It's a bit overwhelming to start posting for your business on social media. Who do you want to post for? What do you post? How do you get enough content to post images, videos, and more? A simple tactic to navigate through this noise is to post about what you own. 

Using Coca-Cola and Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow again, Sharp explains all Coke has done to associate the brand with certain traits or activities. Like the color red, going to the beach, or movie theaters. He calls these memory structures, and utilizing them is critically important to marketing.

"In summary, advertising largely works by refreshing memory structures…." Sharp states. He continues with, "Advertising maintains and builds brand salience via creative publicity. Brands don't need to worry about having a persuasive message; even when they do have one, the message needs to be embedded within a framework of brand links and cues...."

Going back to Coca-Cola, so much of their advertising takes place doing the activities mentioned above, or even over-impressing their shade of red. So if they make compelling campaigns using these things that they own, they have created, as Sharp calls it, Brand Salience.

Using Coke as an example of marketing success seems unrelatable. Their budget, the size of their agency, the creatives they can afford—I do understand; It's not cheap to (mostly) own the color red.

Bringing this back to relevancy for you and your company, Sharp elaborates that there is a lot of situational differentiation between you and your competitors:

• Location: "This product is here and I know it is here,"" This company is conveniently located near me," "I need it now and I know this place is open."

• Products & Availability: "this one is in my size," "this is the only one in green,"

• Branding: "this was the one I noticed," "this was the product that came to mind," "this is a family-owned business and I like that,"

There is more to achieve creative success and a wide reach on social media, but this is a good primer if you're not ready to hire someone. If you are, and would like to hear about more robust social media strategies, then click on the button to fill out a contact form.