Using Social Media for Business: Bringing Your Brand to Life

Nowadays, social media isn’t an option, but a necessity for business. It consumes so much space in our lives and is around every corner.

Both B2B and B2C businesses risk missing out on reaching an incredibly large number of prospective customers if they aren’t actively engaging on social media and realising the importance of social media marketing.

“As of February 2025, there were 5.56 billion internet users worldwide, which amounted to 67.9 percent of the global population. Of this total, 5.24 billion, or 63.9 percent of the world’s population, were social media users.” — (Petrosyan, 2025)

Can businesses afford to skirt around socials?

Social media is a staple in both our personal and professional lives. How can you use social media to boost your business?

1. Remember that authenticity resonates

Connection is essential for conversion.

If your customers don’t feel connected to your brand, product offering, or ethos, the likelihood is that they won’t buy into your services. Businesses are increasing investments in brand-led marketing, and the AI marketing landscape is opening space for creative, brand-led content to shine (The 2025 State of Marketing Report, 2025).

But you don’t need big campaigns to get your message across — start by fostering a great company culture and being a business that your employees are proud to work for. With employees who are active on social media, you’ll see your brand culture begin to show as they choose to engage with posts and content from the brand.

2. Get creative

Creativity is more important than ever. Scroll down your timeline, and the likelihood is you’ll be able to spot obvious AI content using the same phrases and giving the same insights.

We’re seeing brands go big already in 2025, bringing truly creative campaigns to billboards, screens, and packaging — a firm favourite of mine is Cadbury and VCCP’s ‘Made to Share’ campaign.

Refined tip: Video content is your secret weapon, letting you show your personality, brand culture, and values in an engaging format — especially short-form video.

3. Leverage tools instead of relying on them

Time saved on mundane, repetitive tasks helps to free up precious time for innovation, testing, and strategy. An overwhelming majority of marketers have started to integrate artificial intelligence into their repertoire of tools, with many using AI to assist with social media marketing.

HubSpot’s report ‘2024 AI Trends for Marketers’ found that a staggering 97% of B2B marketers consider generative AI tools either effective or somewhat effective. This speaks to the AI-dominated business landscape and fast-paced industry.

While it takes mere seconds to ask generative AI tools like ChatGPT to write 10 LinkedIn posts promoting your business, the market is becoming saturated with obviously AI, over-salesy content that lacks human connection. That’s where it’s important to know when to use these tools, and how to get the most out of them.

Top tips for using generative AI:

• Get your prompts right — be as descriptive as possible, including information about your target audience, brand values, and intention for the content.
• Add context — AI may not have up-to-date information about your business, so give some background information, set a tone of voice, and if necessary, set a persona.
• Keep your brand in mind — one thing is for sure; AI will never know your brand as well as your team does. Set a tone of voice and give any necessary information from your brand kit about how to talk about certain things.
• Fact check — this speaks for itself; the information you present needs to be accurate.
• Revise and refine — human oversight is necessary. HubSpot found that when using AI to write copy, 52% of marketers make minor edits to the text, 41% make significant changes, and an additional 7% change it completely.

4. Add validation to your services

Case studies are a great way to add validation and trust to your service offerings. They give potential customers an insight not only into the type of work you do and industries you work in, but also the way in which you work.

Client testimonials are a powerful tool to add human insight to your offering, letting potential clients know what it’s like to work with your business or use your services.

5. Align your social media and branding

Your social media presence should be viewed as an extension of and an opportunity to showcase your brand identity to more people.

Aligning your branding with your social media activity can strengthen and build trust between your brand and target audience. Every social media post, including images or videos, should connect back to the messages your brand wants to send to its audience.

Additionally, ensure you utilise every possible way to show off your brand — think branded header images and optimised descriptions.

6. Keep touchpoints linked

Keeping all the different touchpoints to your brand linked is important for consistency.

Through your various social media platforms, website, and marketing materials, tell your brand’s story — not just what you have to offer.

7. Choose the right channels

Not every brand needs to be on every social media platform — we aren’t!

The key is to focus your efforts and time on the platforms that have the most potential for your business goals, keeping in mind your target audience.

“Facebook and Instagram seem to be the best social media channels in terms of ROI — 29% of B2B marketers saw the greatest returns there. YouTube comes in third place with 26%, while TikTok was the most profitable avenue for 24% of B2B marketers.” (The 2025 State of Marketing Report, 2025)

B2B brands inevitably have a different target audience than B2C brands, but within that, there are different personas to consider. HubSpot’s ‘Make My Persona’ tool is a great free tool you can use to create a buyer persona to help you visualise your audience.

8. Measure, monitor, and refine

As much as we value creativity and using social media in a way that feels authentic, it’s always important to measure content performance.

Brands measure success in different ways, depending on their goals for using social media. Some businesses use social media primarily for promoting their products, so they may focus on leads generated and sales. Whereas other businesses are keen to drive brand awareness and loyalty, so engagement in the form of comments, shares, saves and likes may be more important.

Consider what you want to achieve from a presence on social media, set some achievable goals, and define your success metrics to track and monitor. But having the data isn’t the end of this exercise; it’s essential to learn from what you see in the data and tweak your content accordingly.

Reference

Petrosyan, A. (2025) Number of internet and social media users worldwide as of February 2025, Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/ (Accessed: 19 February 2025).

The 2025 State of Marketing Report (2025) HubSpot. Available at: https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing (Accessed: 19 February 2025).