top Quality Tips and Content
I think this is a MUST in social media and in your
blogging, your content must be high quality and
should help make your fans’ lives easier. This

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will catch the eye of your target
audience (especially if you’ve asked existing fans
and followers to share your tip.) Even better, combine
really useful tips with the latest-breaking industry
news and changes, that way you will be seen as the
“go-to person” for invaluable and timely information.
Here is an example by socialbakers,who shared a
Facebook cheat sheet for the correct image
dimensions for Facebook. They knew their audience
needed an easy go to guide like this.
Gary
Vaynerchuk shares some ways you can create content
your market craves, his 6 strategies were summarized
by SociallySorted:
 it shouldn’t interrupt the user experience
 it offers something of value to your audience or
helps them rather than placing demands on them
 it shows people that you – from music to pop
culture to news. It’s about playing on their turf the
way they want to play!

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 It should be snackable, easily digested and unique
to your brand in that you are consistently creating
micro-stories and micro-pieces of content
that entertain, help or inspire your fans
 It needs to be consistent and should reflect your
brand identity
#7 – Illustrate your Posts and Links with
Graphics
Visual marketing is trend that is taking off right now.
With affordable tools like Canva, you can develop
stunning images and use those images with your link
shares on Facebook. Images are so important
because they captivate and motivate us in ways that
text can’t. Because people have become immune to
links and conditioned themselves to gloss over them,
a photograph helps stop people in their tracks if
it “tells” them instantly what they’ll get when
they glance at the photo. Hubspot has an excellent
article on how to use images in your marketing which
will give you a great guide to get started. I also
recommend the Branded Solopreneur’s recent blog
post which outlines 8 types of visual diarrhea that
plague DIY’ers(Translation- Don’t make these
mistakes when creating your images!)

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#8 – Be Generous and Share Relevant and
Timely Industry News (and make sure you give
credit)
If someone else has written the post you wanted to
write – blog about it and share it and give credit
to the author! If they’ve provided a fabulous list of
resources or a juicy tip – share it and give credit to
the author! If they have a great program that your
fans would benefit from (or if you took the course and
loved it) share it and talk about it with your followers.
Never be afraid to share your secrets of your success
with your audience. You’re proving you have their
best interests at heart and that you are all in the
journey together. (And the person whose post or tip
you are sharing may return the favor or JV with you
one day in the not too distant future.) Oh. And share
your followers’ posts and tips too (people love to
be noticed and acknowledged; particularly by

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experts). I do this all the time of Facebook, Twitter
and Google Plus. Here are some simple tips on how to
do this with some examples:
1. Tell them why you love it, how the information may
help them
2. Share results you have had
3. Be clear about what pain point this information
solves
4. @ mention (or + Plus) the people you have
mentioned in the post so they know you are
promoting their content
5. Use hashatags that are relevant to ensure
interested people can find your post on social media
6. Ask for the share and for comments on the content
Example: Facebook course (I have to do a little happy dance on this one,
because Mari Smith actually commented on this post!)

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#9 – Vary your Post Types
Your page will feel more interactive and interesting if
you vary yourpost types. Rotate between:
 Photos
 Contests
 Quizzes/ polls
 Questions
 Blog links
 Tips
 Personal posts
 Videos
 Infographics
 Motivational quotes
Motivational quotes and inspirational sayings do well
for business and they often become
“viral”. Remember, you need to remind people that
there is a real person behind your business page on
Facebook. Example: Jay Abraham

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#10 Build Authentic Relationships with Key
Industry Influencers with The Goal of Providing
Value
Don’t just focus on your fans – actively follow and
respond to your own favorite “key influencers” in the
social media niche. We’ve already spoken about
crediting them and sharing their work. Responding to
polls, quizzes and sharing your own tips will help get
you noticed too. Visit their feeds and interact
regularly. Your regular, thoughtful contributions to
their community will get you noticed. Make sure you
make it about THEM and not YOU. Once you have
your list of people, spend some time contributing to
their community on Facebook or their blog and then
pick out 5 that you can learn from or who you think
can provide value to your community and send a brief
email asking how you can promote their work. You
will be amazed to see how many emails they get with
pitches and offers that are not genuine or reply-
worth. You can, and should be the one that stands
out.
Things to include:
 How long you have been following them and why “I
have been a fan for 6 months, I found your podcast
on Itunes when I was searching for entrepreneur and
business podcasts”
 Describe the blog post, podcast or a resource they
created that you liked and why “The episode on
entrepreneurship totally blew my mind, you nailed it

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when you talked about taking an active role in
protecting your mindset”
 Outline how you have a shared vision for serving your
target market “I share my experiences with my
followers via my blog and weekly entrepreneur
mindset newsletter, so we serve similar target
markets, and even though my audience is smaller
than yours, we are both committed to serving their
highest needs”
 Note that their work may seem thankless at times,
but their work has had an impact on you “know you
have had an impact on my life and business journey
thus far, I want to thank you for that”
 Then end it with a request for them to get back to you
about how you can promote their work.
This works because its real, authentic and you are
supporting them and showing their work has had an
impact on you. What influencer doesn’t want to hear
that? Be honest, be real, be YOU.
There you have it! My top 10 tips to build your brand
presence and attract influencers. I also put together
“How to be a social media superstar” checklist,
calendar and action worksheets to help you define
your social media +branding goals. You can learn
more about it here.