For most SMEs, building a brand is an important part of growth hacking. Your brand is what defines you and makes you attractive to new customers and clients. Building your brand on social media means building a base of fans and followers that take you from being an unknown to a well-known brand.

Which entrepreneur doesn’t want their business to become well-known on social media? But it does take time and effort to do so.

Here are three social media networks that you can use for this purpose.

GlobalLinker

GlobalLinker is a networking solution for SMEs that offers business networking opportunities, special deals and helpful business services – in one place. Below are some simple tips to optimise the GlobalLinker experience:

1.     Update your personal & company profile

To make the most of your membership, be sure to fill in your member and company profile completely and verify your company by uploading the documents required. An updated profile will accurately showcase your products, skills and expertise. When members log in, they will see your updates and be exposed to your brand and your products or services.

2.     Expand your business network

One of the best reasons to join GlobalLinker is because its target audience is comprised of company founders, CEOs and high-flying executives. These people are the decision makers in their organisations, and if they are your target audience, GlobalLinker helps you connect to a hyper-targeted pool of people in front of whom you can present your brand. Moreover, on GlobalLinker you can connect with other SMEs and link with potential clients & suppliers.

3.     Share articles & participate in discussions

One of the most effective ways of branding your business on GlobalLinker is to share great content of interest to the members of this network. You can post articles, updates, and connect to people directly without any restrictions. You can also initiate discussions to seek advice or share some updates about your business and industry.

Facebook

The first step to promoting your brand on Facebook is to create a page for your brand. Now there are two ways you can go about this.

1.     By creating a brand page

Your brand page will bear the name of your company and will be your brand’s connection to your customers. If you’re a global brand, you can and should create localized pages for each country, as Dell India does.

The purpose of a brand page is to connect with your brand’s fans and share updates related to the brand. As many fans join brand pages for the purpose of discounts and freebies, it’s a good idea to grow your following with contests, deals and offers.

2.     By creating a community page

A community page is built for the purpose of growing a community of fans who are passionate about a cause or share a common interest. An example would be the Dell’s Social Media For Business branded community page, created around the topic of using social media to promote your business.

On this page, Dell posts updates related to social media and how businesses are using it to grow their brand. As it’s a pretty hot topic among business owners, this community page helps Dell target the kind of audience, i.e. businesses, that may be interested in purchasing a Dell computer some day. It may also be easier to grow a fan following for a community page around a hot topic of interest.

The best way to grow your fan following on both, your brand and your community Facebook pages, is to post engaging content, and use Facebook advertising to boost Facebook likes, promote certain posts, and run contests and promotions.

Facebook advertising is cheap, has multiple options and is a very effective way of getting attention for your brand.

LinkedIn

The first thing to do when you want to brand your business on LinkedIn is to create a LinkedIn company page for your brand.

Company pages offer public information about each company on LinkedIn. To add a company page, you need to be a current employee or founder of the company. You also need to be the official representative of this company and must have the right to act on behalf of the company.

To create the company page go to the page here and enter the company name and your email address at your company.  Once you have created it, you need to optimise your company page with relevant keywords so that it can be easily found in search engines.

Even though it’s easy to create a LinkedIn page for your brand, it’s not easy to grow your followers on it. LinkedIn doesn’t provide much help in this regard, either.

The easiest way to promote your company page on LinkedIn is to clearly mention it at the top of your LinkedIn profile. But there are more ways you can grow your followers on your LinkedIn company page. Here are some of them:


1.     Post content regularly

By updating your company page, either with your own blog posts or with third party content, you increase the likelihood that your followers will grow whenever someone shares an update they liked to their own followers.

The key to growing your followers is to post updates that are relevant to your target audience. See how Hootsuite Media Inc. posts updates with helpful tips and insights around social media, continuously providing value to their followers.

They also make announcements of new Hootsuite features on their LinkedIn page. You can also make your posts more sharable by posting video and trending posts from LinkedIn Pulse.

2.     Sponsored updates

Another way to grow your LinkedIn followers count is to pay for Sponsored Updates - a type of LinkedIn advertisement that allows you to promote a specific update on your company page to a targeted audience and grow your follower count.

3.     Promote your LinkedIn company page on your blog

Adding a follow button that leads to your LinkedIn company page, on your corporate blog, is an easy way to build your followers.

You can use LinkedIn’s Follow Company Plugin Generator to generate the code to create a follow button for your website or blog. You can also add your complete company page profile to your blog with the Company Profile Plugin Generator.

Other ways to promote your LinkedIn company page include creating multiple LinkedIn showcase pages, which give you more occasion to be found in search engines and by other LinkedIn users, and asking your employees to share your brand page content. 

For more tips to promote your LinkedIn company Page, check out LinkedIn's Best Company Pages in 2014 and LinkedIn’s resources on what makes a company page shine.