Social Media Rebranding in 10 Steps

The 21st century has been filled with rapidly evolving technology, including the popularization of social media and the growing importance of having a specific brand. As of July 2020, more than half of the WORLD uses social media, and 75.3% of businesses will use Instagram in 2020. Because there are (literally) billions of people on social media, businesses can easily leverage their social media presence to promote their brand, drive leads, and ultimately increase name recognition and revenue. 

However, if businesses do not adopt social media best practices, it can be detrimental to their bottom line. Think about it – the first thing someone does when they hear about a new brand is view the business’s website, social media accounts, etc. If they see that your business has little to no social media followers or don’t post much, they will probably assume your business isn’t very active or established and will move on to a more legitimate business. Sound familiar? It may be time to rebrand your social media accounts.

But how do you even start a social media rebrand? Let me tell you – it’s not going to happen overnight. But don’t worry, we’ve put together 10 steps to launching a successful social rebrand that’ll help generate meaningful results. 

Deciding if you need a social media rebrand:

1. Examine Your Current Strategy 

The first step for your social media rebranding is figuring out what you’re currently doing and defining your current social media strategy. Whether you have a clearly defined social media strategy or not, this will help you determine what should change or remain the same. 

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is your strategy in terms of posting frequency, content, tone, and visuals? 
• Who is making the content? Are they on social media themselves? 
• How much time are you budgeting for your own social media accounts? 
• Are you treating yourself as a client? 
• Do you have a clearly established brand – both visually and conceptually? 
• Does your current social media reflect the current social climate, popular trends, and popular culture? 

2. Determine WHY You Need a Rebrand

Now that you’ve taken a look at your current strategy and set up, take a look at your social media performance and marketing analytics to figure out what’s working and what’s not.

Here are some signs you may need to rebrand your social strategy: 

• Your account is experiencing lower engagement than in the past 
• Your ROI is not up to par (either with paid media, hours spent making content, etc.) 
• Your analytics are dropping 
• Your platforms all have different looks (handles, headers, avatars, bios, descriptions, etc.)
  
  

How to start your social media rebrand:

3. Research Your Competitors and Their Platforms 

Take a look at what your competitors’ accounts look like and what you assume to be their overall social media strategy. This can include local competitors, global leaders in your industry, and other companies around the same size as yours. This step is important because it can help you determine what you’re going for, while also providing a good model to follow. 

Here are some things to take note of:

• Their performance & stats – followers, engagement, views, shares, likes, comments, etc. 
• Their visual representation – is it cohesive? What are their colors? Are all posts branded in some way? 
• Take a look at their content – what exactly are they posting – blogs, premium content, infographics, e-books, whitepapers? Do they have a podcast or something like that? Do they post videos? Are they posting just about themselves or about popular culture, clients, projects, and news? 
• Company culture – are they including their employees on their social media platforms? What does the culture look like? Does this seem like a company you’d want to work with or for? 
• What do you see on their accounts that you would like to adopt? 

4. Establish Your Problem Areas 

Once you’ve taken a holistic look at your strategy and performance, while also comparing that to competitors, it’s time to establish your problem areas. This will allow you to form clear goals and make necessary adjustments when it comes to your social media rebranding. 

Here are a few common problems: 

• Posting the same content over and over again 
• Posts are either visually too similar or have no cohesive look at all 
• You don’t have enough followers, engagement, views, etc. 
• You completely forgot about one or several social media platforms 
• You’re only posting about one topic. For example, you’re only posting blogs and not including client work, awards, popular culture, or industry trends. 

Keep in mind that it’s a small victory in itself to be able to determine what your problem is! If you don’t know what’s wrong, you can’t fix it. 

5. Establish Your Goals 

Now that you’ve discovered what you want to fix, you’ll want to establish SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely) goals for your social media rebranding efforts. By creating meaningful goals, you can keep yourself on track, check off boxes along the way, and ultimately feel as though you accomplished something! 

• Specific – Make sure you are giving details so you know how to move forward. Don’t just say “we want to drive engagement” – on what platforms? How are you going to do that? Who is going to do it? When are you doing it? How much are you spending? 
• Measurable – Give us some stats and numbers! When it comes to social media and marketing analytics, there’s a lot to keep in mind. Don’t just say “we want more likes” – how much more? How are you going to do that? What platforms?
• Achievable – Push yourself, but make it achievable.
• Realistic – It’s a fine line, but make sure you are challenging yourself while still being realistic. Your goal can’t be to “have 1 million followers on Instagram next week” if you only have 1,000 followers. 
• Timely – Include a start and end date to hold yourself accountable and determine a timeline. If not, you’ll never get it done.

Here’s an example of a SMART goal: 

“We want to drive engagement and follower count on our social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) by 25% over the next 6 months. Our team of 8 marketing executives will drive this campaign by establishing clear goals, content, and visual changes, along with delegating responsibilities to others. We have budgeted 1,000 hours and $15,000 in order to carry out these rebranding efforts. At the end of 6 months, we will take a look at the analytics of the campaign to determine what worked and if we met these goals.” 

6. Make a Team & Stay Organized

Determine WHO you want to be doing the social media rebranding. Your team doesn’t have to be big, but you need to make sure you stick to it and treat your own company as a client. This is important when it comes to delegating responsibilities, determining workflows, and making decisions. 

Here’s an example of how you may want to set up your team:

• Director of Marketing – Oversees project, budget, time, and responsibilities. 
• VP of Social Strategy – Determines what content should be changed and has a good idea of goals and objectives. 
• Creative Director – Decides the new visual direction for your social media presence, including social media banners and imagery.
• Mid-level Marketing Executive – Gives outside input into the ultimate look and helps make decisions to assist high-level executives.
• Marketing specialists and Intern(s) – Performs competitor research, pulls performance analytics, and writes content (blogs, social posts, premium content, press releases, etc.).
  
  

Launching Your Social Media Rebrand:

7. Create Your Message 

It’s time to create your brand message and inform your audience about your new social media rebrand. What do you want your audience to know about you during this change? By establishing a message, you can directly craft your content and visuals. Depending on your industry and how you carry out this social media rebranding, your message will be different. 

Here are some examples: 

• “Our look is changing, but we are not. Our services, commitments, values, and customers remain our top priorities” 
• “We are reimagining what it means to be a _____ business. Starting in 2021, we will be adopting more technology and AI into our everyday practices, and we wanted to refresh our brand in order to reflect the tech-savvy nature of our company culture” 
• “Change can be good! Introducing ____ 2.0!” 

8. Make Visual Changes 

It’s your graphic designer’s time to shine! With the guidance of your Creative Director, you’ll want to update your social media profiles to reflect your new brand imaging! Of course, don’t go too crazy because you want your customers, both current and prospective, to recognize you. 

Social media graphics to update:

1. social media banner
2. profile picture/logo
3. post graphics

Here are some things to think about: 

Imagery: What images should you post? If you want a more fun and casual social media presence, post pictures from your company happy hours and parties! If you want your visuals to be branded and more about clients, create some eye-catching templates to highlight your projects. 

Colors: What colors are you using? Besides just brand colors, what are your other accent colors? Will they be different from season to season or depending on the type of post? 

9. Make Content Changes 

Have your higher-level marketing executives determine the general content changes and have your marketing specialists and interns write the new copy. Think about the different types of content and topics you want to post on each social platform.

Types of content and ideas that perform well on each platform: 

• LinkedIn:
  • Topics: industry trends, business best practices, client work 
  • Content-Type: blog posts, articles, case studies, whitepapers 
• Instagram:
  • Topics: industry trends, projects, company culture
  • Content-Type: eye-catching graphics, videos, galleries (multiple pictures on one post), employee spotlights
• Facebook:
  • Topics: industry trends, company updates, client work, events 
  • Content-Type: blogs posts, employee spotlights, event promotions, e-books, case studies 
• Twitter:
  • Topics: industry trends, company updates, holiday posts, any event reminders 
  • Content-Type: video, short reminder tweets, hashtags

Just because you are writing NEW content doesn’t mean you have to get rid of your old content! Harness the power of existing your content and repurpose your assets.

10. Stay With It 

By now, you understand that social media rebranding won’t happen on its own, and it definitely won’t continue to run itself. Staying organized and utilizing helpful software is key when it comes to maintaining a rebrand and running social media accounts. There are a lot of CRM and CMS software solutions out there to help schedule and optimize your social media accounts, so find out what works best for you. 

Social media rebranding is easier said than done and it can definitely be overwhelming! If you’re looking for an agency to partner with your team for your rebranding efforts, Pyxl is here to help! Pyxl has years of experience providing meaningful solutions for clients in several different industries. Reach out to us today! 

Updated: Apr 13, 2022