Tutorial
The best place to showcase your company’s branding is social media. Sure, it looks great on your website, but on social media you can see if it can hold it’s own when surrounded by hundreds of other brands.
Do you have to have the word’s greatest brand? Actually no. You just have to stand out.
How do you stand out?
In a word, consistency. It sounds mundane, but it’s true. Using the same brand look and feel in all your posts will make sure your loyal followers don’t miss your posts as they are quickly scrolling through their feeds. They will recognize your posts when they see them.
How does one excel at consistency?
It starts with a Brand Guide: an instruction manual on how a brand should be communicated. (bynder.com)
This is a template that has worked well for Small Biz Brands.
A Brand Guide such as this will enable you to really identify all the key parts of your brand. Download it and use it to create a cohesive brand.
For starters, your colors are not just red and gray, for example. They are exact shades of these colors that need to be the same every time you use them.
Next, think about font. You should have two fonts that you use in your graphic image posts. (See related tutorial.) If you can’t find your exact font in Canva or wherever you are building your images, choose a similar one and stick with it.
Even your photos can be part of this look and feel. Are they full of color? Black and white? Modern or traditional? Soothing or full of energy?
Now, on to your design elements. These should stay the same. Brand icons, patterns, borders, etc. should be identified and saved somewhere handy.
Usage can also take away from your overall brand impression. If you don’t have consistency in how your motto is used, how you describe your three main benefits, even in how you refer to your company name or team, it will reduce your overall impression.
Finally, a word about your website. Ideally, it should feel like a smooth transition when your audience follows a link from social media to your website. In other words, they should feel like they are part of the same branded environment. Otherwise, they are much more likely to bounce out. If this is not the case for you, start seeing how you can sync up these two today.
Do you have some other ideas of good information to include in a Brand Guide? Share it with the community in our private Facebook group, The Small Biz Builders.