Brands often rebrand for a number of reasons, and when you don’t do it for the right ones, you end up with rebranding efforts that are all over the place. And nobody benefits from that.

Brands “rebrand” to keep the brand relevant, reach new and untapped market, or when doing a product launch. On rare occasions, some even use it for a fresh start after they’ve experienced a crisis.

Reintroducing your brand to your audience is easier nowadays, thanks to the power of social media platforms. Wherever you are in your rebranding journey, here are some tips to help you roll out a successful rebranding strategy on social media.

6 Tips for Rebranding Successfully on Social Media

Assess your existing social media strategy.

When doing a rebrand, the first thing you must do is take a holistic look at your existing social media strategy—find what works and what doesn’t. If you’ve been toying with the idea of a rebrand for a while now, then we’d assume you already have a few ideas about this. Unlike building a brand from scratch, when you do a rebrand, you already have a system in place. In a way, you already know your brand, how you want it to grow, what it’s trying to achieve as well as what you’d want to carry over to the new phase.

Whatever reason you may have for this undertaking, the first thing you have to do is assess what isn’t working for your brand right now. Only when you find the gaps can you come up with better ways of addressing these moving forward, so you can be sure not to fall into the same mistakes in the future. Once everything is laid out in the open can you begin to build the rationale behind your rebranding, especially the answer to why you’re even compelled to do it in the first place.

We are going to argue one important part of this step, and that is doing competitor research. No strategy building is complete without looking at your competitors. It’d do you well to check what they are doing, especially in terms of content formats and (new) platforms and technologies they’re benefitting from. You may be surprised to find that the avenues you’ve yet to tap—platforms they’re already using—are already doing wonders for them and for many in your industry.

Take TikTok, for instance. The rise of TikTok makes it a viable social media platform that helps brands reach more audiences. The exposure and reach of the platform make it so worth it and brands who know how best to leverage this (and leverage it well) are already taking advantage of TikTok’s potential.

(Learn how best to leverage TikTok for your brand.)

Define goals for the rebranding effort.

Rebranding takes more than changing a few things here and there like your name, the overall brand colors, the tagline, and so on. It’s about repositioning yourself so the old audience can reconnect with you or help you attract new followers. When rebranding, there must be a great balance between your roots and what you want to capture in this new era. You can only do all of these with a clearly defined goal for the rebranding effort.

After assessing your existing brand and how it looks and feels to your audience, the next logical step is to define what goals you want to achieve with the rebrand. This gives a cohesive structure to your efforts. This helps narrow your focus so you don’t end up trying to sprinkle a little bit of everything that you think would work into the mix. Like any other goals, rebranding goals must be SMART—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely.

There is also the issue of your past content, which is usually overcome when you already have a clear goal in mind: are you planning on starting from scratch or perhaps, interested in tweaking just a few, surface-level things? When going for the former, brands often scrap all the older content to make way for the new. Remember, you don’t have to delete it all; you can always opt to just edit your old posts accordingly so it still aligns with your new style. Better yet, create a clear boundary between the old and the new to delineate where the old style ends and where the rebrand begins. This way, it’d be easier for your audience to follow the change.

Come up with a team.

Once the goals are in place, it’s time to come up with your “dream team”—people involved in turning these goals into reality. We have to note, however, that the rebranding effort is something everyone in your brand or company must be aware of. But it does help to engage, more so than the others, a few key people in this journey.

In your team, you must have the project manager, some key persons involved in marketing, the creatives, web developers (if you’re planning to rehash the website), plus—if not most especially—your social media team and content creators.

(Check out 8 of the most notable UI/UX trends for this year.)

One of the most crucial parts of any modern rebranding effort involves the social media rollout. For this, you need your social media team there from day one. They can plot what things to do pre-launch, during the rebranding launch, and after (or post-launch). They’re one of your most crucial people in this rebranding effort. When not helping you determine how to translate your brand goals, the social media team is also tasked to do up the content that matches it, which brings us to the next step.

Create your new look and content for social media

Here’s where the heavy lifting for your design and content team comes in. These professionals are trained to translate your brand voice into pieces of content and assets that people can easily understand and relate to your brand. Not only that, but they also make sure to take care of the nitty-gritty details, too, including making sure that everything is coherent and uniform across all channels.

Here’s when you create profile images, pieces of copy with the new brand voice, brand guides and more. This is more than just choosing a shiny new logo, name or tagline. A rebrand would also mean, in most cases, changing the visual style and tone of the brand.

For this step, it’s important that you engage the creatives—graphic designers, content creators and of course, your social media team. It’s their duty to ensure that while new, the best parts of your brand are still captured and recognizable.

Some brands, especially if they don’t have an in-house creative team, employ third party service providers, like a full suite digital marketing team, to do this for them. The look, the palette and how you “talk” on social media will ultimately differentiate you from the competition; it will magnify your rebranded personality. So, it’s best to have a team who knows what they’re doing to do it for you.

Excite your audience.

The market loves feeling like they’re in on something, and because they do, they also adore being let in on changes happening to brands they subscribe to. To make sure they’re in on this journey with you, you can opt to drop hints in advance. Nothing major, really. Come up with a campaign to inform people who follow you so they know something’s coming.

One of the most popular ways to do this is by releasing a short teaser or countdown on your existing social media platforms. This helps build the anticipation around your rebrand and lessens the surprise for your loyal followers.

You can make this experience even more special not only for your team but also for your followers by giving them access to your rebranding efforts. Focus on the rebranding or branding story. Your narrative has to resonate with them. Explain the rationale to them and share with them some bits and pieces of the rebrand. Not only is this going to help build the anticipation, but this will also make transitioning them to your brand’s new version smoother as well.

Monitor progress and track analytics.

An ideal rebrand is never complete without a post relaunch assessment. Brands doing a rebrand have to especially be ready to answer questions for the first few days (or weeks) after the relaunch. People, especially those loyal to the brand, may have questions regarding your new look and it’s best to answer these as soon as you get them.

Pro tip: one thing you can try is putting yourself in your customer's shoes and then doing up a content, sort of like a FAQs section, that answers questions they may have about the rebranding. This’ll help target questions they may have without them having to message you directly about it. Plus, the shareability of this content published on social media is easier.

Finally, track your analytics for a few weeks or months after the rebrand. This allows you to learn from your success and avoid failures in the future.

There are so many ways to go about rebranding a brand, but when you know the basic things to consider, it’s easier to narrow your focus and go about this journey.

You can map out and launch your own strategy or hire an expert team to do it.

Digital marketing, web design and development—whatever you’re not certain of, we’re there to fill in for you. Message our friendly team today to learn more!