Every business owner knows that no matter how unique your products are or how niche your market is, brand image is always vital in setting you apart. if your brand exists purely online, branding may be even more important than the products themselves. Your social media content, the way you communicate with your customers, and even the fonts you use — all make up your brand image and can determine your business’s success.
Think about your online brand image as your customer’s in-store experience; you want it to be consistent across all your store locations. So whether you’re posting or sharing livestreams on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, any other social platform, everything must be aligned and consistent. Here are some tips to help you:
Follow a color palette
When creating your brand image, colors are one of the first elements you should finalize. More than just a visual cue to help your customers identify your brand, colors can also help convey emotions and experiences. That’s why choosing a color isn’t just about preference, there should be a strategy behind it.
Red, for example, is a color that evokes excitement and passion — a color famously adapted by Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola’s eye-catching bright red is consistently applied in advertising collaterals and photos posted on social media.
While the brand is mostly associated with the color red, it also has secondary colors including orange, black, and gray, which are used as accents in all creative materials.
You can choose one to four colors for your palette. One will serve as your base color or main color, the second and third can be your accent, and the fourth can be any neutral color that can serve as your regular background.
Following a color palette will not only help you produce consistent creatives but can also help increase brand awareness by 80%.
Have go-to filters
Using photo filters can enhance your photos, add character to your shots, and even help you communicate a story better. For brands, having go-to filters can help keep their feed clean and consistent.
M.A.C Cosmetics (@maccosmetics) uses a bright filter to create a crisp and professional-looking feed. The filter is on-brand with the cosmetic company’s premium image and high-end products.
Having go-to filters can help you produce images that stand out individually and look great when put together. It also makes it easy to publish photos for different platforms as you simply need to tap on your filter of choice, make some adjustments if needed, and you’re ready to go.
Use photo editing apps that have a wide selection of filters, which you can combine and customize to make your own. You can also apply filters to videos and resize photos for any platform to ensure it’s optimized for posting.
Establish a tone of voice
Brand image isn’t all about your look, it’s also a lot about how you sound. Establishing a tone of voice for your brand is extremely important because it tells customers who you are
Emily Weiss, CEO of Glossier points to the skincare brand’s tone of voice as one of the keys to its success. Newly-hired copywriters are trained to write as if “they’re talking to their best friend”, while employees respond to all direct messages and emails themselves. When customers leave a comment on the Glossier Instagram page, they’re sure to get a reply. This friendly approach has proven successful for the skincare brand as it continues to make waves in the beauty industry many years after its launch.
It’s crucial to have a consistent tone of voice across all platforms, advertising materials, call to actions and even the way you talk to your customers privately. If you’re consistent, customers will feel more connected to you and will more likely stay loyal to your brand.
Repurpose content
If you’re running a small team, creating different content for every channel will be impossible, not to mention, unnecessary. Repurposing doesn’t just mean reposting your content for Instagram on Facebook, it also could mean applying it into different formats.
If you just posted a long-form video on Facebook, create bite-sized images of important power quotes and add them to your Instagram feed. If you have a blog, you can transform it into infographics that can be resized and published on all your social platforms.
Repurposing content might sound like a lazy shortcut — it’s not. Repurposing content (especially those that performed well) is a smart marketing tactic that will save you time and ensure that all your platforms are on-brand and aligned.
Build a brand book
A brand book is a key document or reference that will help you create a consistent brand image before you think of launching your business off the ground. It should cover messaging, look and feel, logo guidelines, and all aspects of creating content for any platform. It may also make sense to find a software to organize your photos so it’s easy to reuse them in the future for promotional reasons.
Having a brand book will make your life easier as your brand gets bigger. It will ensure that each time you craft a new campaign or join a brand-new social media platform, you are always aligned with your brand’s goals.
