Branding, Marketing, Social Media
In today’s digital marketing world, staying on brand with your marketing can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. All it takes is a little planning ahead. Let’s look at a few tips that will help.
- Determine your brand and message. This should be done when setting up your business so this step should be easy!
- Refer to your style guide often to keep your color and logo the same throughout.
- It’s important to have one person creating your social media. Be sure to have your brand voice, tone, and imagery examples available.
- Schedule your posts in advance. This will help you keep on brand because you aren’t rushing trying to decide what to post at the last minute.
- Document your social media process for new hires. Include how and where to find content and images.
- If you have a team, assign one person to approve the content.
- Set your tone and voice and be sure it remains consist on all marketing outlets.
- Have a checklist to keep posts brand focused. Successful digital marketing cannot happen without guidelines.
Each platform handles information differently but if you follow the guidelines you have put in place, your marketing will convey your brand message in a way that will get you noticed!
Contact us should you wish to set up a time to discuss your marketing.
Branding
There are so many new buzz words these days it’s hard to keep up. (Here’s a complete list of buzzwords predicted to take over in 2017.) One of the new words is ‘brand identity’. It’s more than just your typical buzzword though, you need to know what it means and what you as a business needs to do about it.
So, what is a ‘Brand Identity’? According to http://www.investopedia.com, a company’s brand identity is “how that business wants to be perceived by consumers. The components of the brand (name, logo, tone, tagline, typeface) are created by the business to reflect the value the company is trying to bring to the market and to appeal to its customers.”
It also goes on to point out the difference between brand identity and brand image. Your image is how the public perceives you which may not necessarily be what you think your brand identity is. For that reason, it is important to create a clear and concise brand identity and keep it consistent across all forms of your marketing..
Here are a few ideas to help manage a brand identity that will last and represent you well:
- Take the time to development your brand. This will help you manage your image.
- Brand consistency eliminates brand confusion.
- Establishing your brand standards and maintaining that standard, will build brand equity.
- Customers will see your brand and know exactly what your business is no matter what platform they see you on.
- Maintaining a consistent brand helps to convey a certain degree of reliability and trust. (think Coca-Cola)
You may want to create a brand style guide to share with your team. Included in the guide should be:
- Exact company name to be used including LLC, Inc, Co., etc.
- Tag Line
- Mission Statement.
- Logo – You should have variations so you need to detail what/when/where each variation is used.
- Color Scheme – Include hex codes, rgb, and color usage as it relates to your brand.
- Typography – List of fonts you use in your blog content, press releases, emails, sales copy
- Imagery and Photo Styles — How should these look to the market? Under what circumstances are different styles used, what feelings they should induce in the customer
- Copy Guidelines — The more details the better about capitalization of letters in the brand name/brand material, and circumstances and locations to use trademarks, affiliations, slogans, disclaimers, etc.
- Examples of what you consider poor use of your brand — such as inappropriate language while signed into company social media and other online profiles.
Is your brand identity the same across all platforms of marketing, including social media? Is it telling the same story everywhere you see it? Talk to us and we can do a complete brand identity evaluation for you!
