7 Steps to Test Your Brand Standards
Brand management or branding is the messaging to clients and potential customers in your advertisements, posters, brochures, and letterhead. Now entrepreneurs can’t stop there. Add to those traditional mediums your website and social media tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, and blogs.
Test your brand standards with these 7 steps for consistency:
1 Make a list of all the mediums you use to get ready to review them
Business cards, letterhead, newspaper ads, Google ads, Twitter, Google+, etc.
2 Do you have a branding plan?
It doesn’t have to be War and Peace. A page or two about what image you want to present, your values, the tone, and your colours (as CMYK, RGB, or PMS) is a perfect start.
3 Are you using your logo consistently?
Usually the colour and the black & white versions are enough. Use the same logo colours and the same aspect ratio.
4 Do you use the same profile picture on everything?
People connect with people. Make sure use the same friendly profile photo. When you update one medium, update them all.
5 What is your tone of voice?
Accounting and law firms tend to have more professional and conservative tones to denote seriousness. That same tone of voice wouldn’t work for my website or speaker sheet because I offer creative training and writing services. Be sure to choose a tone and stay with it in your text and images.
6 Do you have social media guidelines for staff or volunteers?
Anyone who posts on your organization’s behalf needs to understand your brand and their role in the branding plan.
7 What is your list of six to ten words that you want to use consistently?
Social media/marketing consultants may use grow, connectivity, strategic, mentorship, business to business, consulting, analytics, communicate, and product development.
Holistic practitioner’s selected phrases could be natural healing, empower, exceptional, caring, take control of your health, strength, power, well-being, and covered by insurance.
How is your branding? Have I missed any? Please share your thoughts.
Catherine,
Great article! I completely agree, it is imperative to have consistent photos and information on every social media channel. Additionally all image related materials and profiles must match to ensure consistency.
I look forward to reading more.
Best,
Michael
You offer some really great tips here. I also firmly believe in consistency and professionalism when trying to brand your business. I like that you pointed out that a branding plan doesn’t have to be an overwhelming project – just one to two pages that you can reference to keep you on track!
These are some great tips to get started or to make sure you have everything covered!
I appreciated your post. It presents great guidelines for those of us who are new to social media marketing. I’ve found it can be hard to find content and to post often without feeling like I might be blurring our branding guidelines (in terms of message, not design). You’ve given me a few more things to consider.
Great advice here, Catherine. I’m going to review my online presence based on your tips. I especially love #7.
Thanks for reading, everyone! The best thing about a checklist is that I caught myself needing to update a few things too 🙂
Great tips! I will have to go through the checklist with my own brand and make sure I am being consistent.
Great branding piece! I think you covered about everything I would have said on the subject. Consistency is key is branding. Your logo, your message and your content, voice…etc! 🙂
I have to work on getting branded it’s in the tip of my list to get done this month! Thank you for the tips and reminders!
I have to get after branding my business and getting to the point that no matter where you are you know that it’s about me..;)
Great list Catherine! This is exactly what people need, it can be too overwhelming at times. Thank you for giving clarity on the brand standards.
People are so visual. It’s always great advice to use the same logo or likeness all over the net for branding purposes. I’ve been known to tell folks that more than a few times 🙂
Great tips Catherine, and very helpful to make the branding process less confusing. Thanks!
Consistency is huge across social media. I love these tips, Catherine!
Catherine, when I launched a 99Designs.com contest to design my logo, I wrote a whole branding brief, based on offline marketing campaigns I did for clients. (Most contest participants had never seen one.) And, this week, when I started having some website changes done, I sent out the same 3-year-old brief. Sure makes life simple when you do it from the start!
So true. Making time for planning makes entrepreneurial life zoo much easier!