Starting a brand is all about capturing the essence of your company; understanding what that is to your and/or the customer and conveying that through consistency.
Why bother building a brand though? Surly that's time wasted, that you could be spending begging the customer to engage with your service or buy your product?
In short, no! Time spent on building a brand is not wasted at all. A brand is what brings customers back, time and time again. Did you know: a brand can actually be considered a tangible asset, and a strong brand is worth money that increases the physical value of your business!
I'd just like to start this post... My third post on Layered Income... and say thank you! It really does mean so much to me that so many of you have been reading these posts. I hope that they are motivating you to get out there and create your own businesses today!
So what is a brand?
Well done, Nike is a brand! But what is Nike?
"Nike are trainers": Nope.
'Nike are t-shirts": Nope.
Actually, Nike is a brand held by a company that makes shoes etc. A brand so well designed, that a simple 'tick' is enough for most people in the world to recognise it, with out even having the word 'Nike' present!
So a brand... A brand to me is the face of a company.
A good brand, to me, is a simple, effective and consistent face of a company!
How to start building my brand
Now we have some decisions to make. - And in order for this to be easier to follow I'm going to use my other website (www.bristolstudent.co.uk) as a case study.
Bristol Student is currently undergoing a re-branding over haul, so this is a perfect time for me to give you a complete rundown of my plans for branding my niche site!
Website/Company Social Branding
For Bristol Student, it felt important for me to keep a very non-corporate 'student' lifestyle type feel. Luckily for me, typing, as if I'm talking to a mate, comes easily.
However,
Trying to place graphics or layout that could be considered 'studenty', now that was difficult!
Firstly I started out with an idea. So I'm trying to appeal to students. What do students like? Pizza and beer:
(The image below was the first carnation of the Bristol Student website)
Trying to place graphics or layout that could be considered 'studenty', now that was difficult!
Firstly I started out with an idea. So I'm trying to appeal to students. What do students like? Pizza and beer:
(The image below was the first carnation of the Bristol Student website)
I don't want to push this post towards design (That is to come in a later post). But, the idea behind showing you the above image is to demonstrate a move toward better branding. However, as you can see, the header above causes a large waste of space before the fold.
Above, is the Facebook header for the original carnation of Bristol Student. This is where you should first be able to see the consistency involved with creating a brand. I have tried to keep with the theme across all social networking.
Time for a re-think, I think!
The above, is literally, my first conscious attempt at an element that builds a brand, but it doesn't capture what a successful brand is to me.
Here is something to think about, looking at my images above, does my branding openly alienate parts of the market I'm trying to target?
At a first glance, probably not. But as we discussed earlier, the branding is the face of my company/business/product, and by highlighting a very drink and food biased brand profile, it could be argued that I'm giving the first impression that my blog is simply about food and drink... No?
SO let's try again:
With the help of my brothers artistic eye, we've created a smaller header that captures the idea of Bristol. You may also notice other drastic changes, however these will be discussed in a different post.
The challenge of creating consistency lies in Facebook and Twitter (Ofcourse, among other social networks.. I'm currently working on a Bristol Student Instagram) ... Here are the results:
Content Branding
Now it's time to follow your new shiny presence with content that matches.
Facebook and Twitter posts should mirror your audience in style. For example, if your customer is primarily school children aged 10-16, then posts should contain snippets of content that would appeal to that demographic. Think, high-school trends etc!
It also makes sense that your posts to your site and your content matches your brand, this may sound like a dumb comment. But remember... Consistency.
Todays promise
As always at the end of these posts, I set a promise. The idea of these promises are to encourage you to act. To finish reading this post and physically do something right now.
Why do I want YOU to do something so bad? Well it's simple. I create this content to help you learn from what I've done.
It really makes all this work worth it, when I hear that you have gained just one more sale, or one more customer off of the back of these posts!
SO the promise:
"I promise today, to go to my Facebook page AND my Twitter page, and ensure all the branding is consistent. With headers that fit in with my branding, and matching profile images"
Yours,
Rory
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